Best Motherboards For The Money: October 2014 (Archive)

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
For AM3+, the MSI 970 Gaming and the Gigabyte 970A-UD3P should also be added for budget options. The 970 gaming has SLI and CF support, and 8 phase power. Most MSI AM3+ boards are junk, but their gaming series boards are generally top notch. The 970A-UD3P also has 8 phase power, like its cousin the 990FXA-UD3P, but doesn't support SLI.

Also, some M-atx and Mini-ITX suggestions, for Intel, would be nice. 😀
 
5 months into this series, and the article is still WILDLY unbalanced (and showing no signs of improving).

If the vast majority of builders do not intend to overclock (as seems likely), then it's NOT VERY BRIGHT to review only overclocking chipsets.

If there is a significant proportion of smaller-than-ATX builds then it is NOT VERY BRIGHT to only pay lip service to these formats (including no smaller-than-ATX Z97 MBs).

Until your review-selection process comes within the same galaxy as what people are actually buying and building, then this article will remain an irrelevance. Does Tom's HW ever actually look at any statistics for what chipsets and/or formats are actually selling/being built? For example, I would suspect that only a tiny proportion of them would be X99 based, but 6 out of 20 MBs on this list are X99.

The question has to be asked, is this article meant to be a serious guide to builders, or technoporn for enthusiasts to fantasize over what they would build if they had unlimited budget, no space restrictions (and probably excellent air conditioning)?
 
(Minor correction to my last post, all the Intel chipsets reviewed are overclocking-orientated -- I'm not sufficiently familiar with AMD chipsets to know whether they are or not.)
 
We obviously could have waited just ONE MORE MONTH for RedJaron to finish his budget roundup before publishing this, but why would we skip a month when we had such an awesome opportunity to annoy you?

 
<blockquote>Popularity. When a high-end platform gets reviewed, the big boards go first. More reviews means more awards.</blockquote>
I think right there is your problem. A 'popular' MB is one that builders want to buy, NOT necessarily the one that manufacturers want to be reviewed, want to win awards and want to sell. Unless you're prepared to stand up to manufacturers and educate them as to what MBs your readers are interested in buying, and so want to see reviewed, this will remain an irrelevance.
 
Crashman: it takes SIX MONTHS just to review a few smaller/lower-specced MBs? Longer actually, as the anomalous title of this series (omitting the "for the money" of previous series) meant that you knew going into this series that it was unbalanced. And yes, you could have avoided some of the (well-earned) derision, by giving a firm commitment in the "March Update" announcement to correcting the imbalance next month, rather than using that to extol the virtues of the extreme-niche X99 chipset.
 

You vastly underestimate the enthusiasm of most Tom's Hardware readers. Traffic reports show that mid-budget enthusiast boards STILL generate the greatest number of page hits.

It's as if you decided to write to Road & Track complaining that there weren't enough economy cars.


The title "Best Motherboards" was chosen because it's based on awards that INCLUDE Tom's Hardware Elite: While "Elite" just means best-in-class, the more common "Recommended" is a value award.

Enthusiasts were the initial target of the Z87 launch, most of these enthusiasts wanted mid-priced boards, and this just happened to be the market segment that also gave us the most traffic. LGA-1150 articles started there and worked outwards, which means you should have seen your specific coverage last spring.

Intel reset its product line at the Z97/Haswell Refresh, so we started over and again began expanding outward. X99 coverage got in the way of LGA-1150 expansion, so I brought on a lab tech. When his "regular job" got in the way of this part-time work, I brought on a couple new freelance reviewers.

Getting the new guys set up took a while and, being new writers, it's taking them a while to get the work done. You might have seen January's work published in February, but you didn't, because motherboard makers were mostly ignoring any email that didn't relate to CES during January. You might have seen February's work at the end of February, but you didn't, because I'd rather treat these guys well than worry about whether their first piece appears in the March or April updates.

I see that you'd like to debase us for not getting the cheap stuff up ahead of the enthusiast parts, but our enthusiasts wouldn't agree with you on those priorities.
 
Hey Crashman:

"everyone BUT you" : so I have been the ONLY one complaining about your ludicrously unbalanced and irrelevant coverage over the last 5 months? Yeh, right -- read the threads.

