How to find/buy latest revision mobos

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Miklagaard

Miklagaard

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Sep 30, 2013
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It's been a long time since I was looking at hardware for the past few years just bumming around educating myself on PC hardware, but I recently came across a bit of information that I figured actually felt really important.

I've known that newer versions of motherboards come out like, for example Gigabyte has the UD3H, and then there's the UD5H. I'm not exactly sure if they're made to be totally separate or if the UD3H came out first, then the UD5H came out second as something like an upgrade from the UD3H.

Going on that assumption, i looked more into and learned about motherboard model revisions, like how a UD5H has revision 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc.

I figured I would read through comments on sites selling the board to see what people had to say about their specific revisions they are using, and it looked like depending on the revision you got, it would either work mostly fine, or would present as more of a hassle than anything great and smooth to use.

I read some more online and found that sometimes you may or may not get the latest revision of a board, depending on how the site or physical retailer handles their inventory. Weather they discard all earlier revision boards in place of the latest and greatest revisions is beyond me.

It appears harder to me now than I originally thought to make sure I'm getting the best, latest version of a motherboard I have my eyes set on.

So, I'm asking the community to help me figure out how one would go about making sure they 100% obtain the latest revision of a board, and weather or not the latest revision is actually better than it's predecessors, because I don't want to end up getting duped or cheated in the end.

I'm mostly looking for re-assurance, if anything, that most sites like say, Newegg for example, keeps the latest revisions in stock over older versions unless otherwise stated, like if a previous revision is actually better than a more recent one. Feels quite confusing.
 
Solution
Eximo
Hit or miss what BIOS updates will be installed on the board. You can always e-mail the vendor and see if they will check for you. The loaded BIOS revision is often written on the box (or a sticker is affixed)

As for voltage, I did have an issue with my ASUS Rampage III Formula. The stock voltage was set to the maximum the CPU could handle. Caused nearly instantaneous overheating. I had to use the motherboard manual to come up with a step by step to change the CPU voltage quickly and reboot before it reached thermal limit. (The CPU I ended up with would run as low as .8 volts rather then the 1.35 maximum) I think I settled on 1.083 volts for long term use and even had it overclocked on such a low voltage.

Didn't have any issues with...
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Eximo

Eximo

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I don't think you are going to get much help on this one. Whatever they list for sale is roughly what you will get. The only way to be sure to have the latest is to buy a product recently released (and that opens yourself up to unknown issues)

Various manufacturers use different naming conventions. Revision numbers are usually applied within the same model. If the alphanumeric model or name of the board changes, then it is likely a completely different part.

Only advice I can give might be to see if they post the SKU of the part in question. Generally the higher the number the more recent the board is, but that can be misleading as different manufacturers do things differently.
 
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Miklagaard

Miklagaard

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Hurm.. I'll take that into consideration. For the sake of the conversation, my eyes were set on Gigabytes UD5H BK black edition motherboard.

I liked it's style, I liked the colors, all black is something I love. Seen videos and pictures on it's UEFI Bios which looked pretty nice.

Most people didn't seem to have an issue with the board, and if they did, it's most likely just the rare isolated incident or just a faulty batch. Some complained about the UEFI Bios' voltage settings allowed for crazy voltage OC's. An even fewer amount complained that the default voltage, not having been adjusted higher at all from it's base setting, was already too high of a voltage for their 1150 Intel CPUs.

But, that sounds like a BIOS software issue and BIOS updates are a lot easier to handle than hardware issues & switching out one board for another or the exact same.

This was just me attempting to figure out if places are selling updating versions that come with all the fixes, patches etc, so people don't have to go through all the hassle, minus the rare isolated incidences.

But I do thank you for the info
 
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Eximo

Eximo

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Hit or miss what BIOS updates will be installed on the board. You can always e-mail the vendor and see if they will check for you. The loaded BIOS revision is often written on the box (or a sticker is affixed)

As for voltage, I did have an issue with my ASUS Rampage III Formula. The stock voltage was set to the maximum the CPU could handle. Caused nearly instantaneous overheating. I had to use the motherboard manual to come up with a step by step to change the CPU voltage quickly and reboot before it reached thermal limit. (The CPU I ended up with would run as low as .8 volts rather then the 1.35 maximum) I think I settled on 1.083 volts for long term use and even had it overclocked on such a low voltage.

Didn't have any issues with voltage on Haswell. Stock settings are all set to auto and the CPU decides what it needs.

They may be referring to automatic overclocking settings using too much voltage, which is certainly true.
 
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Miklagaard

Miklagaard

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Automatic overclocking settings.. Didn't think of that one, but yeah that's definitely likely.

I have yet to even begin getting the parts for the new PC, it's been a while waiting. I'm making sure I know what I'm getting into with the help and advice from sites like this and you good knowledgeable folk. I'm not IT professional, but I can damn well try to get good at this so nothing is screwed up and I don't get botched purchases.

