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General Motherboard Questions (what to look for in a good motherboard)

Tags:
  • ASrock
  • Support
  • RAM
  • Crossfire
  • Build
  • Motherboards
Last response: in Motherboards
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March 12, 2014 10:14:23 AM

Firstly, please forgive the possibly dumb questions...I am quite new at this building your own PC thing.
Take, for example, this motherboard that I'm looking at for a build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-b85pro4

Here are my questions:

-What is crossfire support?
-What is SLI support?
-What is SATA?

Are any of these important.

The board has 4x memory slots, is this for RAM? (4x8GB=32 max?)

Is this a decent motherboard for an approximate $800-$1000 gaming build?

Thanks in advance

More about : general motherboard questions good motherboard

a b V Motherboard
March 12, 2014 10:33:32 AM

Okay.

Crossfire and SLI are running multiple graphics card, Crossfire is multiple AMD cards and SLI multiple Nvidia Cards.

Sata is basically the connection between your Hard Disk Drives and your Motherboard, Sata II has a data transfer rate of 3GB/s where as Sata III has a transfer rate of 6GB/s so SATA III transfers data twice as fast.

This board for example you posted is capable of having upto 4 Hard disk drives or Solid State disks at SATA III speeds and 2 at Sata II speeds.

This board you posted is an okay board for a gaming build BUT beware of a few things, you can't overclock your processor on this motherboard and you CANNOT run multiple graphics cards but it is PERFECTLY fine for 1Graphics card non-overclock builds.

Can you post your full build and then I'll suggest a suitable motherboard.

Oh and final thing, the 4 memory slots are RAM stick slots correct. 4x8GB=32GB max right.
March 12, 2014 6:19:01 PM

Here is the full build. What's the return on dual GPU's? I'm guessing they don't stack (ex. two cards at 3.2 GHz does not equal 1 at 6.4GHz), so what is it really like?
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a b V Motherboard
March 13, 2014 12:51:09 AM

Can't see full build.

The return varies per game, sometimes 5% boost and sometimes 100% boost in performance, I'd always take one strong card over two weaker personally as one strong gives you room to grow.

VRAM doesn't stack either so if you have 2 GTX 770 4GB' VRAM each they can only use upto 4GB of VRAM.
a b V Motherboard
March 13, 2014 11:42:47 AM

I wouldn't SLI 2GB 770's only 4GB ones as two of them are limited if only 2GB versions.

Also if you aren't going to get an i5 4670k you may as well save money and only get an i5 4440.

By the way, this is as fast as an i7 4770 build for gaming but considerably less so also worth a look at

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($244.68 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock B85 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($57.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card ($328.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Rosewill BlackHawk ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Hive 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($59.99 @ Microcenter)
Total: $951.60
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-13 14:41 EDT-0400)

Changed RAM as this one is cheaper and fine. Hope this helps you.

The Xeon 1230 v3 is basically an i7 4770 without the integrated GPU but you don't need that.
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