Motherboard chipset's

[berre95]

Hello,

 

I am quite inexperienced with pc building.

I have taken apart some old pc's and did some random maintenance, got a bit into oc'ing. But that's about it.

 

Now i started a project recently, a case mod. And obviously there needs to go some hardware in there.

I was thinking about an i5 4690k and a gigabyte 970 G1 with 8gb of ram.

And all the part picking went quite well until I got to the motherboard.

I was looking around seeing the cheaper ones often have numbers like H81, B85, H87 in their name and the more expensive would have Z97, Z87.

I know these refer to their chip set's, but what is the real difference?

 

I heard B85 is more for workstations, so very reliable.

And Z97 would be better for oc'ing.

Yet gigabyte has a B85 based motherboard which oc's quite good apparently.

And motherboards practically don't have any impact on performance.

 

So i'm a bit confused.

What does a chip set do, what does it affect, what do different type of chip sets do different, and why do i pay more for some then other's?

[flibberdipper]

What is a Chipset as Fast As Possible - YouTube

[WoodenMarker]

Different chipsets have different features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1150

The 4690k is Devil's Canyon and only works on h97/z97 boards without a bios update. Other 1150 boards need an update. 

If you don't need any special features, pretty much any h97/z97 board will do. 

You should be looking at z97 boards for oc'ing. B85 boards can oc the G3258 but not K sku cpus like the 4690k.