When I think I have everything down and know exactly what to get, something new pops up, like DX 12 and Win10 coming around the corner.. Which is now making it harder for me to decide on a x1 gtx 960, or 970, or SLI 960 or 970. So my choice will have to wait until Dx 12 is fully released with Win10 so I can find benchmarks on that hopefully, with the two cards and with SLI to make a better choice.

Also fiddling around trying to figure out if Phanteks PWM fan hub was able to control a 4 pin PWM CPU cooler fan + any other case fans to get set to the same speed as each other. Read though that it appears to be better to have the CPU fan doing it's thing on it's own separately from the RPMs of a case fan, and just try to set the case fans to a comfortable RPM balancing noise vs CFMs. Will probably need a fan hub or controller anyway, if I'm gonna try hooking up as many as maybe 9 fans in an Enthoo Pro case.

Not even sure what fans exactly to get though. Was looking at corsair SP 140 mils, but figured those would only be good as intakes. But almost all fan slots are meshed + dust filters, so I figured maybe just go with nothing but static pressure 140 mils.
 
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Eximo

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I like Corsair SP fans, have six of them myself. I bought the performance versions and hooked them up to automatic controls and a manual fan controller. That way they are quiet when you don't need the CFM and not too bad when you do.

You shouldn't concern yourself with GPU performance benchmarks. The majority of games will not be exclusive to DX12, and games engines that take advantage of DX12 completely will be a long time coming. PS4 and Xbox have the same GPU, AMD GCN architecture, which supports DX11.2 I believe. They will be around for years to come, so most games will be built around that until 2020 probably. (Same thing happened with DX10 and 11 while the Xbox 360 and PS3 were the newest consoles, all games were DX9 capable. Very rarely did PC game exclusive limit themselves to DX10 or 11. That has just begun recently.

Just look at the games you want to play now, and pick out your GPU(s). You could hold out for AMD's 300 series if you are interested. Should be the more powerful GPU on the block for a while. Depending on your monitor choice I would opt for a single GTX980 in place of a pair of GTX960. Basically deliver the same performance, and yes the 980 is more expensive, but you don't have to deal with SLI, power requirements are lower, and you can add a second 980 at a later date if you needed more performance.
 
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Miklagaard

Miklagaard

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Well SLI tends to make sense when SLI is really well optimized for a game, like Star Citizen (hopefully).

The problem or drawback, is the cost vs performance when it comes to using two 970's vs one 980, for example. And that kinda bums me out that it's been like that for awhile. Of course, there are a few situations where it would definitely benefit from SLI or crossfire, like in the case of using 2k & 4k screens.. But outside of that I don't see too much of a use for SLI aside from having an extra card in my system in case something does go wrong and I have a backup.

I was considering getting just one GTX 970 actually, I don't think I can afford to dump in 500 bucks or so for a 980.. Because me and a friend are trying to slowly pitch in money together for my build, and I figured I'd try to take care of the case, PSU, mobo, and CPU at this point, and he'll try to go for the rest of the components. And I really don't know if he's willing to throw in 500 bucks just on one card, especially since I felt like SLI-ing at some point and I really feel like it's a waste of GPU performance, becuase I'm on a 1600x900 screen.

Dual 980s make more sense on a screen thats 120hz+, 1080p at least and especially 1440p with or without G sync. And those kinds of monitors are already expensive. So for now I was just looking at only one 960, or 970. I was considering AMD but I've been using a crappy old 9500 GT from long ago, but it's real simple and easy and Nvidia is just what I'm used to, but don't get me wrong I do like AMD.

And yeah I figured most games will be dx 11, which is fine. But one game in particular I think might be trying to take advantage of DX 12 is Star Citizen, which is a game I'm looking forward to playing but I need a good gaming PC first.
 
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Miklagaard

Miklagaard

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I'm also trying to re-do my search for motherboards. I still got the UD5H BK saved in a little list, but I'm trying to look for other stuff. I also totally forgot about PCIe slots running at x16, x8 etc. Seems alot of boards that interest me run a single card at x16 but when you throw a second in the x8 slot, it doesn't run at x16/x8 like it should, sometimes runs them at x8/x8 depending on the board and I'm like... Yeah why the hell? Maybe that's one reason why some peoples SLI/Crossfire builds aren't so great is cus of the board

Some of them say when you put in SLI it switches from doing x16 to doing x8/x8, not sure if that's something I want if I'm gonna do SLI down the road. So i look back at these two Gigabyte mobos I'm looking at, and they say x16/x8, and x16/x8 for both. Cept the UD5H Bk is $180 thanks to a bunch of useless features nobody really needs, and the G1 Sniper B6.

Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass there about something I seem to have totally lost my memory on, but I remember encountering some boards a lot of my life where they just run at x16/x8, and I've been doing some searching on that too, and it appears there isn't mcuh difference at all if two cards run at x8/x8, or x16/x8, or x16/x16.
 
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