Are all mobo practically the same?

[UltraTin]

I've been looking around at multiple mobos for a friends build and thought the Gigabyte z97x gaming 7 was a good choice for his budget. Then I delved deeper and deeper into the insane number of z97 mobos offered by ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and realized most mobo are actually pretty similar to each other. Other than features like audio and wifi, there isn't much difference in terms of performance is there? My friend isn't on an extremely tight budget, but after realizing this would a z97x gaming 7 be a good choice or is there a cheaper alternative?

[WoodenMarker]

The motherboard doesn't really affect performance outside of oc'ing.

[Tech_Dreamer]

in terms of performance other than overclocking like WM said it's not much except the addons & external features, basically depending on the brand & the components  quality on it to provide much safer & stabler platform for a CPU to work on as you step into higher & pricier tier, & extremely useful when you're crazy overclocking like liquid nitrogen cooling & that kinda stuff other boards cannot take

[ShadowCaptain]

I've been looking around at multiple mobos for a friends build and thought the Gigabyte z97x gaming 7 was a good choice for his budget. Then I delved deeper and deeper into the insane number of z97 mobos offered by ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and realized most mobo are actually pretty similar to each other. Other than features like audio and wifi, there isn't much difference in terms of performance is there? My friend isn't on an extremely tight budget, but after realizing this would a z97x gaming 7 be a good choice or is there a cheaper alternative?

 

Motherboards are largely the same across the board, and do not necessarily directly effect the performance of the computer

 

If you are overclocking generally you go for the Z series boards, if not then an H or B series board will perform the same

 

Features such as better audio, RAID, more sata ports, SLI/Crossfire, better VRM cooling, etc etc etc are the things that separate motherboards mostly I like to go for medium range boards, as they tend to offer the best bang for buck and almost all features anyone could want outside of extreme users