Motherboard reviews: What matters the most to you?

[lowrider_05]

I´m just going to answer the Main Question: "Motherboard reviews: What matters the most to you?":
1. Ease of installation and setup.
2. Does the Mainboard adhere to the limits and standards (Powerlimits/Voltages/etc.)
3. RAM Support and stability
4. How hot do things on the board get (VRM/Chipset/SSD´s)

 

[Space Lynx]

vrm cooling and I want 12k Japan black caps (usually these only come on high end boards, but the asrock steel legend budget series always has 12k black caps)

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

Didn't read the whole thread so sorry if I'm repeating someone but I want Wi-Fi hotspot tests if Wi-Fi equipment is present. All my other preferences are much more than covered by other forum members

 

[lemonadesoda]

Reviews ? Short but information dense. It seems that TPU is at risk of going the way of many other review sites: author paid per word, rather than pay per fact divided by length of article. Keep if brief. Keep it insightful. Bring relevant information forward. reduce ramble.

 

[A Computer Guy]

That's something really hard to measure, but something I can work with.
As an example there are many AM4 motherboards advertising speeds of DDR4000 and above - yet none will actually work at that speed, with 3200 being the limit for most CPU's that work on the boards.

ROG Strix X570-F Gaming (asus.com) - this is the motherboard in my personal PC. It's marketed as a high and AM4 overclocking board, while in reality it's the budget model of their midrange line.

This is just a mess. 128GB of DDR4 5100 on AM4, apparently.
There's zero explanation about that first and second row of speeds and why they differ, because it's been copy-pasted from somewhere else
View attachment 319913

Their own QVL list doesnt even have a 5100 entry, making it seem a generic copy paste from an entirely different board.

Basically, if a world record overclocker managed the speed long enough to get a screenshot, they added it in as a possible overclock.
Doesn't matter than above about 3800, you lose sync with IF and performance tanks massively - it's still 'possible' so it's advertised misleadingly.

Meanwhile, i've got an example here of a budget board with fantastic details on stock vs OC
ASRock | B760M PG SONIC WiFi

Other than translating what "1DPC" means this is clear and simple, for a board that could be a nightmare since it supports three generations of CPU's as well as K and non K variants.

You could simplify that down to "OC needs a K chip and manual settings" while native "just works" and i've found the board to actually exceed those guidelines slightly, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, i cant test every board with multiple CPUs - Generally that boils down to how well your invidual CPU behaves, rather than anything measurable on the board itself.

Another issue with advertised features is for example my ITX came with Nahimic Audio but only to find out later that something changed and that fancy audio software wouldn't work at all making it a vaporware feature. So I paid more for nothing which pisses me off.

As as aside when reviewing motherboards it might be nice to know the layer count. Not sure if it matters so much now because boards need to be much higher quality to support PCIe 4/5 which seems to correspond with having more layers. For example from things I have read in the past higher layer boards have better chances in memory OC. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

I thought about this more and wanted to add something that comes from personal perspective. I've been using EVGA motherboards for years now, but that's clearly not going to happen again (them riding off into the sunset and all). I'm going to have to choose a different brand going forward. There are probably a good chunk of people out there riding the "Asus has gone bad" wave that's become so popular on YT as well, so I'm sure they're looking at other brands too (not that there are many left if you rule out those two lol). This is beyond what I said in my previous post about features, capability and performance.

So that leads me to some questions that may be hard to put into a review, but I'd find them incredibly helpful if answered:
1. What's the support like? What if I run into problems? Is the warranty any good? Is there an active community that uses the board and collaborates to help each other with common issues? Does the company do a good job communicating with bugs and providing updates to their BIOS? Is their RMA process easy to deal with if there is a problem? Lets face it, some percentage of people will have problems with any brand, but it has always been helpful to me knowing EVGA would support me (past tense anyway). What am I looking at with the board you're reviewing today? For example, even though it would be unlikely to review an older board...if I read an EVGA z790 review today, I'd want to see it mentioned that there's no official support for 14th gen and it is unclear whether or not they will even fix any of the remaining BIOS bugs that still exist for 12th/13th gen use. Support will be limited going forward from the company that used to have the best support in the industry as the company seems to be winding down.

2. What does the quality look like on the review unit? Does it look like they handled it well when they packaged it? Do heatsinks, screws, logos, and all the parts line up nicely and resemble a quality product that good money was paid for? If we assume that all motherboards of a certain price range work the same way (just go with me for a second), the main difference is possibly that this is the board I'm considering looking at for years. Does it look good? I know that can be subjective on style, but fit and finish are pretty easy to judge.

