Z87 Motherboard for first build

BlazeMike

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Hi!

Recently I planned out th parts for my first build... I was going to get a core i5 4670 (non- k) and was going to get a gigabyte H87- D3h, due to my fear and not wanting to overclock. Before all this i was planning on getting a z87 from gigabyte: G1 sniper z87. I was suggested that because i wasn't going to be overclocking and getting a NON-K processor the z87 chipset would mostly be useful, i Also learned that there are no problems when putting a normal non-K processor into a z87 board. The purpose of my build will be gaming, and h87 mobo s dont offer the best gaming features like a Gaming optimized NIC or an integrated high quality Sound Card. I would like all these features, without the overclocking bit.

My budget will be 200$ (US).

I recently saw the Asus Maximus VI Hero and it was EPIC.

The Gigabyte G1 sniper z87 was a pretty good board as well.

Pls help me in choosing Which of these Mobos to get, or feel free to suggest your own choices thnx,

Blaze
 
Solution
The Z87 Chipset is better if you are willing to spend the extra, Z87 boards have far better features compared to H87.

I am sticking with the Asus Maximus VI Hero, a great board with great ROG exclusive features. If you would like a motherboard cheaper, I am happy to help select you another one.
NICs and sound cards are basically the same across boards- the 'Gaming-Optimized' thing is FUD.

The only reasons to get a Z87 board are overclocking and running multiple GPUs.

If you do want to OC or SLI/CF, there's no point in spending more than ~$130. If not, don't bother spending more than ~$75.
 

Tedfoo25

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To be honest, it will make very little difference what manufacturer you go for as long as it's one of the big name brand ones: MSI, ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte.

Personally, I would go for an MSI board (I always do). They are designed for gaming, are very reliable and have a reasonable pricetag, simple as that. ASUS boards have extra (arguably gimmicky) features and are a little overpriced, whereas Gigabyte and ASRock are marginally less reliable/have less features, but are cheaper. It is down to personal preference.

One thing to keep in mind is if you plan to use SLI/CrossFire. Many motherboards (MSI ones included) say they support multiple GPUs but use X16/X4 speeds, where X8/X8 is a lot better. If this is a concern, find a board which will run X8/X8.
 

BlazeMike

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Thnx for the responses guys.

@someone somewhere, what is FUD?

Do you guys recommend for a hero, a gigabyte sniper z87, or fall back on the Gigabyte H87-D3H?

Are there gaming h87 boards?
 
The Z87 Chipset is better if you are willing to spend the extra, Z87 boards have far better features compared to H87.

I am sticking with the Asus Maximus VI Hero, a great board with great ROG exclusive features. If you would like a motherboard cheaper, I am happy to help select you another one.
 
Solution
Not really; you can get H87 boards with pretty much every feature (excluding the overclocking-oriented ones) of Z87 boards.

Most of the ROG exclusive features I've seen haven't gone far beyond 'Look! It's ROG'. You're paying for the bling.

EDIT: IMHO all of the 'Gaming-oriented' stuff is just FUD. There's very very little difference aside from the badging and price tag.
 

BlazeMike

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Seeing the responses so far.... I really do like the Hero, it also will go well with the Cm storm enforcer that I will build in. And someone sorry, but I need a proper mobo with great features reliability and I won't be upgrading for a long time so that why I wanted to go for a z87 based mobo. I most probably will go for the Hero....

Thnx for the help guys
 
There are no extra features available from ROG that matter unless you are OCing. With that CPU, you're not.

The only extra feature you get from a Z87 board (excluding OCing) is multiple GPUs. If you want to do multiple GPUs in future, fine, go for a Z87. Get a Z87 Extreme4, GA-Z87X-D3H, or Asus Z87-A. Don't waste money on bling with ROG.

I'd like to see where they're more reliable. The one study I've seen with a decent sample size showed Asus decidedly mid-pack. And boards produced in lower numbers tend to be less reliable, because they aren't scaled up so well.

I don't much like to see people wasting money, and IMHO that's what you're doing if you buy an ROG board.
 

BlazeMike

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Your point is made someone.... So should I go back to a h87-d3h which is a fairly cheap board, and maybe if I'm comfortable with OC ing then ill get a hero?

Is that what ur implying someone?

Imp notice: I don't mean any offence
 
If you don't want to OC or run a second GPU, I'd suggest a B85 or H87 board. The H87-D3H looks like a good one.

