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Bang for the Buck Z97 Motherboard Showdown Part 3

nicklmg
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ASRock Z97 Ext.3



 

Gigabyte Z97X-SLI



 

MSI Z97 U3+



 

ASUS Z97-C



 

How does the UEFI of each of our affordable motherboards stack up against the rest from a usability standpoint?

 


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I prefer Asus' UEFI Bios personally.

CPU: R5 5800X3D Motherboard - MSI X570 Gaming Plus RAM - 32GB Corsair DDR4 GPU - XFX 7900 XTX 4GB Case - NZXT H5 Flow (White) Storage - 2X 4TB Samsung 990 Pro PSU - Corsair RM100E Cooling - Corsair H100i Elite Capellix Keyboard Corsair K70 (Brown Switches)  Mouse - Corsair Nightsword RGB

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Cheers mang.

export PS1='\[\033[1;30m\]┌╼ \[\033[1;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[1;30m\] ╾╼ \[\033[0;34m\]\w\[\033[0;36m\]\n\[\033[1;30m\]└╼ \[\033[1;37m\]'


"All your threads are belong to /dev/null"


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Awesome! I have been waiting for this since CES! Thanks Nick, Linus and Luke for continuing the series!

LTT's unofficial Windows activation expert.
 

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This is a need for me, im deciding which board to get and the bios is a big deal for me because my current mobo wont even let me instal my os to my ssd

My Rig  

 
PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/kGNksY

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($379.00 @ shopRBC) 

CPU Cooler: RAIJINTEK THEMIS 65.7 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($34.99 @ NCIX) 

Motherboard: MSI CSM-H87M-G43 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($78.83 @ DirectCanada) 

Memory: Kingston HyperX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($139.99 @ Memory Express) 

Storage: Kingston Fury 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($71.34 @ DirectCanada) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($92.95 @ Vuugo) 

Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card  ($298.98 @ Newegg Canada) 

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($125.98 @ Newegg Canada) 

Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($66.99 @ NCIX) 

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit)  ($116.00 @ shopRBC) 

Case Fan: Cougar Turbine 120 (4-Pack) 60.4 CFM 120mm  Fans  ($23.99 @ NCIX) 

Monitor: HP 22xi 60Hz 21.5" Monitor  ($187.11 @ Amazon Canada) 

Monitor: HP 22xi 60Hz 21.5" Monitor  ($187.11 @ Amazon Canada) 

Keyboard: Logitech G710 Wired Gaming Keyboard  ($114.99 @ NCIX) 

Mouse: Razer DeathAdder 2013 Wired Optical Mouse  ($76.99 @ Amazon Canada) 

Headphones: Kingston HyperX Cloud Pro Headset  ($78.98 @ DirectCanada) 

Total: $2074.22

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when availableGenerated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-10 15:33 EDT-0400Build log http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/303263-the-dell-from-hell/#entry4121100 

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Do enjoy working and building with ASUS motherboards great UEFI and fan control options. 

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:D

 

After watching video:  I'm still used to the classic gigabyte dual uefi bios, and also the usb comparability issues is a B****.  Had so many problems so far  :angry:.

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Am I supposed to like or dislike if I don't have pants on? Curses Luke you have left me in quite a pickle here... I guess I will just like it anyway and say nice job and wtf 4k(not a complaint just a comment)? I have an asus board and the bios is pretty easy to navigate even for me as a beginner.

I am the one who goes bump in the night... usually making a sandwich.

 

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Primo White - Motherboard: ASUS X99 Deluxe - CPU: Intel i7 5820k - RAM: 4x4GB Corsair Vengeance 2666mhz ddr4 - GPU: Dual EVGA gtx 980 SSC - PSU: EVGA G2 Supernova 750w - Cooler: Custom PETG Loop on cpu and gpus - Storage: 500gb Samsung 850 evo ssd, 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 3tb hdd

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Asus! Yeah. I love that brand. They are just good.