I like the comment about memory specifications you brought up as many will claim "8000MHz(OC)" but don't tell you that it would completely depend on the CPU's IMC and that even if it boots, it's likely not stable. I think it's also helpful to point towards a different article where speeds are tested in various use-cases and indicate what is most likely a good "sweet spot" for a particular board. Your note about what needs manual settings or what works natively is a good start. It may be helpful to point to a guide on how to test stability of memory as there are a million opinions and you shouldn't have to re-write that step in every single motherboard review. If referencing a guide, it may just be helpful to indicate what might have been different on this particular board for some reason. Or if you're reviewing a board and it's surprisingly good (or bad) with a few different kits and that's notable for some reason.

Anyway, I wanted to add this comment to have you think about the perspective of someone going to a totally new brand (or at least a new generation where things have changed a bit) and give information about what life is like with this board. Here's the set-up experience, here's the BIOS experience, here's how easy it is to overclock a little, here's what you can expect from the company if there's a problem, etc.

I've been on the EVGA forums for years and lately I've seen a lot of people buying their z790 boards off Amazon or Newegg having no idea that the company is in a nosedive, there's no support for 14th gen, and they never even finished refining the BIOS for z690/z790 boards that are missing several features other vendors have for OCing (V/F points don't even work 100% correctly for example). New BIOS updates with 14th gen support were promised in August and people are still waiting with no news since then, compounded with them claiming their BIOS team is still there a while ago, but it's obvious Kingpin and the BIOS team have moved on at this point.

 

[ir_cow]

It seems that TPU is at risk of going the way of many other review sites: author paid per word, rather than pay per fact divided by length of article.

Sit down! You dont know what your talking about...

 

[Space Lynx]

@Mussels I think it is important to keep in good bang for buck as a positive too. take for example my MSI Pro B550 VC mobo, $109, and the VRM's didn't even break 45 celsius last night gaming... contrary to popular opinion you don't need a super high end board to get good performance. MSI is the leader in this, ASRock a close second. ASUS the worst offender, not even giving us heatsinks on some $180+ boards... that should always get a negative imo

just my two cents anyway.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Sit down! You dont know what your talking about...

Get your coat and leave the building. Staff member getting personal is out of order.

 

[Space Lynx]

UNHAND ME GOOD SIR, UNHAND ME RIGHT THIS INSTANT

alright I will see myself out now, lol

 

[chrcoluk]

Well since I got ignored lol, I am out of this thread, I will assume my suggestions havent been taken onboard.

But will look at the first review that comes along to see.

 

[Mussels]

Gonna burst your bubble, some some of the MB have OC settings just missing in the software. I'm trying to think of a good example and all I can think of that the moment is per chipset. like Intel B660/B670 is missing OC options completely. Some MB have SA control, others will have VDD2, but not SA, or just VDD_TX. Its worth checking out each motherboard. Though if you don't point these things out, its maybe a waste of time. Once in a while I noted something, but software coverage was only included because people demand it and sure didn't point everything out. Your round-up will be extra long if you have to do every single MB in one article. Might as well knock it out in each review to keep it contained... or just not at all.

Personally i dont think the software is good for overclocking on any board, period.

Some boards have software required for hardware features - like needing their branded RGB software to run an LCD display for temperatures. That needs testing to see if it messes with performance, but individually it's going to be slow boring work so it makes more sense to collect the information and slap up a comparison article later.

Didn't read the whole thread so sorry if I'm repeating someone but I want Wi-Fi hotspot tests if Wi-Fi equipment is present. All my other preferences are much more than covered by other forum members

Confused, what does this even mean?
Do you think these motherboards have secret hidden wifi hotspots enabled??

Another issue with advertised features is for example my ITX came with Nahimic Audio but only to find out later that something changed and that fancy audio software wouldn't work at all making it a vaporware feature. So I paid more for nothing which pisses me off.

That's a problem with all software-reliant features and why i'm focusing on the hardware, nahimic has been around for many years now and it's never worked correctly - some games see it as cheating and you get banned for some of those software features they advertise.
Features like showing a 'radar' of where sound was from, so CS players could track exactly where other players were with an overlay from their motherboards software - not something I can reasonably test due to needing specific hardware and software combinations that seem to change at random.

Reviews ? Short but information dense. It seems that TPU is at risk of going the way of many other review sites: author paid per word, rather than pay per fact divided by length of article. Keep if brief. Keep it insightful. Bring relevant information forward. reduce ramble.

I get the intent, but your wording was terrible. Yes, brevity is something i want. That should be clear from the thread title alone, that i wish to reduce unpopular content.

A lot of the lengthy fluff in the early parts of the articles is straight from the companies themselves, or repeated content to make sure new readers don't need to read a dozen prior articles to understand the content.

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

Confused, what does this even mean?

