What are the latest intel motherboards for the average person?

[nicholaslovell]

I think the x99 might be the newest but are only compatible with xeon and i7 right? What are the newest motherboards for a decent price? I think it's the z97 but I couldn't find anywhere that confirmed that.

Thanks!

 

[mctylr]

The X99 is the latest (newest) high-end consumer chipset (I don't know if Intel uses the phrase "Intel 9 Series" as it did for previous iterations).

It uses a LGA2011-v3 CPU socket, which limits it to three Core i7 models -- i7-5820K, i7-5930, and i7-5960X Extreme Edition. While the Xeon E5-16xx/26xx v3 series also uses the LGA 2011-v3 socket, I don't know why anyone would use a Xeon in a X99 motherboard, economically and technically it isn't a recommended configuration (if I'm using a Xeon for a workstation system, I want ECC memory which X99 doesn't support). I also don't know how well the X99 firmware will support the E5 Xeons.

Anyhow, that series is very much at a premium pricing, compounded by the premium pricing for DDR4 RAM necessary for an X99 motherboard.

The other recent chipsets most commonly seen in new motherboards are Z97 for gaming / performance systems and H97 for value/office systems. They both use the LGA1150 socket for the CPU. This is used with Haswell and Haswell Refresh processors.

So for a gaming or performance oriented systems you would normally look for a Z97 chipset based motherboard unless you are looking at a budget system. They both use DDR3 RAM which is most commonly available and cheapest (except old stock clearance).

There is also the slightly older (released in 2013) Z87 and H87 chipsets as well, whereas the Z97 and H97 were released in 2014. These should work with any Haswell and Haswell Refresh processors, so long as the manufacturer did release a BIOS update to support the Haswell Refresh CPUs. I think most/all of the bigger companies have.

This is of course is for Intel CPUs.

Warning, for your confusion circa 2011-2012 motherboards use a LGA1155 socket, but this is for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs. This is an example of where the higher number is not a sign of a newer/better model or product.