What motherboard is better?

[marat85]

Hi, please how can you tell visually which one of these three motherboards is better (how many phases, better VRM, capacitors, etc) ? Thanks

 

[Barty1884]

They're all OEM boards - so they're not going to vary dramatically in quality since their purposes don't vary much (no overclocking etc)

Two use iron chokes, the Lenovo uses ferrite.
All appear to be 4 phase... although can't zoom in enough to confirm 100%

The VRM as a whole are all going to fall into "bare minimum" territory on each board. As for caps, I'm not too familiar with them to say with such a passing glance. Being able to zoom in more might help but, at a very basic level they're all pretty much equal/comparable.

 

[Eximo]

Were I to pick, the Dell. It uses standard ATX power supplies. They other two appear to be proprietary.

Only downside on the Dell is the Backplate/Socket for the CPU. Easy to fit an aftermarket cooler if you don't mind holding the socket in place. Or what I have done is just get some long M3 screws and clamp something like an Evo 212 or Gammaxx 400 to it with some washers.

Agreed, 4+1 phase designs. Not sure what those larger caps for are on the Dell. Might just be large buffers or something.

On the Dell proprietary motherboards (the ones they typically sell to businesses) they have an 8-pin 12V power input and then 3.3 and 5V are converted on the board and supply the drives.

 

[marat85]

They're all OEM boards - so they're not going to vary dramatically in quality since their purposes don't vary much (no overclocking etc)

Two use iron chokes, the Lenovo uses ferrite.

Barty1884, thanks for your answer. What's considered better iron or ferrite chokes or they're basically the same?

 

[marat85]

Only downside on the Dell is the Backplate/Socket for the CPU. Easy to fit an aftermarket cooler if you don't mind holding the socket in place. Or what I have done is just get some long M3 screws and clamp something like an Evo 212 or Gammaxx 400 to it with some washers.

Agreed, 4+1 phase designs. Not sure what those larger caps for are on the Dell. Might just be large buffers or something.

On the Dell proprietary motherboards (the ones they typically sell to businesses) they have an 8-pin 12V power input and then 3.3 and 5V are converted on the board and supply the drives.

Eximo thanks. How do you think from your experience 4+1 phase design is enough for normal functionality of 3770/3570 (77W) or hotter E3-1290v2 (87W) with CPU intensive applications like Mathlab, Excel, etc? yes often these apps load the CPU on 100% for hours and the only thing I am worried about is possible throttling issues...

I checked many lower segment business oriented motherboards and majority of them come with 4 phases, some (like HP Elitedesk or Fujitsu esprimo SFFs) come with only 3 phases, like B Series mobos from Asus, seems like some kind of standard fir business... 5 or 6 phases designs (no more) on bigger business boards like the ones on Dell T3610, HP Z820 and Servers like Dell PowerEdge or HP ProLiant...

So is it still possible to upgrade all these boards with good third party air coolers (maybe top-down design to cool down additionally the VRMs or air tower)?

 

[Karadjgne]

You can always get aftermarket heatsinks that use double sided thermal sticky pad and use that on the VRM's etc, but as you won't be pushing higher than default current or voltage through those VRM's, it shouldn't be a problem.

Boards are rated to take the abuse from the largest cpu allowed by bios and thats going to be an issue with 3rd party OEM boards. Many bios only allow certain cpus, generally the ones that came with setup, so while that Dell t1650 came with a Xeon 1280v2, it might also not recognise any consumer cpu greater than a i5-3570, regardless if it's lga1155 or not. Unless you can custom bios, it might preclude use of either of the K cpus and possibly the i7-3770. HP and Lenovo can be even pickier on what cpus are allowed by bios.

So while knowing which is better is a valient goal, actually figuring out which one will work for your purposes might be a better place to start.

 

[Eximo]

From my experience I can offer nothing. I skipped that generation.

Karadjgne is correct, adding your own heatsinks to the VRMs can extend their life. But if your goal is heavy loads, go ahead and search for a Z77 board. Or look forward and get newer processors. Closer you get to current the easier it will be to locate appropriate motherboards.