whats the difference??

[LukaLuka]

this is probably a simple question for most. but whats the difference between Z87, H87, Z97, H97 and B85???? will it effect my gaming experience??

 

[Gam3r01]

Those are various chipsets for Intel processors.
The simplest way to look at it is to break them now by letter and number.
B represents their business series, relative cheap not many features.
H is their locked chipsets, for those who dont OC.
Z is their overclocking motherboards.

The numbers refer to the various reiterations and refreshes.
At this point in time, all I would bother with are H97 boards if using locked processors, or Z97 for overclocking.

 

[smorizio]

h87 are haswell only chipset they cant run brodwell cpu if they ever come out.
b85 mb most time have 2 6g sata ports and two ram slots. most of the new b85 have 16g ram limit.
also as it an 8x chipset it haswell only.
h97 is a locked chipset you cant over clock gpu. some h97 do have two video slots for sli/crossfire and some have 4 ram slots for 32g of ram. most time there limited to 4 or 6 sata ports. have standard sound card chipset.
z97 chipset for k level chips. they have the m2 sata and other newer hardware on the mb, some have 3 party sound chipset and gaming ethernet chipset. some are crossfire only mb on the low end. when looking at them look at how the video card slots are wired sli are wired 16x for one card and 8x/8x for two. the non sli/crossfire are wired 16x/4x.

 

[Guest]

To break it down some,

Z - Performance/Overclocking/Gamer board. Meant for performance work, and for that person that wants to be able to tweak everything.
B - Budget board, for the person who just needs a motherboard, without the extra features that the others might have.
H - Is mainstream, so it'll likely be somewhere between the Z & B boards.

The numbers on the other hand are just the revisions of the chipset involved. So, revisions of the Z series would be Z77, Z87, Z97, and the next one is rumored to be Z107. It should also be noted that a processor that supports say, the 97 chipset will work on Z, B or H based boards, but it may not be able to utilize all available features that the processor can offer. For instance, if you have an unlocked processor, you'll want a Z based board so that you can overclock. Overclocking is a feature you'll likely lose on the non Z boards.

It's a little confusing, but hope this make it clear!

 

[smorizio]

avery the next chipset is 100 series and is 1151 pins the x97 mb have 1150 pins. so you cant drop a haswell cpu into a skylake mb.

 

[Lord_Sunday123]

avery the next chipset is 100 series and is 1151 pins the x97 mb have 1150 pins. so you cant drop a haswell cpu into a skylake mb.

When did I say anything about dropping a haswell chip onto the new series? I didn't say you could because I know you can't. And I doubt the next chipset is 100, if they follow the same naming pattern. Likely to be 107.

 

[Lord_Sunday123]

Who's Avery?

Anonymous/Me. I started with an account from facebook, but it was showing my real name and wouldn't let me change, so I deleted that and got a real account