[SOLVED] Gigabyte B660m DS3H vs Gigabyte B660M Aorus Pro AX vs Asus TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4

[Regev]

Is there nay motherboard tier list (VRM quality, etc) for LGA1700 boards?

The gigabyte b660m ds3h is the only board I can find available for reasonable price, but I wanna make sure the VRM is good enough to keep a non-OCed 12600K healthy.

Update: I can also get either the Gigabyte B660M Aorus Pro AX or the Asus TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4

Thanks!

 

[Lafong]

Is the Gigabyte B660M Aorus Pro AX unavailable?

Pretty good VRM setup as far as I can see.

12+1+1 Twin Hybrid Digital VRM design

Probably a bit more expensive than the DS3H.

 

[Regev]

I can get this one. I can also get the Asus TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4, which one is better?

Gigabyte has 12 (6+6 phase parallel power design) DrMOS for the CPU, 1 phase DrMOS for the iGPU, and 1 Low RDS(on) MOSFET for the PCIe & memory controller:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B660M-AORUS-PRO-AX-DDR4-rev-1x#kf

The Asus has a 10+1 DrMOS power stages (I think the 10 are true ones, and not 5+5?) :
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/TUF-Gaming/TUF-GAMING-B660M-PLUS-WIFI-D4/

Which one would you go for? They're only about $10 difference.

Better VRM and sound quality is what I'm after. Both have all the features I need.

 

[Lafong]

You can drill down into the VRM details on the web sites for Asus and Gigabyte. Then you get to decide if what you read is actually useful or just marketing hype to get you to bite.

Both boards likely use some variant of Realtek onboard sound. You'll never know which might sound better with your speakers without personally testing with your own ears. It's rank speculation. Pretty good chance you couldn't tell the difference although placebo effects are often fabulous.

"Better"....meaning what? Less prone to failure? Lots of features that you won't use? Flashing lights, cool looks, and doo-dads? 6 online complaints rather than 9?

Trying to decide "better" is always a stab in the dark. Dozens of people on this forum have had horrible experiences with Asus and Gigabyte and whatever. Both of those boards are quite new and reviews are hard to find. Very few people have personal experience and that would be their experience only.

Accept that you have less control than you'd like and roll the dice.

 

[Regev]

You can drill down into the VRM details on the web sites for Asus and Gigabyte. Then you get to decide if what you read is actually useful or just marketing hype to get you to bite.

Both boards likely use some variant of Realtek onboard sound. You'll never know which might sound better with your speakers without personally testing with your own ears. It's rank speculation. Pretty good chance you couldn't tell the difference although placebo effects are often fabulous.

"Better"....meaning what? Less prone to failure? Lots of features that you won't use? Flashing lights, cool looks, and doo-dads? 6 online complaints rather than 9?

Trying to decide "better" is always a stab in the dark. Dozens of people on this forum have had horrible experiences with Asus and Gigabyte and whatever. Both of those boards are quite new and reviews are hard to find. Very few people have personal experience and that would be their experience only.

Accept that you have less control than you'd like and roll the dice.

Thanks, man, for all the help and input.

Let's then only consider the VRM setup. Both seem to use similar DrMOS components, just with a different setup. Which one looks better (at least on paper) for you?

 

[Lafong]

I'd buy the Gigabyte.

Why? Because I had a bad experience with Asus.

Which is a poor although understandable reason......that you should ignore.

Suppose you choose brand X and it turns out bad for you. There's only a small chance that "VRM" will be the direct source of your unhappiness and even less chance that choosing the other brand would have necessarily given you a better experience.

And even less chance that if you only had done another 100 hours of hand-wringing and "research" that you would have improved the chances of being satisfied.

But in all honesty, who can overlook the fact that 12 is a larger number than (10 plus 1)?

 

[Regev]

I'd buy the Gigabyte.

Why? Because I had a bad experience with Asus.

Which is a poor although understandable reason......that you should ignore.

Suppose you choose brand X and it turns out bad for you. There's only a small chance that "VRM" will be the direct source of your unhappiness and even less chance that choosing the other brand would have necessarily given you a better experience.

And even less chance that if you only had done another 100 hours of hand-wringing and "research" that you would have improved the chances of being satisfied.

But in all honesty, who can overlook the fact that 12 is a larger number than (10 plus 1)?

I'm asking because it's 6+6 parallel design. Even on Gigabyte's website itself:

https://au.aorus.com/blog-detail.php?i=974

Typical Power Design on Motherboard

Parallel is a common power design that could be found on motherboards. As per Figure 1 below, although it looks like a two-phased power, it could be regarded as a single-phase power because both its circuits are controlled by one PWM. The equivalent resistance could get lower with this kind of power design, but it also gets hotter, which is due to the poor loads to the current. If you pair a higher-end processor with the motherboard with a parallel power design, you may not get the full performance of the processor.

As opposed to direct power, which seems to be the 10 that Asus use? -

The Direct power design allows PWM to communicate with multiple Dr. MOS simultaneously and comes up with multiple independent circuits. Direct is the most premium power design of motherboards right now because it features the lowest temperature & the best capability with respect to current loads. This means that this power design could perfectly match the most premium processors in the market, and you could do something more extreme with your processor and motherboards like overclocking or a long-period of heavy loads.

 

[Regev]

Alright, waiting for your final input

I ordered all 3 to my friend (through Amazon 1-day Prime shipping), who's flying out here tomorrow evening from the US to visit me.

I'll cancel the other two.

$135 - GIGABYTE B660m DS3H + a separate WiFi chip - VRM = 6+2+1
$180 - ASUS TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4 - VRM = 10+1
$190 - GIGABYTE B660M Aorus Pro AX - VRM = 6(+6)+1+1

As for unique features, the Gigabytes have that Q-flash button on the panel. The ASUS has PCIe5 support.