In Windows and other operating systems, you can enable the hotspot so you can share your internet connection via Wi-Fi to other devices so it's mighty useful if your PC is currently in a room with really poor Wi-Fi coverage and you need to have some sort of connectivity on your Wi-Fi-only devices.

I'd want you to test these hotspots so readers could know how good of a Wi-Fi router their future motherboard is. I know it might be affected by silicon lottery but it's worth a try, innit?

 

[DudeBeFishing]

I have never seen a motherboard review that is useful. Most just go over the specs, but don't really check anything. What matters to me is are the specs accurate. Does it really have 8+4 phase VRM, or is it lying and it's a 4+2 design with 2 chokes per phase? Does the DDR5-8000 spec imply that anyone can pop in a DDR5-8000 memory kit and it will just work, or is it only for extreme overclockers with hand picked CPU/memory bins? Is the dual bios automatic or a manual switch?

But most importantly, how is support? Do they have a quick turnaround time for RMAs? Is support easy to reach? Are there any law breaking attempts to deny warranties like warranty void stickers? Do they deny warranty if the heatsink was removed?

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Imo motherboards are like marmite, some love it, some don't. A good review is well written and composed, with good information on the boards details and well done relavent tests.

Good luck Mussels anyway.

 

[ir_cow]

I have never seen a motherboard review that is useful. Most just go over the specs, but don't really check anything.

Probably should check out some TPU motherboard reviews

 

[DudeBeFishing]

Probably should check out some TPU motherboard reviews

You're right I should. I keep getting this site mixed up with other sites who's reviews are more like an ad than a real review.

 

[caroline!]

Buying a motherboard is like dating, gotta look for the red flags. If it has RGB that's a red flag for me, yep I'm that superficial, but thankfully there aren't (a lot) of enterprise/server mobos with it. Wi-fi is another red flag, unless it comes in a standalone module (which is rare) that you can remove, there's no way to fully disable it via software, that matters for me.

Don't get me wrong I like overclock and all, but we're at a point where overclock, if possible, only gives you marginal gains, not the same as overclocking an old Athlon 64 or P4 back in the day where you could squeeze like 20-25% more performance out of it. And overclock makes sense only in very specific, niche, applications... and no, not games, unless you unironically believe there's a massive difference between 165 and 170 FPS, overclock for me makes sense when you have an outdated build that can't afford to replace and want to keep using to run new programs or games, talking 5+ years old hardware, and older. My first PC was overclocked to the max so I could run Windows 7 instead of XP, even played Crysis on that thing, neat.

 

[mechtech]

It's already leaked out in other parts of the forum, I'm TPU's latest motherboard reviewer.
Part of the changes being brought in is to speed up the reviews - finding ways to streamline the process so we get reviews out faster without compromising the content.

Personally, I think there's a lot of duplicate testing going on with CPU and GPU testing and want to trim that down, but it's a fine line of where to stop.
We already have detailed 14900K and RTX 4090 reviews, how much do we need re-tested every motherboard review?
Don't we need to just test enough to make sure they're not being throttled or held back in some way, instead of re-running every single benchmark and test again?

I'm after feedback and thoughts on this, so that my time is spent where it matters to the readers.

Congratulations.

Hmmmmmmm well,

1. BIOS layout, intuitiveness, accuracy, fan speed control - hysteresis, features like secure erase, default voltages at default and not overly high or low, etc.
2. VRM quality, temps.
3. General - board layout, battery and m.2 slots not buried under gpu's, pcb layers, traces, compatibility, warranty, weight, rigidity (for big heat sinks), numbers for codes for trouble shooting, EMI, power consumption, stability, heatsinks fastened with plastic pins vs. screws, connectivity, etc. (quantity of m.2 slots )
4. Audio quality
5. Inferface transmission speed and between devices, sata to m2 or m2 to m2, usb to key, etc.
6. Network/LAN - I think after the 2.5G intel chip debacle perhaps this should be tested for throughput, latency and stability?
7. Perhaps ECC ram if it is supported by Mobo and cpu

As per your questions
Question 1 to you guys:
Is synthetic testing of the VRM's to find a motherboards power limits enough to compare to the existing CPU benchmarks?
If not, what *exactly* do you think should be tested and why - program/game examples needed, and a reason why they need re-testing.
Whatever you think. I would say perhaps 2 synthetic tests, like Prime95, etc. and 2 real world like one demanding game and one demanding program.

Question 2: AIDA64 is an obvious inclusion, what RAM Bandwidth/latency sensitive games/programs matter the most to you?
With the manual effort of swapping the RAM sticks and recovering from failed boots and such, this really wastes a ton of time so simpler is better
Again whatever you think is worthwhile - I typically run stock jedec frequencies and timings.