Intel Core i3 2100 @ 3.10GHz - Intel Stock Cooler - Zotac Geforce GT 610 2GB Synergy Edition

Intel DH61WW - Corsair® Value Select 4GBx1 DDR3 1600 MHz - Antec BP-300P PSU

WD Green 1TB - Seagate 2.5" HDD 1TB - Seagate Barracuda 500GB - Antec X1 E.

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ASUS boards are so easy to use... their UEFI/Bios are very well detailed. I don't think I will ever switch brands.... ASUS boards are super stable and well worth their price. My 10 year old son can operate his M5A99FX Pro R2.0 with ease, and my ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z is basically the best for the AMD platform. Can't beat 'em.

My rig =SCOUT2= 

 

 

 

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Thanks nick

My pants are a brownie gold colour so my favourite was the asus board

Also the fan controls are kinda rad.

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@Slick

The ASRock has a "board explorer" type thing, and it also has the scrolling wierdness. (At least mine does, Z77 Extreme6)

pc specs: 4 function calculator / 8 digit lcd display / colored numeric and function buttons

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I used to have a Gigabyte board, and while I did not mind the UEFI BIOS, I have upgraded to an ASUS Z97-a, and the EZ and advanced mode are just so much better than good ole Gigabyte in my opinion.

And most importantly, I am wearing black pants.

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During the video at 12:08 when Slick is talking about the msi board the Asrock board is displayed. Just thought I should mention it.

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ASUS all the way. They managed to go UEFI without loosing basically the same layout we were all used to from the old days that is fully compatible with 100% keyboard navigation. All off the stuff is very well documented and where it should be. They also have the best legacy/UEFI control from my experience so that if you still have some BIOS only hardware lingering you can just enable that while everything else is UEFI. With this enabled it also will label both the UEFI and legacy boot option if the device can do both. Also the quick/easy menu is actually useful compared to many other boards. Personally I just stick it to advanced since having used their boards for so long I know where everything is.

I think ASRock should have come in selectable one from my experience. It's well layed out and it can be easily navigated with a keyboard. On my Z97 everything is where it's expected to be except one thing which I forget offhand. I can't comment on its OS/GPT compatibility as I havnt had to deal with non UEFI hardware in that build.

For me MSI is the worst. The giant buttons leave you very little room to work and to me the top bit is basically useless, even for newer users. It's also not well organized or explained. This isn't good because things arnt where you would expect. There have been multiple times where the boards have decided to get stuck in the EFI command line prompt right after boot. This is a huge pain to get out of if you can. Another thing is that I have had nothing but trouble trying to get UEFI MSI boards to actually boot using UEFI. And by that mean that windows detects this and initializes the drive as GPT and creates 4 partitions vs the normal 2 and MBR among other things. It seems like unless everything thing is UEFI capable it just sits in legacy mode.

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Asus is really the best one and the msi feature where you can see the plugs in your mobo is available on Asrock boards too.

I guess between these you really can't go wrong, they are all great boards, my only concern is msi not having a quick "repair" possibility if the bios gets corrupted

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Well, I own the gigabyte one, so I'm probably a bit biased, but it seems to work well enough for me. Not that i fiddle with the bios much anyway :)

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Great video, but you could have gone longer with it. I know you don't want to bore casual viewers with long videos but casual viewers don't usually watch videos about UEFI's.

Still, It was a great series and I hope you guys will consider doing similar overviews for the future generations of mobos (emphasis on UEFI's). ;) 

 

Also, I have a question. Do H97 boards have the same UEFI ? (excluding the chipset limitations of course)

- Now with added  WUB WUB -

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For the bios, yeah, I agree with the video but aesthetically the Asus motherboard doesn't look 'beefy' enough..

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i often use mobos in this prizerange for builds and i have to say i really like the asus and msi boards. i had trouble with gigabyte and asrock before and because they are a little bit cheaper i often choose msi over asus ones

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Glad that both Asus and MSI were before Gigabyte....

 

UltraDurable is not.

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