ATX vs mATX

[Mottamort]

Hey there. I'm looking to build a midrange system for myself (keep in mind my prices vary as I'm in South Africa) and I'm currently looking at 2 rather cheap but decent options for motherboards.

Up until now I've steered clear of mATX for no actual reasons other than the n00b one of "bigger MUST be better" but here is what I'm looking at

Asus M4N68T 630a AM3 Dual-Channel DDR3 PCI-E 2.0
(heres the description) :
Asus M4N68T ; socket AM3 only ( upto 140w ) , nvidia nForce630a chipset , 4x DDR3-1800(O.C)/1600(O.C)/1333/1066 , 4 x s-ata with raid 0/1/5/10 , 1 x parallel ata133 , on-board VT1708S 7.1 audio + gigabit lan ; 2x pci-e (1x) , 1x pci-e (16x) , 4 x pci , with EPU4 + express gate + turbo key + 100% high-quality conductive polymer capacitor , with com/serial + parallel port - atx

and heres a slightly lower priced mATX board:
Asus M4N68T-M AM3 Dual-Channel DDR3 PCI-E 2.0
(heres the description) :
Asus M4N68T-M , all-in-one ; socket AM3 only ( upto 140w ) , nvidia GeForce7025 + nForce630a chipset , 2x DDR3-1800(O.C)/1600(O.C)/1333/1066 , 4 x s-ata with raid 0/1/5/10 , 1 x parallel ata133 , on-board 256mb UMA vga with + VT1708S 7.1 audio + gigabit lan ; 1x pci-e (1x) , 1x pci-e (16x) , 2 x pci , with EPU4 + express gate + anti-surge protection + turbo key + 100% high-quality conductive polymer capacitor , with com/serial + parallel port - micro atx

Keeping in mind the 2x RAM slots is enough, what would be the drawback of getting the -M over the other Asus model. On paper it seems that the mATX board has more features etc, so it seems to be "too good to be true". Any help would be appreciated, thanks

 

[saaiello]

Well IMO I would rather have the extra slots for more ram in the future but besides that they both good boards.

Next time you want us to compare stuff provide links its easier to compare that way

 

[Mottamort]

http://www.prophecy.co.za/asus-m4n68tm-dualchannel-ddr3-pcie-p-65734.html

http://www.prophecy.co.za/asus-m4n68t-630a-dualchannel-ddr3-pcie-p-65736.html

there we go. As I said, I'm South African, so I'm not exactly searching on Newegg.

It seems though they're both the same board? (M4n68t) but one is micro..and then the micro comes with onboard vga too...and its cheaper... I'm still confused :/

 

[saaiello]

Yes they are basically same board the MATX board has only support for 8GB of ram in 2 slots and it has onboard graphics. The full ATX board has 16GB of RAM in 4 slots which is the main difference there and its not the capacity its the 4 slots thats the big difference yes 4 gigs is plenty for most but sometimes you need more and to use 2 4gig dimms will be alot slower then useing 4 2gig dimms, the four slots provide double the amount of bandwidth for the ram to run and also the larger the ram the slower it is .

 

[Mottamort]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

 

[Mottamort]

Best answer selected by Mottamort.

 

[saaiello]

No problem any other questions feel free to message me.

Good Luck