Question Best Motherboard for a NON-Gamer

[Bulldog17]

Virtually all 'best motherboard' reviews out there are written for gamers, which makes total sense. After all, who is most likely to be interested in building?

However, gamers aren't the only DIYers. There must be lots of builders like myself who are building for media editing, content creation, data science ... use cases like that. And while I can always ask a forum "what do you think of this build?" I would love to see motherboard reviews for non-gamers. They must be out there. Can you point me to where I can find them?

Thanks for your advice.

 

[ARICH5]

there are a lot out there. just search for workstation motherboard reviews. the world of EDM and dj'ing have alot of input also.

 

[Eximo]

There are creator and pro boards out there, but they don't always get reviewed by general gaming sites because they often cost a lot of money.

Type of motherboard doesn't matter so much as the features. Depends a lot on what you are doing what type of I/O and slot arrangement you will need. High end gaming motherboards often have a lot of features that can be useful to a professional. Gaming and high end workstation tasks have similar requirements of long duration processing after all.

If you need a lot of PCIe lanes for add-in cards, or lots of type-c / thunderbolt ports, you will find the right motherboards to look at. Or if you want absolute control of PCIe bifurcation or IPMI or something.

Though if you want absolute professional level stuff, then you would basically look at Supermicro, ASRock Rack, Gigabyte also has a division for that I think, and ASUS still does some server class boards.

Level 1 Tech is probably a good resource for home/pro server stuff.

 

[Zerk2012]

Virtually all 'best motherboard' reviews out there are written for gamers, which makes total sense. After all, who is most likely to be interested in building?

However, gamers aren't the only DIYers. There must be lots of builders like myself who are building for media editing, content creation, data science ... use cases like that. And while I can always ask a forum "what do you think of this build?" I would love to see motherboard reviews for non-gamers. They must be out there. Can you point me to where I can find them?

Thanks for your advice.

No such thing as a gaming motherboard.

Your going to be using the same parts, you need adequate power delivery, cooling, and whatever features your looking for such as the audio quality, number of m.2 spaces and so on.

What would work for you depends on all the parts you need to use.

Edit I wouldn't even think about it as best more like adequate both would have the same chance to last the same amount of time without failing.

 

[CountMike]

Just because MBs and other major components are reviewed in regard of games and gammers it doesn't mean they are not just as good for anything else. Games tend to be "heavy" on parts ore than ordinary applications. As for MBs, "Gaming" moniker is usually just a selling point and has little to do with actual performance, mostly down to able to use 2 GPUs at full speed and some OC potential.
"Serious" MBs on the other hand would have better memory and storage potential as well as better connections options.

 

[ttheobald]

As others have pointed out, the word "gaming" is just a proxy term for "high performance." Often, pre-built systems with the word "gaming" in their title are not really well-constructed, they just include the term for sales potential.

Your mainboard choice should really be determined by the needs you have and the features of the board, not the words in the title. If you're building your own because you need it to behave a certain way, isolate what features will provide the behavior you're seeking. I know that's a pretty big bill of materials, but if you're serious about building a data analysis or video editing platform, then you need to dig in and find out more information about power VRMs, video cards, etc.

If you don't have the patience (and there's no requirement that you do have - I often have no time to dick around with stuff if I've got work needs doing), checking out a popular and proven gaming config will usually provide you a solid platform to begin with. You can then customize to fit any particulars that aren't met by the base platform you chose to start with.

Hope this helps -

T

 

[Bulldog17]

Thanks for everyone's replies, and I apologize for taking so long to get back to this conversation.

I get it: The term 'gaming' as in 'gaming motherboard' is really just another way of saying 'high performance,' and what I really need to do is to decide what I'm looking for in a motherboard, then go looking for motherboards that have those features and reviews about same.

Thanks for your advice. This really is a great community.