which is better for a budget pc: a consumer motherboard or a workstation board

[Ryan_286]

I am trying to build a pc on a really tight budget of about $250 or so. I am going to use and i5-2400 cpu and I need a cheap motherboard to go with it. I am considering two different motherboards to use in the rig. one is an MSI H61M-E35 (B3) motherboard for $45 (https://goo.gl/8AzT3B) and the other is a Lenovo 03T8005 ThinkCentre M81 motherboard pulled from a workstation for $18 (https://goo.gl/iwrZLU). There is also a Lenovo 03T8351 ThinkCentre M91 motherboard for $25 (https://goo.gl/DkmTPH). I am not too concerned about lots of features, I just need a pcie 16x slot and the standard rear io.

Anyway, what i really want to know is if there are any drawbacks to using the workstation board? The lower price and more ram slots makes me want to choose it over the MSI consumer board. Is the MSI board going to be that much better to justify the greater cost?

Thanks for your input
Ryan

 

[Chugalug_]

Go with the cheaper workstation one, even an x8 slot doesn't bottleneck a 1080 Ti, don't worry.
They're both supposedly mATX so compatibility with cases will be fine.
No real drawbacks, just less features.

 

[Ryan_286]

Go with the cheaper workstation one, even an x8 slot doesn't bottleneck a 1080 Ti, don't worry.
They're both supposedly mATX so compatibility with cases will be fine.
No real drawbacks, just less features.

When you mentioned less features, what are you meaning exactly? I know that they don't support us 3.0
And probably only have pcie 2.0. what are the other drawbacks?

 

[Chugalug_]

Just like less USB ports, less headers etc.
Ignore that, you're fine with a normal rig, you're overthinking this.
PCIE 2.0 is fine, even an x8 slot from that is perfectly fine for up to say a 1060.