Ok, so THAT is the correct way to get an appropriate response. That being said, I do not always have all the answers. Nobody does. But to my experience if I am going to recommend a specific motherboard I do three, sometimes four things first. The reason why is because even today there are motherboards that have symptomatic problems. You might think these board manufacturers have it all figured out by now, and mostly they do, but not in every case.
The first thing I do is a Google search for reviews on that model. I ignore everything that is not done by one of the following sites, and sometimes even one of them will get it wrong so you need to take a CONSENSUS bases on as many reviews as you can find, but these are the sites that 99% of the time get it right.
Tom's hardware (Especially if Crashman (Thomas Solderstrom)) does the review
Anandtech
HardOCP
Tweaktown (Usually ok. I've seen a few reviews there that I had to question though. Normally, fine.)
Guru3D (Again, usually. I've seen very good reviews there and others that I had to simply laugh at.)
Tech PowerUP
Silent PCreview (Usually solid and in depth. Occasionally they'll base an opinion without much testing. Watch for that)
If you have to go to other sites for reviews of an item because there are no other reviews available, take them with a grain of salt and don't put any faith into them unless you can see for yourself that they have actually tested the hardware in depth. Some sites simply unbox the hardware, set it up, claim it works great and make a few statements about how many power phases it has and then sing it's praises. Not how you review a motherboard.
Other hardware is pretty much the same guidelines and the same sites.
Two, look at the reviews on both Newegg and Amazon. Do not believe ANYTHING you read in any of those reviews, however, if there is a common theme such as a specific failure or common problem on a certain model of hardware, it will show up here most of the time. These reviewers usually haven't the faintest idea what they are doing but if they all have the same problem, it's usually because it IS a problem.
Three, ask around for opinions. Even I will sometimes contact one of the people I know consistently does reviews of the specific hardware category I am looking at something in, and ask them, whether they have actually purchased that hardware or reviewed it, or not, if they would buy it or if there is a better option. You won't always get an answer, but I have avoided buying and recommending hardware that it turned out later did have issues by doing this. Sometimes they simply have insights or they consider factors that you may not even think about, like the fact that the power phases on that board you recommended do not actually have the true amount of power phases that it says it does.
Further, if a chipset is fairly new, and there are not many reviews yet, or none for the specific model I am looking at, I will generally try to stay above the bottom 25% of price because usually those boards will have a few that don't last long due to a design defect, while most of the ones between 25 and 75% of the lowest to highest cost are generally at least viable, if not fairly decent. Also, you ALWAYS lose features with lower cost boards. In every case, on every chipset, you can be sure that the cheaper the board is, the more features it will lack.
Sometimes, some of those features are the whole reason why anybody would want that chipset in the first place, so not having them makes buying that chipset useless. There is lots more, but it takes time to gain all this. Main thing is, just throwing out the cheapest build you can throw together using the best CPU and GPU card you can stuff into it is RARELY a good way to build a system.
To be honest, if you were REALLY trying to offer somebody a truly valuable system build, you would ALWAYS start with a power supply that was in the upper 60-80% of performance and price for the capacity needed on that build. If the PSU is not solid, the whole build is not solid.
Review says it is 3x2 + 2 VRM, does that x2 not contribute? Not trying to say it is a good board or anything. How do you deal with both good and bad reviews for the motherboard? For example, some claim they can oc to 3200 easily, some do not, etc. Which b350 mb will you recommend instead? Thanks.
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