Which Motherboard Do You Use?

Frezzato

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Alas, Albino Boo is banned, but I love his tech advice. RIP you salty curmudgeon.

Anyway, I'm building a new PC, and I recall the Boo's solid advice of starting with a quality motherboard and power supply. I have a saved build here [https://pcpartpicker.com/user/BotaniculaSamsung/saved/2nLsYJ] if you're curious.

I would like to know what MoBo's you mofos chose and why. For me, I want something that can use higher frequency DDR4, has USB 3, and...that's about it. So I went with the MSI Z170A GAMING M5 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard, but I don't like that it's from 2015. Are there any newer boards you guys and gals can recommend?

.

A bit of background on me: I'M LAZY.

I don't want to replace anything in the PC I build. I want plenty of power and I'll use an additional cooler to make this new machine last as long as possible.

I will eventually want to play games on my new rig but I also enjoy doing completely random crap like using Handbrake, Subtitle Edit, making games, a bit of programming, and having 30 different applications running all at once because I have no attention span. I also love fooling around on Adobe CS, Unity, etc.

So what pitfalls/pratfalls should I be aware of when setting up this new build? I've seen people listing instructions on how to set up things in the BIOS prior to loading Windows and I would like to avoid that if possible.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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I have one of the variants of the asrock h97 (the pro4 I think).

It was more of a budget mobo that I got while trying to save money (which I poured into a 980), and I got it mostly because I knew I wasn't interested in overclocking, and it was compatible with everything else I needed at the time.

A year after I put together my PC I found a sick deal on some nice DDR4 ram and wanted to get it. Checked my mobo, oops, only supports DDR3. Feels bad bro.

So yeah, my motherboard is fine for now, but I really should have gotten a better one and just future proofed my build. I figure I'll skip this gen of graphics cards since my 980 is holding up well and wait for the new one, but when that happens I'll end up needing to replace my mobo, ram, and graphics card so it'll end up costing more later than what I initially saved by cheaping out.

So...yeah, don't cheap out.
 

Frezzato

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Dirty Hipsters said:
Ooh, thanks. Yeah, my buying instincts almost always run out of control when it comes to parting with my money, as in too quickly. But in this case I'll ignore the negative aspects of that.

Reading some Newegg reviews of ASRock mobos shows that quality control is on par with just about every board I've considered, meaning a few instances of bent pins from the factory. I guess it's just a roll of the dice for that.

I had no idea mobos could get that expensive though, and it seems the negative reviews of a product are directly related to the ratio of cost/expectations. I'll keep looking around, thank you.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Frezzato said:
Dirty Hipsters said:
Ooh, thanks. Yeah, my buying instincts almost always run out of control when it comes to parting with my money, as in too quickly. But in this case I'll ignore the negative aspects of that.

Reading some Newegg reviews of ASRock mobos shows that quality control is on par with just about every board I've considered, meaning a few instances of bent pins from the factory. I guess it's just a roll of the dice for that.

I had no idea mobos could get that expensive though, and it seems the negative reviews of a product are directly related to the ratio of cost/expectations. I'll keep looking around, thank you.
I mean I'm not going to badmouth the mobo I bought. It's been working well and installing it was zero hassle. I just wish I'd thought more about the future during my initial purchase. At the time I didn't have as much disposable income as I do now though, so I basically just got all the parts that were "good enough" to not bottle neck the 980 I wanted (with the exception of the power supply, which I got with the consideration that I might want to SLI the 980 later).
 

Frezzato

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Dirty Hipsters said:
I mean I'm not going to badmouth the mobo I bought. It's been working well and installing it was zero hassle. I just wish I'd thought more about the future during my initial purchase. At the time I didn't have as much disposable income as I do now though, so I basically just got all the parts that were "good enough" to not bottle neck the 980 I wanted (with the exception of the power supply, which I got with the consideration that I might want to SLI the 980 later).
I think as long as you can do what you had initially planned then it wasn't a bad purchase.