Z97: you seem to be conflating "enthusiast" with ATX-only. It may surprise you that many enthusiasts/overclockers are using mATX these days. You are also ignoring the fact that H97 was released simultaneously with Z97, but remains a stark omission from this list. You also ignore the fact that Z97/H97 only superseded Z87/H87, leaving the other original-Haswell chipsets still viable candidates, which have been around for many moons and (given that Broadwell will be overclocking-only on the desktop) will remain viable until Skylake comes out.

You are right about one thing however, this issue is not about me. I built my Haswell refresh build a few months before the first edition of this article came out. I worked out on my own that Z97 and H97 gave no useful benefit over B85 for my usage. This is about your COMPLETE FAILURE to acknowledge the DIVERSITY of your readership. Treat non-overclockers and smaller-format enthusiasts as second class citizens and we will eventually abandon THW for sites that offer RELEVANT reviews.
 
I'm sure the guy who's been working on that article for the past month will love to see this from you. Of course there are articles like this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z87-motherboard-roundup,3656.html
Where the winning boards were replaced during Haswell Refresh but most of the companies decided not to participate in the update (tested last month, not published yet). And before that there was this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z87-motherboard-roundup,3656.html
And then there was this article which didn't generate an award:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pentium-g3258-b81-cheap-overclocking,3888.html
The lack of an award there made it a good starting point for the first freelancer.

So, you can kick and scream all you want. I'm not going to rush the guy. I read his first draft, he's doing great work and I really don't want to discourage him. The "Failure to acknowledge" comes down you you ignoring what I said.
 
Crashman:

1) I see you have COMPLETELY REWRITTEN your post since I replied to it.

2) I would suggest that it is YOU who is MISINTERPRETING "the enthusiasm of most Tom's Hardware readers." If you're looking at building a new computer, there's a reasonable chance that you will read all/most of the reviews -- that doesn't provides much useful information as to which areas you should be concentrating on. Secondly, "traffic reports" offer no guidance whatsover for how popular categories of board that you have failed to review might be. If you ONLY review "enthusiast boards", then it is COMPLETELY UNSURPRISING "that mid-budget enthusiast boards STILL generate the greatest number of page hits."

I would ask again, does THW ever do any research on what MBs builders actually buy? Yes, we may get a technoporn thrill out of reading an X99 review, but chances are that it has exactly zero impact on our buying decision.

3) I notice you still remain tunnel-visioned on Haswell as being only to do with Z87/Z97/X99.

4) The word you are after is "deride", not "debase". And yes, I deride (and ridicule) you for being so divorced from reality that you lavish vast attention on the X00, which only a tiny minority will buy, whilst dismissing as "cheap stuff" chipsets that yield sufficient features for the vast majority of builders, and offer far better cost-benefit balance.
 
Crashman:

I am amused that when attempting to defend yourself on the subject of diversity, the best you could come up with was a 15 month-old review that covered the mITX ONLY for the overclocking chipset (I presume the repeated URL was meant to be for some other article), and an article on using a single B81 MB ONLY in a very narrow context ("Overclocking The Pentium G3258 Using B81 On A Budget").

You can continue to pretend that I'm the ONLY one making a stink about this lack of diversity, but we both know that this is complete bollocks.
 
You can pretend that you're being honest, but we both know that this is complete bollocks :) What you're saying is that "Because you haven't done this recently, you don't do it at all". Alternatively "You say you're doing this currently, but I say you still don't care enough to do it at all".

I understand that you want me to crack the whip on the guys writing the H81, B85, and H97 Mini/Micro articles.That won't happen, because I can replace you more easily than I can replace them. And so you throw around the word "diversity" as if you'd just stepped out of a neo-progressive indoctrination camp.

When these guys are finally finished, I bet you take credit for the idea. Your entire tirade is like a man screaming as the garbage truck pulls up at 10:30 because he thought it should have been there at 8:00, even though the schedule said "Between 8AM and Noon".
 
Best CPU and Best GPU both have a lot of value to me. It's clear how to use them.

