[SOLVED] Downgrading Motherboard

[Bhathiya]

Hi,

I need to know how much of a performance drop am i going through after having to downgrade from a Gigabyte Z97-D3H to an Asus H81M-CS Motherboard. My previous Motherboard had an issue after leaving the PC unused for a few months and had no other option since that was the only motherboard having the LGA1151 socket that supported my processor at the time. The specs of my PC is as follows.

Motherboard - Asus H81-CS
Processor - Intel i5 4460
RAM - Kingston HyperX Fury 8GB DDR3 1866mhz
Graphics Card - Gigabyte GTX960 2GB
PSU - KCAS 600W

If there's a considerable amount of a performance drop, any other Motherboards you would suggest...

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, for one thing you can't run your memory at 1866mhz on that board. The fastest it will support is 1600mhz, so that's going to be a hit to performance right off the bat. Then, the VRMs on that board are probably MUCH less capable than even on that entry level Z board, so that MIGHT have some effect on boost profile performance, but probably not that much because the 4460 is a fairly low TDP CPU and doesn't really need a great board.

The biggest issues are likely to be other features, such as the lack of this or that that you might have had on the Z board, and the memory performance loss. What country are you in?

 

[Karadjgne]

The CS is India market, so it's not surprising to see this gen still in use there, prices on new gen stuff there is nuts.

What is surprising is the lack of options. 3rd/4th gen stuff is huge there still in the used/refurb/recapped markets.

Performance hit? Not much, nothing you'd really notice. Ability is a different story. The H81 CS is the cheapest and least capable of those boards, it's the bargain basement bare-bones model when the H series is supposed to be almost as good as the Z's. And Asus historically is the worst for this, asrock/msi/gigabyte had much more capable boards at similar prices.

If it's the Only option, you don't have much choice in the matter, but if you Do have the option to wait and keep shopping or shop in different places/sites then that would seriously be preferable.

Which 1866MHz ram? If it's Cas10, then running at 1600 Cas9 is basically the same thing, nanosecond differences. If that 1866MHz is Cas11, then 1600 Cas9 will actually be slightly faster.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yeah, there are literally ZERO H87/H97 or Z87/Z97 boards available in that market new, that's for sure. Used, on a board that is going to be about ten years old, is a SERIOUS roll of the dice that I would be inclined to not make unless you had absolutely no other choice and could get a decent one for a very fair price that had not been much used or a good price on a new old stock board through a local shop or Ebay. Still a roll of the dice though because there is no accounting for age related degeneration on those boards if they've been sitting around on shelves under various unfavorable conditions. Even if it's never been used it could have bulging or leaking caps by now, potentially.

Might be better to simply scrap the platform and move on to something newer where hardware is a lot more readily available AND you get some kind of gain in performance for your investment, if possible.

A cheap B450 motherboard and Ryzen 3600 could be very tempting in that situation if it's within your means, and would offer you a nice bump in performance.