I don't expect a long life from the machine I intend to build. I mean, right now I'm using a mediocre, dull-as-dishwater HP prebuild which I haven't done much gaming on, and it's been chugging along faithfully since 2009. So if I get 8 years from this new machine, which is a fairly average lifespan for prebuilds in my experience, I'll be happy.

So according to that timeline I'll be ready for a new machine entirely in about 8 years, perhaps swapping out a video card if the motherboard doesn't explode somehow.
 

Remus

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I went with an Asus X99-A for my current rig. This was 2 years ago and people were, and largely still are, using DDR3. I wanted to futureproof however so went with a DDR4 quad-channel config with 4 sticks of 4gb. It also has the USB3 that you're looking for. My last rig lasted 8 years as well, only dying recently after I gave it away to (at the time unknown to me) a heavy smoker. This dropped my old PC's lifespan to exactly zero with no hope of recovery. I dropped an R9 295x2 in the new machine and haven't had to think about upgrading since. At the time the card was running for around $650 new, which quickly jumped to the 1k+ range shortly after I bought it, likely due to dwindling supply with the current gen of cheaper cards coming down the pipe. Still ranks in the top 3 cards on futuremark and I like a good one-card solution so I'm happy.
 

Frezzato

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Remus said:
Thanks for your response.

I'm considering upping the limit for how much I'm willing to spend on a motherboard, possibly reducing costs elsewhere, although I don't know where since I'm not even buying a new monitor or peripherals. The one I had chosen, the MSI Z170A GAMING M5, is at $150 right now and if I'm going to go higher, then I have to balance that against a realistic expected lifespan of the machine.

I can definitively say that in terms of rank, my priorities are: 1. Reliability 2. Features 3. Cost

I think I'll be lucky if it lasts ten years, with the last few years spent as a media server or something.
 

aozgolo

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I have an ASUS Maximus VII Hero Motherboard, it works perfectly for me, I was able to set up the system proper right away without any issues. The UEFI (BIOS) is very detailed and gives you loads of control, and there's even a little 7-segment display on the motherboard that gives off codes so if you need to troubleshoot it you can see exactly what it's doing at any time. The motherboard is easily expandable too. There's a newer version out, the Maximus VIII Hero, but it uses a different CPU socket, so whatever mobo you get, make sure to confirm that you get a compatible CPU. I have a i7 4790k on mine.
 

Frezzato

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aozgolo said:
Thanks for your input. I've considered the Maximus VIII Hero and I think it's going to be between that and the MSI Gaming Z170A.
 
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I got a Z97 sabretooth with thermal plating, an i5 4690, 16GB DDR3 but am considering going up to 32 for Civ IV C2C and a 6GB 1060. Previously had a 770 but it cooked itself.

I'm hardly an expert but it seems to happily handle anything I want to play.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I went with an Asus x99-A. I wanted an i7-5820k and it was the best not stupidly expensive mobo I could find that worked with the lga2011 socket at the time.
 

Mcgeezaks

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A ASUS Z170-P because it was the one I could afford when I upgraded from a i5 2500k to a i7 6700k.
 

ghalleon0915

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Actually just finished my new rig about a month ago, so good time to respond to this. My mobo is similar to yours, it's an MSI Z170A SLI LGA 1151 Intel Z170. I was going to get the one you mentioned, but my mobo went on sale for $159 CAN ( plus $20 rebate) and the other one was at $219 so that made the choice for me.

Looking at your list, we have very similar picks, the only difference being the gpu ( went with a 8GB GTX 1060, Asus has it for $320 CAN + rebate ) and an i5 6600k ( again, on sale for $279 CAN ) so I think your choice of mobo would be pretty good. My installation went smoothly, BIOS was a breeze and I didn't have any issues with the M.2 slot although others seemed to have issues with it.

