Motherboard questions

[Pm_me_nude_pc_parts]

I know that there are a lot of information to be found that's easily digestible about this topic. However I feel like when you read up about stuff like this it takes you into rabbit holes. What I'm specifically wondering about is gaming. I'm just going to dump everything I've gathered by osmosis into my questions just so people can get a feel for my knowledge on the subject.

 

So there are two sockets that's in use right now and they are AM4 and LGA1151 and they are for AMD and Intel respectively.

1. My first question is about price points, what should you expect from something that's $100, $200, and $300. I'm assuming mid tier boards should've overclocking capability and wifi. What do I get for more expensive motherboards? And what do I give up for going into the $100 range.

2. My second question is about onboard sound. Does every motherboard in these price ranges have the same sound capabilities if you're just going for something generic without getting boards specifically for sound? Right now I have some Realtek thingy and I'm assuming that's the onboard soundcard are there other manufacturers that are better which I should look out for?

3. What are VRMs and are they better if you go for more expensive boards? Follow-up, how do I differentiate between the bad and the good if there are differences?

4. Is latency between your components something you should keep in mind when buying a motherboard?

5. What's up with the naming schemes? X570, B450 etc... Are they the same for Intel & AMD? I get that they are for different price points but beyond that I'm clueless.

6. Clockspeeds for RAM, some boards are capable of like 3600 MHz whilst some are only capable of 3000 MHz. I know that AMD depends on these speeds a lot for performance compared to intel, so if you're buying intel can you just disregard that and go for lower speeds without sacrificing performance?

---

It's hard to know what you don't know of. So are there more things I should consider when buying a motherboard? For my upgrade I'm going with Ryzen and my considerations are, RAM speeds, M.2 Nvme slots, wifi & blue tooth and good onboard sound and I'd like overclocking capability.

[Fasauceome]

16 minutes ago, Pm_me_nude_pc_parts said:

So there are two sockets that's in use right now and they are AM4 and LGA1151 and they are for AMD and Intel respectively.

Well, there are the high end sockets like LGA 2066 and TR4 and the like but for the sake of this specific discussion let's ignore those

 

16 minutes ago, Pm_me_nude_pc_parts said:

My first question is about price points, what should you expect from something that's $100, $200, and $300. I'm assuming mid tier boards should've overclocking capability and wifi. What do I get for more expensive motherboards? And what do I give up for going into the $100 range.

There's huge variation from vendor to vendor, and indeed generation to generation. You'll find a lot of discussion about things like how the current X570 TUF motherboards are great, but someone might say a Z370 TUF is terrible, and that's because they're really not the same board. 

 

For price points on the AMD side, the $70 price point is the solid budget option zone, $150-$200 are some really nice boards, and anything higher is premium and more premium. Intel has much less consistent price ranges at the moment unfortunately.

18 minutes ago, Pm_me_nude_pc_parts said:

My second question is about onboard sound. Does every motherboard in these price ranges have the same sound capabilities if you're just going for something generic without getting boards specifically for sound? Right now I have some Realtek thingy and I'm assuming that's the onboard soundcard are there other manufacturers that are better which I should look out for?

Basically all the same, no sound chip stands out and if you want good audio you get a dac.

 

19 minutes ago, Pm_me_nude_pc_parts said:

What are VRMs and are they better if you go for more expensive boards? Follow-up, how do I differentiate between the bad and the good if there are differences?

Voltage regulator modules control the power to the CPU, good ones allow better overclocking. 

 

For more info, you can see the motherboard tier list by clicking the motherboard in my signature below, and also check out buildzoid's videos on YouTube.

20 minutes ago, Pm_me_nude_pc_parts said:

Is latency between your components something you should keep in mind when buying a motherboard

Nope

 

20 minutes ago, Pm_me_nude_pc_parts said:

What's up with the naming schemes? X570, B450 etc... Are they the same for Intel & AMD? I get that they are for different price points but beyond that I'm clueless.