Best SSD has never made any sense to me, because I couldn't figure out the point of view. The questions I have for an SSD are "what the cheapest good one at a particulare size, whats the best one at a size." The article shows me everything I can get for a price of various sizes.

For Best MB, what I'd like to know is "If I've selected a CPU and am building a PC based on that CPU, what MB is the cheapest effective solution, and what extra value would i get if I spent more for that CPU class".
 
Part of that is explained in the tables, but the details are so various that you're better off knowing what features you'd like in advance. Of course we focus primarily on overclocking-unlocked boards because this is an overclocking kind of site, but you'll still see things in the reviews like how well it overclocked.

So, for that part, the real purpose of this article is to link awards back to the original reviews.

 
I kinda have to agree with hafran regarding lack of diversity board wise. In the systems forum, often people are on a low budget, and cannot afford an overclocking rig. More often than not, I recommend against overclocking, because the budget is better spent on locked CPU's, so there is more budget for GPU. All this list does is alienate those that cannot afford a Z97 and a 4690k or 4790k. Yes it is helpful for those that can afford such hardware, but vast majority of people cannot. Some M-ATX and Mini-ITX would be nice for the Z97 crowd, but some H97 choices would be nice too. The CPU and GPU articles cater to those with various budgets, and I use them often. The Motherboard one really doesn't target anyone but people with deep pockets.
 
The title of the series is wrong! It is not the best motherboards for the money since it would not make any sense to get Z97 board for an I3 which is the recommended budget gamer! Same applies to FX6300 why go with 990FX boards when there is perfectly good 970 boards for it.
Should be done in similar fashion as the best gaming CPU's for the money and match board to the recommended CPU's!
 


Agree 100%. An i3 would be better paired with something like an H97 Pro4. FX 6300, the MSI 970 gaming or 970a-UD3P. Even the cheap GA-78LMT-USB3 is good enough for low budget FX 6300 builds, as it can still easily deal with a 4.0ghz FX 6300. This is just the best for those with money, not for the money.
 
What's with all the hate for AMD? Boards down to $24 have awards in the article.

You're half right, it's not "Best Motherboards For The Money", it's just "Best Motherboards", which allows it to include the full range of overpriced "Elite" boards all the way down to the ultra-cheap AM1s.

Reasonable people can see that this is why hrafn42 was wrong. Knowing that the reviews he was expecting to see this month were delayed, he decided that starting a riot was the best way to take revenge for this perceived slight. Any intended effects on the content are ineffective, because I will neither force the new reviewers to rush-out lower-quality content nor will I hold back a review out of spite. I'm just not that petty.
 


I have such a system, Dell T7500 with two X5570s and a Quadro 6000. Yup, big sucker.




It's not really a question of being extreme as such, merely that some top-end boards (even those that
don't support 4-way SLI/CF) are simply bigger than ATX. In many cases, the ATX size just isn't large
enough (or wasn't at the time, guess die shrinkage helps here) to fit everything on that the mbd maker
wanted to include. The ASUS Maximus IV Extreme is a typical example

Ian.

 


Why AMD the hate? Sorry, but that question makes little sense to me. AM1 is good for an HTPC platform, but I wouldn't consider it for any kind of gaming rig. I have mentioned 2 potentially good AM3+ boards, that were never even considered. What about the person wanting an i3 or FX 6300, due to low budget? How does a cheap AM1 board help that person? They also will not be buying expensive Z97 and 990fx boards for these CPU's.

The CPU and GPU articles target different budget levels much more effectively than the motherboard one does. No H97 boards or 970 boards for the budget crowd. Instead we get high priced Z97 and X99, or 990fx. Most people cannot afford these boards.

The problem with board selection has been mentioned since the creation of this article segment, it is nothing new. Since the thread title is showing October, that would be 6 months of articles. I can understand a couple months, but 6?
 
How about some lower priced Intel motherboards for those that want a reliable system but not for overclocking or max ram speeds? Say something a buyer can pair with a Pentium or an i3, or even an i5 or i7 but without all the extras.
 


While the answer to that is no, you should start a thread asking this. This thread isn't the place to ask such a question, just as n FYI. 😉
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom