Motherboard tier list collaboration: Interested?

Sounds like a good idea. I would say grouping by chipset and the particular features would be a good idea. It might be hard to do it in a tier format as there tends to be very little difference in terms of performance.

Sounds good IMO.
We should wait for more members to answer.

Just prowling... Good idea, but very time consuming...

Seems like a sound idea, is going to take some time, but should save members time in the end.

The only way I see this working, is if you do separate lists for EACH chipset. AKA, tier 1-5 for z97 boards, 990fx boards, h81 boards, etc.

I'll be honest. I don't really see this working 100%.

It could work I think. But I don't think PER chipset is require.

I certainly do. There are GREAT $50 motherboards and GREAT $300 motherboards but can they both go in tier 1?

If the list is STRICTLY quality based, then yes they can, no problem, but if you want to include features in the ranking, then you need a separate list for every chipset for sure.

Whoever is making the list needs to define a single variable that it will be based on. Example: the PSU tier list is based on quality of the unit, not number of connectors, or color scheme, or sleeved vs. unsleeved, etc.

I still do not see it working with more than one variable at all. You really need ONE defined variable. Make it quality, and make sure you state this.

Also make sure to label the tier lists appropriately. I will be different from the PSU list where a tier 5 unit could fry your computer. Here a tier 5 board simply would not have many features, be more basic, and has higher chance for RMA, but is not dangerous for the computer.

Fair enough, but there are low quality AMD 780G and 970 chipset boards that NEED to be avoided for FX CPUs.

I'm not sure how this would work since things like CPU overclockability are more dependent on the CPU lottery than the board. This would be more of a subjective list than say the power supply tier list which is based on electrical performance. Honestly the only way to do this would be based on features.

You contradicted yourself.

You said a home theater would not need a high end motherboard. This is because the system will not require many features. This would then put it at the bottom of the feature tier list. Where it BELONGS. Because it has little features. It is not a bad board, it could even be great quality, but it BELONGS at the bottom of the feature tier list, where it could also be in the middle/upper middle of the quality tier list AT THE SAME TIME.

You can't do it by H series boards. All H97 boards would be above H81 boards because they offer more when there are VERY good quality H81 boards. You MUST do it by chipset, if you are counting features at all. That is the ONLY way it will work.

I don't see why it would be a problem. The couple of tier lists out there for GPUs and the PSU tier list as well, all have hardware with similar performance, which simply results in similar tier placement. If two different boards both have similar performance, why shouldn't they be on the same tier. Considering purpose of build, as mentioned by other members, probably ought to be a factor since what works well at stock clocks with an adequate PSU and a single GPU may not be a very good choice for somebody determined to get that big overclock or run dual cards.

^ I have not read most of the posts everyone made but how will we create a Tier list. Because the motherboard has many factors affecting it.


But remember, nothing is impossible. It takes time to research. I am not sure about the rest of us, but I am in for a great big fun.

Since the PSU tier list actually has notations indicating "Highly recommended for any situation", "Excellent quality for limited budgets", "Meets ATX specifications/not ideal for overclocking/dual cards etc." this should be applicable with each tier simply being divided by chipset along with notations to the side of each board indicating it's intended platform (ie, small form factor, mini-itx, atx, or media center, desktop) this might be a good consideration to carry over for the very same purpose of clarifying why and for what uses it makes the grade.


This does however seem like a very daunting task considering much of the information will have to be based on testing provided by other parties and we already know that some of those reviews are not entirely accurate due to the reviewers not wanting to knock a particular manufacturers product for fear they will not provide further hardware for review in the future.


Obviously the hardware cannot all be tested for the purpose of the tier list, nor should it, but since not every review has the same conclusion for any particular board, you'll need to devise a way to draw conclusions from multiple reviews or simply rank according to hard facts like, well, features. There it is again.


The type of power phase, mosfets, heat sinks, PCB quality (Thickness, protection, etc.), controller type, memory and cpu support, UEFI BIOS ease of use, number and type of USB headers, SATA headers, PCIe SSD support and a general reliability consensus whether based on an accumulated consumer response or some form of reported RMA numbers may all have to be considered to have any likelihood of being remotely accurate.


Or I may be just completely over-thinking the entire process. I don't think however you can simply go by the basic conclusions of the common review sites as the determining criteria for placement though. Not every board that I've come across with a good review from a basically trusted site has actually been so. Some of them have had issues not addressed in the reviews or issues during the review process that were later cleared up via firmware update. This is a major undertaking I believe.

There are some motherboard feature comparison spreadsheets available that may be of service to this project.

Here is one from Asus for Z97 motherboards that is on Excel.

http://www.asus.com/Microsite/mb/9series/

http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database

http://sinhardware.com/images/vrmlist.png

Good info about power there. Top one is AMD, bottom is Intel. This will help you determine overclocking capabilities/ stability.

There are some motherboard feature comparison spreadsheets available that may be of service to this project.

Here is one from Asus for Z97 motherboards that is on Excel.

http://www.asus.com/Microsite/mb/9series/

Click to expand...

That's just what I was thinking of, except that I created a spreadsheet based on all available listed PCPartpicker models and selected only the relevant categories then sorted them by price. It's a starting point anyhow. I don't how useful it actually is but you're welcome to use it as a starting point of some kind if you want. It's in Excel format.

www.puebloallpro.com/motherboards.zip