difference between cheap and expensive motherboard?

[dpassenger97]

there are $60-$70 motherboards and then there are $500 motherboard. Whats the difference. and what motherboard should i get for $150. Im planing an MSI z87-g45 gaming. any alternative?
Ill be using GTX780 and i7 4770 and 12GB ram(4x3)

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Using 3x4GiB sticks is a very bad idea; you lose dual channel support. Go for 2x4GiB or 2x8GiB.

Pricier motherboards tend to have more ports, more PCIe slots (so you can SLI/CF), and better VRMs (only useful if OCing).

Given you can't OC on that CPU, I'd be going for a cheapish H87 board.

 

[dandn0ten]

dont get cheap mobo crap you will run into issues later on and also z87 is used for overclocking since your cpu doesnt have K you can get H87 or B85 mobo

 

[Karadjgne]

Basically, the difference in boards all comes down to ability. The more expensive boards have better everything. More USB headers, data ports, voltage regulations, chipsets, overclocking ability, better audio, bios, memory controllers.... Everything is better component wise, bigger, stronger, faster.

Alternatives would be ASRock extreme 4, Asus Z87 A, gigabyte U series.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Nothing wrong with the GA-Z87X-D3H (no U).

Something like an ASRock H87M Pro4 would be fine, if you're not OCing or using multiple GPUs.

 

[dpassenger97]

Using 3x4GiB sticks is a very bad idea; you lose dual channel support. Go for 2x4GiB or 2x8GiB.

Pricier motherboards tend to have more ports, more PCIe slots (so you can SLI/CF), and better VRMs (only useful if OCing).

Given you can't OC on that CPU, I'd be going for a cheapish H87 board.

so how about 4GBx4 if there is something like quad channel?

 

[dpassenger97]

And if i use 4770k then what motherboard should i go for?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

4x4GiB will still run at dual channel on a dual channel board - you want the number of sticks to be a multiple of the number of channels.

For a K-sku chip I'd go for an ASRock Z87 Extreme4, Asus Z87-A, MSI Z87-G45 or G55, or GA-Z87X-D3H.

However, there's very little benefit to going for either 16GiB RAM or an i7 for gaming. I'd get an i5-4670K, and 2x4GiB.