Discussion on the drawbacks of a cheap motherboard.

[lodders]

I have noticed that people on this forum mostly recommend and buy Z series gamer motherboards.
As an engineer, I normally buy things based on specification.
If i wanted to use 10 USB devices, 5 hard disks, 4 memory modules and two graphic cards, I would have bought a H97. For a big overclock I would have bought a Z97. Instead I bought a Gigabyte H81 motherboard and put an i5 on it.

My question is:- Do you all know something that I don't? Should I expect my motherboard to stop working any time soon?

Another way of asking the question would be -
Are motherboards like CPUs, in which i3, i5 and i7 chips are all high quality components with long lifetimes, but you pay extra for more cores enabled, clock frequency, hyperthreading etc
OR are motherboards like PSUs, where cheap ones lie about their power output and have important components missing.

I already know that low end motherboards are marginal for supplying power to 125W AMD processors. Anyone had any problems with Intel?

 

[getochkn]

Chipsets just come down to features. They all have different ones, more or less USB, more USB 2.0 but less 3.0, SATA channels, PCIe lanes, different intel technologies, etc. This is often supplemented though on lower end board by manufacturers with just adding another SATA controller or USB controller chip anyways.

Cheap board use cheap caps, very little board cooling and are like PSU's in that regard. Cheap gets you cheaps. I have good Asus boards over 10 years and never been able to get more than 2 years out of a low end Biostar board. lol.

the AMD thing was more because they haven't changed the socket in so long, so the first couple generations of boards were made without 125w CPU's in mind, and then years later they came along, and since they are AM3+ socket, they do conform to it and technically can support newer CPU's with just a BIOS upgrade to support the new CPU microcode, but in reality, the board's aren't equipped for it. Intel doesn't have this problem because they change sockets like underwear.

 

[lodders]

Chipsets just come down to features. They all have different ones, more or less USB, more USB 2.0 but less 3.0, SATA channels, PCIe lanes, different intel technologies, etc. This is often supplemented though on lower end board by manufacturers with just adding another SATA controller or USB controller chip anyways.

Cheap board use cheap caps, very little board cooling and are like PSU's in that regard. Cheap gets you cheaps. I have good Asus boards over 10 years and never been able to get more than 2 years out of a low end Biostar board. lol.

the AMD thing was more because they haven't changed the socket in so long, so the first couple generations of boards were made without 125w CPU's in mind, and then years later they came along, and since they are AM3+ socket, they do conform to it and technically can support newer CPU's with just a BIOS upgrade to support the new CPU microcode, but in reality, the board's aren't equipped for it. Intel doesn't have this problem because they change sockets like underwear.

Thanks very much for your answer.
I understand about paying more for extra features

As for the cheap caps, the motherboard I bought has this
GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 4 Plus Technology
LAN with high ESD Protection
All solid capacitors design
Which is similar to their claims for more expensive boards
What do you think?


My board also has "Audio Noise Guard with High Quality Audio Capacitors"
The sound quality is way better than I was expecting from a budget board - I was so impressed with headphones that I tested it on my Hifi downstairs.

 

[cst1992]

getochkn - I am interested in this topic as well.
Some topics I'd like to know about:

- Motherboard power phases
- Custom controllers on the board(Such as Marvell)
- Comparison of similarly priced motherboards such as Asus Z97 Pro Gamer vs Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 3(I'm personally interested in comparing these two).

 

[getochkn]

Generally the better the power phases, the more stable the power is, and the more it can overclock. A board with good VRM heatsinks helps them stay cooler, and cooler VRM's means cooler power going to the socket and less heat, more overclock room, etc.

The custom controllers usually aren't a problem and most function fine. Back in the day they used some sketchy ones with crappy USB speeds or other issues, but now they're usually fine. The biggest issue with them sometimes is if you want to RAID them and things, if all the SATA channels are on the intel controller, you could RAID them all, but with additional controllers, you can't RAID across the two.

 

[cst1992]

No, what I meant is that, the Gigabyte has two back panel USB3.0 ports that are Marvell based. Also there are some Marvell SATA III ports.

Are there going to be any performance problems if the builder mixes and matches connections in these ports? Or should I prefer Asus who have it all on the chipset and don't have the extra two USB 3.0 ports?