Motherboard Chipsets

Budget Gamer · October 13, 2014

I am currently searching for a budget motherboard with no overclocking in mind but i stumbled across many different chipsets in the motherboards like z97, B85 and h81. Can i know whats the main difference between these chips?

Speedbird · October 13, 2014

H81 is the low-end chipset, with only 2 SATA 6 Gbps ports, 1 memory modules per channel and no USB3.

B85 is more business-oriented, has a few USB3 ports, more SATA 6 Gbps and some business features too.

Z97 is the most expensive consumer-grade chipset, with support for PCIe splitting, NVIDIA SLI and CPU overclocking.

You probably want H97 instead. It's like B85, but newer, more consumer-oriented, and supports Haswell Refresh. If you don't need Haswell Refresh, then get H87.