Question 3: What parts of the *chipset* matters to you, for focused testing?
I think what you have listed is good - and see above 4, 5, & 6.

 

[KLMR]

A standarized block diagram specific for each board of the PCIE lanes distribution over nvme and PCIE slots and other peripherals.

 

[A Computer Guy]

7. Perhaps ECC ram if it is supported by Mobo and cpu

I like this idea although I suspect on consumer boards AMD for AM5+ is finally market segmenting ECC support to server/workstation boards only. AM4 saw a lot of boards advertising ECC support (depending on CPU) but I haven't seen yet this same flexibility advertised for AM5.

This can be tricky. For example 3800x supports ECC (not disabled), 4750g supports ECC (officially), other APU's don't support it at all . On the same board Passmark MemTest86 can't do error injection tests on the 3800x but when the 4750g is installed it appears to be able to perform error injection tests. I used to be able to do error injection test on the AMD R5 2600 but UEFI/BIOS updates killed that so it's a kind of volatile situation where a UEFI/BIOS updates could potentially take away ECC support partially or totally at a later time for unvalidated CPU's that are still capable of it.

Minimally a review involving ECC would need to cover

• Reporting is occuring (in the OS)
• Correction is occurring
• Uncorrectable error behavior
• Other relevant features if any.

 

[Mussels]

More focus put onto power delivery has slowed things down, getting more equipment (without insane costs, no NASA level oscilloscopes)
Theoretical values are so far off from reality, that real testing needs to be done - but in a way that isnt damaging to the boards or extremely labour intensive.

So far the plan is to test and compare voltages in more locations such as the back of the CPU socket, depending on how board designs and this testing goes it may be possible to measure things like Vdroop and ripple on CPU and SoC/SA. Getting equipment like clips to connect to such small components is far harder than you'd expect, everyone assumes you should just solder things - but that solder could affect results and risk permanent damage.

Various places do some detailed teardowns and report on these things but in destructive ways, so it's finding the closest to that without destroying hardware as the new goal - let TPU reviews be the ones that show you not just performance, but power efficiency and accuracy as well. Is 0.1% faster in benchmarks worth 30% power lost to heat at the VRMs?
(so far, 80% efficiency has been the best result but i've not tested flagship boards just yet. That still means a 250W intel CPU is consuming 320W+, rather than what people think they're using.


Oh and it's small in synthetic testing but i have confirmed by repeat testing that hot VRMs do slow CPU performance, even if nothing is flagged as throttling - it can be as low as 0.1%, but it absolutely fits what's been seen in various help threads with budget motherboards with trash-tier VRMs and high wattage CPUs. In gaming that would result in stuttering while in long-term testing like R23 those delays get smoothed out in the longer test to tiny drops over time. If 0.1% of your calculations are late because your CPU had to wait on VRMs to change states that is what shows up in your 0.1% FPS testing

This is a nightmare to test in motherboard reviews because i'd have to artificially overheat them and try to find a 'fair' temperature for components with no official rated temperatures (the parts do, but the boards as a whole do not)

 

[damric]

@Mussels thanks for taking this on. I wish you the very best. We've had some pretty great mobo guys here over the years and I expect you to be great as well.

1) Can we get 1 low end CPU SKU tested as well during the review, even if only abbreviated. Like yeah test the i9 or Ryzen 9 hard, but also see what changes in the BIOS and how well the board handles with the Pentium and the APU.

2) On board sound. Been asking for some testing for a long time on this. If you can pull it off, it would greatly differentiate you from other review sites because no one tests these audio chips.

3) Ok I know this one is far fetched but I'd love someone to figure out how much power fan headers can really supply before they burn up. Also PCIE slots. I've tried running destructive 125W through PCIE slots and they didn't burn up. Is it luck or is the 75W spec just really conservative?

 

[ir_cow]

2) On board sound. Been asking for some testing for a long time on this. If you can pull it off, it would greatly differentiate you from other review sites because no one tests these audio chips.

This would be good to see. Requires an external DAC though. Using in-loop test is pretty much useless because the on-board mic port is often worse and the record volume has to be changed for every MB. External DAC to a different computer means you can set it to 50/60/70/80/90/100 volume and get actual good data (plus Ohm test per volume if the MB supports 600 Ohm). After researching this, I removed the audio section from the reviews because that would add an extra 2+ hours of testing, plus more with installing the audio software by using a new clone drive every time. Not to mention having access to a $$$ DAC and the know-how to do all the audio analysis "correctly". If you aren't going to do it the correct way, don't do it at all is my thinking.

 

[diminishingreturns]

1. BIOS
2. The build quality of the board, no cut corners
3. Reliability
4. Looks, although this one doesn't matter as much. Personally I love the way Aorus boards look.