The name scheme follows the chipset. Every socket has a chipset range, the current AMD chipsets are sorted by A, B, and X for low, mid, and high end. There's X370, X470, A320, B450, etc. Intel has H, B, H (again), and Z. Their current chipsets are H310, B360, H370, Z370, and Z390. There's also some C series chipsets but those are for servers and stuff.

 

21 minutes ago, Pm_me_nude_pc_parts said:

Clockspeeds for RAM, some boards are capable of like 3600 MHz whilst some are only capable of 3000 MHz. I know that AMD depends on these speeds a lot for performance compared to intel, so if you're buying intel can you just disregard that and go for lower speeds without sacrificing performance?

Sometimes yes, but higher frequency ram helps framerates and frametimes at high refresh rate, so if you're spending a ton of money on a baller Intel gaming rig, there's no point in saving a couple bucks on cheap ram since some 3200 is like $10 more than a 2400 kit usually

[Jurrunio]

1. $100 boards could be decent if you go with B450 on AMD, otherwise it will be bad for overclocking. $150 improves things, $200 even better (for handling flagship CPUs), $250 for high end features (more USB ports, M.2, WiFi etc), $300+ is for overclocking features like LN2 mode and stuff. $700+ boards out there like the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme is more of a show off piece of technology

 

2. I myself don't find the low end Realtek ALC887 or higher (because you can still find it on $80 boards as you would on $350) ALC1220 any different (maybe just my cheapo speakers), but all onboard audio are more effected by interference compared to USB external sound cards. Imo you either go all out and buy a sound card, or just stay with whatever the board comes with.

 

3. VRM is the power supplier of a component, most important one on the board (as for as being big is concerned) is those for the CPU core voltage. Better ones supply more current for the same operating temperature.

They don't tell you the good ones and bad ones, so it's basically looking up reviews with VRM thermals tested. Note that this does not include the stupid "infrared heat gun pointing at heatsink" method used by Guru3D and Tweaktown and more because they can only measure VRM heatsink's external temperature, which could be anywhere from 20C to 50C different to the mosfet/powerstage temperature (i.e. the one you should care about) depending on how well the heatsink is as a heat dissipating agent.

 

4. Latency? Shorter latency is better with for example, RAM to CPU. This doesn't sound like what you're talking about though, maybe your wording is wrong.

 

5. They refer to the chipset. The chipset determines many features of the board but not all of them, for example X chipsets from AMD support SLI while B chipsets do not, or X470 carrying more USB support than B350. For overclocking you'll need B and X chipsets from AMD for Ryzen, while Intel CPUs need Z or X chipset for overclocking.

 

6. Higher speed is faster but for price, 3000MHz is the best if you want to spend more on the graphics card. Note that because Intel's memory capability hasn't really improved from Skylake to Coffee Lake Refresh while Ryzen's memory capability greatly differs between generations, you'll see very different board verified (not "supported") memory freqyency for Ryzen. They only correspond to CPUs that existed at the time the board was launched for testing. For example most B450 boards are tested with Zen+ CPUs like the 2700X, so memory frequency pretty much tops at 3600MHz. Zen 2 CPus like the Ryzen 5 3600 however could go 4000MHz easily even on a decent B450 board.

[Pm_me_nude_pc_parts]

Quote

For price points on the AMD side, the $70 price point is the solid budget option zone, $150-$200 are some really nice boards, and anything higher is premium and more premium. Intel has much less consistent price ranges at the moment unfortunately.

Where I'm from the sales tax is a lot higher than the US and Europe in general is expensive for technology. So my price points are a little adjusted.

 

Quote

The name scheme follows the chipset. Every socket has a chipset range, the current AMD chipsets are sorted by A, B, and X for low, mid, and high end. There's X370, X470, A320, B450, etc. Intel has H, B, H (again), and Z. Their current chipsets are H310, B360, H370, Z370, and Z390. There's also some C series chipsets but those are for servers and stuff.

What are the numbers for? Also this doesn't really explain differences like why is this better than this?