Seeing as your heatsink is a coolermaster, be aware that 1-2 of your RAM slots will be pretty close to it so just keep that in mind when you're installing your sticks.

So in short, I'm quite happy with it.
 

JUMBO PALACE

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I built my PC a few years ago with an ASRock Z87 Extreme 3. It's served me well so far but it's a DDR3 board. I was thinking of doing a new mobo, i7, and DDR4 build with my christmas bonus.

Anyway, I don't see a reason to overthink your mobo. There's so many to choose from that are funcitonally identical with the same technology. You highlighted USB 3.0 (pretty much ubiquitous) and DDR4 (extremely easy to find as well). The only thing I would say is if you plan to overclock at all make sure you have a board that has that capability. You also might want to see how many SATA 3 ports it has in case you are planning on running a large number of SSD/HDDs.
 

Saulkar

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I went with an Asus Rampage V Revision as I wanted to get similar performance to my overclocked 3930K after my motherboard PCIe slots went floof (except for the main one) so I went with the LAG2011v3 and 5930K (had I of waited I would have landed on a dual xeon windfall, dammit!) and still needed plenty of room for GPUs when rendering and easy over clocking for the CPU.
 

Frezzato

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JUMBO PALACE said:
I built my PC a few years ago with an ASRock Z87 Extreme 3. It's served me well so far but it's a DDR3 board. I was thinking of doing a new mobo, i7, and DDR4 build with my christmas bonus.

Anyway, I don't see a reason to overthink your mobo. There's so many to choose from that are funcitonally identical with the same technology. You highlighted USB 3.0 (pretty much ubiquitous) and DDR4 (extremely easy to find as well). The only thing I would say is if you plan to overclock at all make sure you have a board that has that capability. You also might want to see how many SATA 3 ports it has in case you are planning on running a large number of SSD/HDDs.
Thanks. Yeah, I'm trying not to get too involved with this but my main priority is reliability.

There's been a lot of great suggestions here but having checked all of them (and I really do mean all), the most recent reviews of all these boards have been dotted with complaints, mainly about bent pins but quite a lot of mobos being DOA. This is even the case with the pricier boards listed.

It's a crap shoot I'm afraid, so I'll just have to make sure I buy from somewhere that will focus on customer service should I run into any issues.
 

JUMBO PALACE

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Frezzato said:
JUMBO PALACE said:
I built my PC a few years ago with an ASRock Z87 Extreme 3. It's served me well so far but it's a DDR3 board. I was thinking of doing a new mobo, i7, and DDR4 build with my christmas bonus.

Anyway, I don't see a reason to overthink your mobo. There's so many to choose from that are funcitonally identical with the same technology. You highlighted USB 3.0 (pretty much ubiquitous) and DDR4 (extremely easy to find as well). The only thing I would say is if you plan to overclock at all make sure you have a board that has that capability. You also might want to see how many SATA 3 ports it has in case you are planning on running a large number of SSD/HDDs.
Thanks. Yeah, I'm trying not to get too involved with this but my main priority is reliability.

There's been a lot of great suggestions here but having checked all of them (and I really do mean all), the most recent reviews of all these boards have been dotted with complaints, mainly about bent pins but quite a lot of mobos being DOA. This is even the case with the pricier boards listed.

It's a crap shoot I'm afraid, so I'll just have to make sure I buy from somewhere that will focus on customer service should I run into any issues.
Yup, I've noticed the same thing. Other components you can easily find the bad eggs but I've never seen a 5 star rated mobo on NewEgg. It seems that as a whole they're the the most at-risk of manufacturing defects.
 

JUMBO PALACE

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Ezekiel said:
The ridiculously named Fatal1ty Z87 Killer. It was relatively cheap and had what I needed. But for some reason, I can't overclock my i5-4670k above 4 GHz. It always failed while booting, so I gave up.
Same. I have that processor as well and it topped out at 4Ghz. Still plenty, but I was really hoping to get through that barrier.