If you want to OC, I'd suggest a mid-range Z87 board, and you'll need to get a 4670k. I'd suggest the Asus Z87-A, the Gigabyte GZ-Z87X-D3H, or the ASRock Z87 Extreme4. You will also want an aftermarket CPU cooler.

If you want to run a second GPU, then get any of the three Z87 boards I mentioned above. You don't need to get the K chip or cooler, but can if you want to OC.

I don't recommend an ROG board for any reason. They're too pricey, and the extra features (there are few I would consider useful) don't have any substantial effect on performance.
 


Basically, but not entirely. ROG is just bling, agree, but it's something nice to have in a case. But the prime reason for the Asus Hero is the OC ability ect. Also it supports 3000MHz memory, which the OP is not likely to have but anyways. You also get SupremeFX - Supremacy through discrete-caliber audio.

With ROG you get these exclusive features, which may have similar on other boards:

Extreme Engine Digi+ III :
- 8 + 2 phase power design
- NexFET™ Power Block MOSFET
- 60A BlackWing Chokes
- 10K Black Metallic Capacitors
UEFI BIOS features :
- ROG BIOS Print
- GPU.DIMM Post
- Tweakers' Paradise
- ROG SSD Secure Erase
ROG RAMDisk
GameFirst II
Extreme Tweaker

and so on.
 
None of those are particularly amazing, IMO. SSD secure erase is probably a rebadged ATA-SE, which is absolutely widespread. I've read that Asus's VRM design is actually a bit behind others', because they've not got integrated controllers in the FETs or some such. Nonetheless, it's a VRM and would basically only shine above a half-decent VRM when you were running it on LN2.

Go look up the benchmarks of the boards. You're looking at fractions of a percent improvements.

I don't much like people rebranding features, then using them as marketing.

“Refabricate a friction reducing rotary transportation instrument using the algebraic equation x squared + y squared equals radius...”
From Simon Travaglia's Bastard Operator From Hell series. It's marketing speak for reinventing the wheel. That's what Asus are doing.
 

I can agree with you on that.
 

feelingtheblanks

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Not as bad ASRock probably. They still keep using ancient cheap d-pak mosfets on their mid range boards like Extreme3 and z87M extreme4. And marketing their pwm as digital while they are analog. They use Intersil pwm and Intersil is an analog brand. Fake marketing all around. :)

On the other hand MSI's power design is pretty good. Using IR3563B pwm on z87-gd65 and above which is the newer revision that increases the doubler performance (if used) with its 2mhz switching frequency. Also Gigabyte is using that pwm. But Asus, however, still using the older revision on their boards (even the rog ones).

Also MSI using that 60amp inductors on their boards at all price ranges. Asus for example, has 60amp inductors only on their rog boards.

Ah also the tantalum filled highly conductive low profile caps. Can't say if its clearly better than ROG's 10K caps though. But its rated as 160k@85C and you know tantalum is a very rare material with self-healing feature which mostly used in space shuttles and some heavy industry stuff.

So I wouldn't say I heard bad things about MSI vrm. It's true that they had some problems with some AMD mobos. But who haven't? That what happens when a processor manufacturer keep using the same platform. And in the end some crazy TDP becomes unbearable with some old low-end boards. Pretty normal.

But all in all Gigabye has slightly the best vrm in the z87 market atm. Then I'd say MSI is second.
 
I think the issue with MSI's VRMs might have been on the AMD side - can't remember.

However, on Haswell, it's generally no more than a few tens of MHz each way, unless you've got a really overkill cooling system.

I think Tantalum is used mainly because it's quite inert - Wikipedia has nothing on it being self-healing. Still sounds like buzzword-spouting.

85℃ isn't usually a good rating for a cap...
 

BlazeMike

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Guys thnx for the suggestions and clarifications..... I think I stick with gigabyte on this one.... Also there is a gaming g1 sniper b5 I think that has a b85 chipset there is also a g1 sniper b85 but it's m-ATX..... These are just thoughts in my mind, but the one that I think is my best bet would be the ga-h87-d3h
 

feelingtheblanks

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Well I have to disagree. Tantalum is actually more efficient and offers more capacitance per size than current gen. solid polymer caps. Also operating temperature is lower.

On the other hand 85C isn't the peak point. They basically can operate upto 175C or more. And where most of the solid caps at mid range boards are rated 50k hours @ 25C / 5k hours @ 100C, or 10k hours caps of Asus ROG, I wouldn't say 160k hours @ 85C isn't good. Note that; usually caps operate at a lot lower temperatures than 100C or 85C under normal conditions.

