Bang for the Buck Z97 Motherboard Showdown Part 2

[Stanvard]

3pm.

Interesting. It's around 11pm here in British Columbia.

[nicklmg]

NIck I know you are new and all, but how come we barely see you in the videos? Does Linus really think you are that bad on screen? 

LOL yes. Yes he does.

Nah, I wasn't hired on as a public personality, most of my work is behind the scenes. I am by no means a tech expert - I'm passionate about tech and I love learning about it, but I have nowhere near the amount of knowledge or experience that Luke or Linus have.

 

My expertise is in the business side of LMG. My role is advertising/sales management, relationship management (building and fostering relationships with brands who want to sponsor videos or work with us in other ways), some public community management (releases, giveaways, etc.), and some scripting. I make some appearances on Super Fun, which is... well... super fun, and that's fine by me, but I don't see my role on camera expanding anytime in the near future

[Infernalz]

Well, darn, was hoping for the BIOS rundown to be this one since I'm buying my Mobo tomorrow. Anyone have any off-hand knowledge on if MSI (and if it matters, this board) has a good BIOS, especially for beginners?

[zinton]

I like these mid-range reviews

[Guest Console Peasant]

I just bought a z97-k, thanks linus

[Takata]

I kinda lament the loss of the text-only bios that must be navigated with the keyboard instead of the mouse.

 

I have one of those motherboards with the 24-pin power connector between the I/O block and the CPU socket. >.<  Nice to know the board designs have gotten better in the last 7 years.

 

So... the only functional thing differentiating these motherboards for now is the fan header positioning. I was hoping for more, but I guess there really isn't anything more. With only that, I still get the impression that it wouldn't matter which one of these boards I bought.

 

I'm guessing Luke wanted more fan headers near the top of the board so he could power a pump with one and two fans with another two, to blow air through a 2*140mm radiator mounted at the top of the case?

 

Expansion slots... who's using an expansion slot for anything other than a video card anyway?

[cesrai]

This video wasn't that useful, would have like to show me how the cooler would effect the fan headers, more macro shoots of the boards would have been great and some b-roll.

[timmywity]

quite a nice idea thing can't wait for the next parts to see what else is good and bad about these motherboards

[AileeneHeart]

I actually like how ASUS motherboards look now than before. I don't like their old yellow/blue mobos.

[Randomacts]

Is it me or is the white balance off on this video..

 

It seems too bright/washed out.

[FizzyFantom]

I may be wrong, but that "fan connector" on the Asrock board (far left @2:38) appears to be a speaker connector. Good video overall, nice roundup of the features on these boards. Looking forward to the next video

[Markmjb]

Video topic is great, the video is not. I'm actually interested in what kind of differences you could find that matter between those boards.

To publish projects like Slick's oil rig or the whole room water cooling in multiple videos is fine, as you can still watch them separately and be entertained. 

But with this you formulate a hypothesis, give 30% of the anwer and say : come back later. 

I find it very ironical, because their have been dozens of moments on the WAN show etc where we all hate on companies like Ubisoft for publishing stuff on a deadline they can't reach, resulting in low quality.

With this video you are doing just that.

[PortentousLad]

Really like this.

I look forward to the bios video, could you make a basic how to OC in the various UEFIs? RAM CPU etc.

[Justaname]

I'm really starting to enjoy this series  
What I would like to see in one of the next videos is fan control utilities that these mobo's have, imo one of the most important/useful features a motherboard can have.

[DJ46]

PLEASE, talk about the user experience of for example controling fans.

For example, SpeedFan only works if the manufacturer works with the developer.

Also, many boards have non-standard 4-pin headers on all conectors but the CPU_fan one, because Intel has a specofication that one must follow.

Not every board can even use splitters, some boards don't have enough power in the conectors to even start 2 NF-F12 fans.

Software for fan control provided by the manufacturer varies A LOT, too. Although I don't have much experience with othe brands, I know GigaByte's EasyTune does f*** all. They moved the fan control aspect into whatever "System Information Viewer" is supposed to be. I can't control anything. Many boards lack voltage regulation, many support it only on 1 or 2 conectors.

The userbase is really angry, I was shocked when I found information that their fan control is this bad on even the high-end boards.

I had to buy a powered splitter for my fans to plug them all into the Intel standard CPU_fan conector.

[reach3r]

The video is good and I like the series, despite the fact it's not primarily of interest to me.

 

But guys: you're really overdoing it with the advertisement of ways to support you.
I absolutely understand this is important to you, but look at the length and breath you need to take to cover all of it!
Although some of these are temporary please think about maybe not including every single one in every video, so that this portion of the video becomes shorter and more compact (beginning of the video not even taken into account).
With daily videos coming out i'm sure you will still get the message out.

 

Just an idea, maybe you haven't thought about this already.

[MooseCheese]

Expansion slots... who's using an expansion slot for anything other than a video card anyway?

 

Me! I've got an LSI MRSAS9240-4I RAID controller, an Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCIe sound card and an Asus ThunderboltEX II Dual thunderbolt header as well as my GPU.

 

[Bicketybam]

... But guys: you're really overdoing it with the advertisement of ways to support you.

I absolutely understand this is important to you, but look at the length and breath you need to take to cover all of it!

Although some of these are temporary please think about maybe not including every single one in every video, so that this portion of the video becomes shorter and more compact (beginning of the video not even taken into account).

With daily videos coming out i'm sure you will still get the message out.

 

Just an idea, maybe you haven't thought about this already.