I don't know what wikipedia says since I barely use it for any kind of research. But tantalum has self-healing capacity (which comes from having MnO2 in the cathode) and also higher thermal resistance, sorry but it's a scientific fact. That's why it's expensive and mostly used in space shuttles.

However these kind of caps used on some Evga, Intel and MSI boards are not solely traditional tantalum caps. They are basically low profile solid polymer with tantalum filled core which still greately increases the conductivity.

You can disagree though, but that won't change the science. :)
 
Is size a major issue? Generally not.

Most caps are rated for 105℃, but I'll have to check on varius ratings. Generally polymers don't have clearly marked ratings; they basically never fail. Nothing but the very lowest-end motherboards have aluminium electrolytics today.

I'm referring to Tantalum the metal, not sure about caps made from them. Manganese oxide isn't tantalum, and I'm not sure what stops them from putting MnO2 (I want subscript...) in other caps.

Tantalum caps are used everywhere, for low capacity low ESR applications, by memory. I've got dozens in draws.

Tantalum is mostly used for caps, some of which would make it's way into shuttles. Very little. Space usage isn't a guarantee of quality, or performance. It generally means that it was a)available decades ago, and b)light. Neither of which are a major issue for motherboards.

Reading the marketing material for the Z87 OC, and laughing like hell. They're using a standard SMD soldering heat graph to show that the caps "are also subject to a 260°C temperature test" - EVERY COMPONENT ON THE BOARD had to be heated to that temp, or you couldn't melt the solder. Same goes for other components.

I'd like to see where you get substantial UV damage to capacitor jackets in a PC, and why peeling labels would matter if it did occur.

They also have this interesting tidbit: " Combine HD, SATA and MSATA drives in RAID". Since when can't you do this. Also, what's the difference between an HD and SATA?

Their graphs about the Killer LAN are misinterpreted and somwhat scary - they don't know bits vs bytes, and I've got near double their stated figure on a C2D horror laptop with a realtek GbE chip.

Again the bit/byte thing, with a 600MB/s 802.11b/g/n card.

Don't turn me loose on marketing material :ouch:
 

feelingtheblanks

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Yes, most caps are rated for 105C but they never work at that temperature. You know it's just something make people think that the caps are durable even under extreme conditions. Most of them can also operate at more than 170C. But they don't rate it at this temperature since the life-expectancy rating would be somewhat discouraging at that point.

On the other hand, yes size isn't an issue but having low profile small sized caps is a good thing imo. So you can use more of them to balance the capacitance without staggering the board layout and complicating the installation of big heatsinks. Not a big deal though.

About that marketing material... I haven't seen that one before. I agree that it's somewhat hilarious but other brands using similar cheap gimmicks too, very often. Like Gigabyte's "hey we use 20 grams more copper!" or Asus's super ultra digi power something while they actually use an older revision pwm. Some of them even making false marketings like ASRock, using analog pwm with dpaks all around the board but marketing it like they use a high-end "digital" pwm.

But it's not the case here. You were saying that MSI using somewhat bad vrm, but actually they are not. It was just some old AMD story, where all other brands had similar problems, since AMD didn't want to change platform for a while and keep increasing TDP for newer processors. So it's normal to have problems like that, especially with old low-end boards.

Oh also I couldn't understand why they mentioned drmos in that marketing material. Xpower doesn't have drmos and actually has a lot higher quality PowIRStage mosfets from International Rectifier. Drmos is just an old term that Intel used to use. Similar operating principle though, but quite different in technology. Yes that marketing sheet is a pretty bad one.

All in all I agree that we shouldn't believe in marketing material. All we need to do is taking a magnifier, removing the heatsinks and looking closely to the motherboard to see what manufacturers actually use.

Both of us actually say the same thing but in different ways. But since it all started from "bad vrm rumors", I think it's a lot more clear now. :)
 
The rule of thumb I've heard is that reaction rate doubles (and thus lifetime halves) for every 10℃ change in temperature. Not sure how accurate that is with regards to caps, but it should be close. That means that a 105℃ cap should last ~4x as long as an equally-rated 85℃ one.

I'll have to hunt down what I saw about the MSI VRM failures. I'm fairly sure they were putting significantly weaker VRMs on than their competitors in the same price range.