 

There is also the option that at that very moment they start talking about support, considering you've heard it all before, you could use that time to then 'like or dislike' the video, maybe start reading the comments or visit the forum.  You could also just stop watching if you've seen it all before.  I don't think they will get too upset if you don't watch every video to conclusion.

 

I think they put the support info into every video as then each video can be it's own separate entity.  Maybe some of the people that come to watch this video don't watch every other video that the LMG release like the rest of us (sacré bleu) but then with the support info in this video, they have that information.

 

Those that already support are not the targeted audience for the support info part of the videos, it's for reaching those that don't currently support...

[tnlich]

Me personally.. I have always loved/liked AMD boards ,video cards etc. This past late summer early fall . Linus was doing a lot of reviews on some z97 boards and 1150 cpu's. Got my attention. 1 Huge factor that I now love my I7 1150 build more than the old budget AMD build is the M.2 drive that Intel has on there boards now. TOTAL NO BRAINER for speed. Also I do not like the path AMD is taking with the APU's. For years I have been hearing and seeing them fail trying to capitalize off of this with the old 64's and such. Slick talks about low end boards here he was reviewing. Its so funny that they still are SUPERIOR to the FX AMD garb that is out there. I have had a few of the FX 4K,,6k and 8k cpu's  they are great if you ate going to do multi tasking options for the PC. Like for instance watching Netflix on 1 mono  then also playing D3 at the same time, being on Skype talking face to face with someone and also say ordering your intel replacement hardware on the 4th mono at the same time. I still have love for AMD just not in the CPU area. I gave all my towers with the AMD builds away to step through that door and become a Intel fan now. I am so happy I did but I will not give into Nvidia. In my opinion and you can show me bench marks till our eyes bleed. They just don't do it for me. With PhysX and Afterburner etc . I just cant go that route. I will say with my new build I am very happy and very satisfied that the build I have is all MSI, Corsair and intel products with the exception of the duel R9 290X Lightning's in there. To me mixing the 2 with the superior CPU and the Fast fast GPU's are insanely orgasmic. Anyhow sorry for all the extra bla bla bla.. just thought I share that since it was on my mind.

 

HUGE!!! thanks to Linus Tech Tip crew for helping me on my decisions for my new Tower.

 

 

Thank you so much.

[papeles]

I kinda know that youtube is a place for cancer-comments but i really, really! don't understand where all the ASRock hate comes from.

Let's see:

They have the same build quality as their counterparts;

They use basicly te same software (sound, packet priority for lan, etc etc) and the other brands, just without a fancy skin...

They have a really good "motherboard management" software (Atunning, FStream) wich is good looking, fast, intuitive;

They are like, 10$ cheaper than an equivalent

They kinda look nice, imo, but let's leave looks out of this

Their UEFI has everything, including internet bios flash and uefi driver download for windows installation, wich is super handy

 

I'm  not a specific brand fan, but i don't understand where this hate comes from. Is it because they are cheaper? People really think that 10$ cheap means bad quality? Or can't they just see past some gimmicky marketing from bigger brands?

 

Anyways, good video as always

[tnlich]

At least he didn't throw in a Biostar board in there... Oh wait!!! Do they make intel boards?

[Simons]

Yay some good stuff to watch for tonight.

[seabass9990]

@Slick I love the fact that you are doing lower end boards because like you and linus said nobody needs or buys those really high end boards and really these are the ones with the most intrest

[seabass9990]

I kinda know that youtube is a place for cancer-comments but i really, really! don't understand where all the ASRock hate comes from.

Let's see:

They have the same build quality as their counterparts;

They use basicly te same software (sound, packet priority for lan, etc etc) and the other brands, just without a fancy skin...

They have a really good "motherboard management" software (Atunning, FStream) wich is good looking, fast, intuitive;

They are like, 10$ cheaper than an equivalent

They kinda look nice, imo, but let's leave looks out of this

Their UEFI has everything, including internet bios flash and uefi driver download for windows installation, wich is super handy

 

I'm  not a specific brand fan, but i don't understand where this hate comes from. Is it because they are cheaper? People really think that 10$ cheap means bad quality? Or can't they just see past some gimmicky marketing from bigger brands?

 

Anyways, good video as always

I have a 970 extreme3 and other than the extremely slow RMA i had to do because it came with dead usb ports i have no complaint

[Slick]

PLEASE, talk about the user experience of for example controling fans.

For example, SpeedFan only works if the manufacturer works with the developer.

Also, many boards have non-standard 4-pin headers on all conectors but the CPU_fan one, because Intel has a specofication that one must follow.

Not every board can even use splitters, some boards don't have enough power in the conectors to even start 2 NF-F12 fans.

Software for fan control provided by the manufacturer varies A LOT, too. Although I don't have much experience with othe brands, I know GigaByte's EasyTune does f*** all. They moved the fan control aspect into whatever "System Information Viewer" is supposed to be. I can't control anything. Many boards lack voltage regulation, many support it only on 1 or 2 conectors.

The userbase is really angry, I was shocked when I found information that their fan control is this bad on even the high-end boards.

I had to buy a powered splitter for my fans to plug them all into the Intel standard CPU_fan conector.

 

This is a huge part of the next video

 

The next video is all about UEFI BIOS so we will be covering ease of use, layout, fan control, boot priority, etc etc

 

the video after THAT will be covering their software and support within the OS

 

unfortunately due to CES timing these 2 videos will have to wait but i will be right back at it after CES