Is an expensive motherboard worth it?

[Dominic-Toretto]

Title really, what do these boards costing £300 plus offer over a £150 board?

I have never had any issues overclocking with cheaper boards, and never found my self limited on features. It also seems like all the modern cpus are focused on boost clocks rather than manual overclocking.

So back to my original question, what do they offer apart from aesthetics and bigger heatsinks and more vrms?

 

[Troezar]

Title really, what do these boards costing £300 plus offer over a £150 board?

I have never had any issues overclocking with cheaper boards, and never found my self limited on features. It also seems like all the modern cpus are focused on boost clocks rather than manual overclocking.

So back to my original question, what do they offer apart from aesthetics and bigger heatsinks and more vrms?

I would say yes if you're aiming to run it for a long time. There is an argument for buying cheaper and upgrading more often but I prefer to get a good settled system and such with it.

I went for the X570 Aorus Master, probably twice the cost of any other motherboard I've owned. However it's extremely well made, high quality components, very good onboard sound and WiFi, 3 X m.2 lots of connectivity options. It's got everything I might need on it until I'm ready for a complete upgrade of platform.

They have a place but it depends on your needs and what kind of user you are. I'm hoping for 3-4 GPU upgrades before I'm thinking of changing it.

 

[Reppyboyo]

I'll say no personally.
My current mobo is my first expensive board and it does the exact same job as the cheap ones I've used in the past. Just a few more pcie lanes and USB ports really.

 

[NoNameNoNumber]

Well, I'm on an x79 Rampage IV Extreme which with the full cover waterblocks was well over £500 IIRC.
The weight inspires a bit of confidence in it, bit of a brute.
It will clock extremely well too, same chip on a lesser board? IDK...
8 years on and still holding it's own just fine. The issue isn't that the chipset has slowed or the chip can no longer keep up. It's the fact the features move on so fast. I have a hankering for a zen 3 build

So YES I think expensive boards are worth it if you're keeping for a while.

 

[Darujhistan]

Nope, unless you have very specific requirements.

 

[Gray2233]

Buy based upon requirements and within an understanding of base quality.

An expensive motherboard is rarely needed for 95% of people.

Can you get a REALLY good motherboard for a fraction of the price that offers great VRM's and solid features?

Absolutely you can, ignore the people that tell you to spend buckets on things you do not need. But make sure the motherboard you do buy is of good quality.

Never overspend.

 

[turbot1984]

I say yes, but diminishing returns apply. Never had a pricey mobo fail on me, but I have just spent nearly £300 on one, so already regretting this post ....

 

[orbitalwalsh]

B550 master is a funny one. Better VRM then any X570 unit. But due to chipset had to eat into main PCIe to offer triple PCIe 4.0 m.2 !!!
Most b550 off only one 4.0 and max Two m.2 with second one being 3.0 standard.

It is £100 cheaper then x570 Master though ! And gives you a Hint of how powerful the design for X670 boards will be. Most likely X670 master will feature 12x 90amps in direct PWM design

 

[Darujhistan]

If it's for gaming, you're far better off with a good £100 mobo and spending what you save where it matters - GPU and CPU. More money is wasted on MOBO's than anywhere, people without any need to spend more than £100 spend three times that much. I've never had a cheap MOBO fail on me, all have done exactly what I wanted them to do when I bought them, latest one cost £113 (MSI Pro Carbon B450) 15 months ago.

Most people will never get their money's worth out of expensive MOBO because it will go into their build and will then become a complete irrelavance.

 

[Joxeon]

If it's for gaming, you're far better off with a good £100 mobo and spending what you save where it matters - GPU and CPU. More money is wasted on MOBO's than anywhere, people without any need to spend more than £100 spend three times that much. I've never had a cheap MOBO fail on me, all have done exactly what I wanted them to do when I bought them, latest one cost £113 (MSI Pro Carbon B450) 15 months ago.

Most people will never get their money's worth out of expensive MOBO because it will go into their build and will then become a complete irrelavance.

I spent £90 on a B450 tomahawk and it's been rock solid, currently running a 3600 with ram overclocked to 3800/14 but will upgrade to a 8 core zen 3 CPU in a few weeks and already got an RTX 3080 installed.

The only downside is just the one nvme slot so if I was buying now I'd probably go for a cheapish B550 at around the 150 quid mark.

I personally don't think it's worth spending 200+ on a desktop motherboard because tech gets out dated so fast so it's better to spend less and upgrade every 3-5 years than 10.

 

[orbitalwalsh]

One advantage of b550 over b450 is pcie 4.0 ...

Is relying on Microsoft to deliver Direct storage along with Nvidia for RTX (guessing and will do the same if use MS). This should be in theory a jump up that SSD offered over HDD . At the moment 3.0/4.0 NVMe does nothing for gaming .

And then the GPU slot should be used to its potential with RTX 4***/RDNA3

But... Gigabyte and Asus are releasing new B450 boards. 8 phase delivery and dual m.2 etc . Mainly due to b450 sells so well, and that tomahawk eats sales

 

[Darujhistan]

I spent £90 on a B450 tomahawk and it's been rock solid, currently running a 3600 with ram overclocked to 3800/14 but will upgrade to a 8 core zen 3 CPU in a few weeks and already got an RTX 3080 installed.

The only downside is just the one nvme slot so if I was buying now I'd probably go for a cheapish B550 at around the 150 quid mark.

I personally don't think it's worth spending 200+ on a desktop motherboard because tech gets out dated so fast so it's better to spend less and upgrade every 3-5 years than 10.

Yep great board, yeah I would be buying a good B550 if buying today, but I don't need to as B450 will handle Zen3, I might looks at Zen3 later down the line but I can't justify it right now, and I always think if you hold off upgrading until you need it you end getting more and spending less, I'm not one for marginal upgrades, I want huge gains like I got with 2500k to Ryzen 2600, or I i'd want my 2.5 times my Vega performmace.

I'll worry about PCI 4.0 when it's fully implemented and I actually might need it, I'm not doing a Turing and buying a tech like RTX that hardly works and isn't implemented in games. People overpay on half arsed tech all the time, I wait till it's a thing so to speak.

 

[pc-guy]

Expensive boards got more feature sets. But at some point these features aren’t necessarily or no offering anything substantial to boards that cost around £250 mark.

for X570 boards £250 will get you dual M.2 PCIe4 and triple pCIEx16 slots (if all used then X8x8x4 modes). This is hardline limited by what zen cpu and the chipset can offer in terms of pcie lanes. Moving up the price point doesn’t give you anymore pcie lanes. There are more slots for build ability but you can’t have M.2 drives in all the slots as it will start disabling pcie slots or SATA ports etc. For me boards is aorus master, msi god like, msi create, ASRock tachi , etc etc aren’t necessary. They are halo products. And generally speaking people buy them tend to have a strong aesthetics bias to their build.


Aorus master and others like it are funny boards that try to be workstation boards but are seriously limited by the pcie4 lanes. Only if AMD is able to cram more pcie4 lanes in zen CPUs or the chipset like the threadrippers.

certianly buy cheap you buy twice as that board gets found out later one. However with so many boards at so many different price point and offering very similar features, the proverbial is to buy smart and to buy right.

 

[EsaT]

Expensive boards got more feature sets. But at some point these features aren’t necessarily or no offering anything substantial to boards that cost around £250 mark.

Actually X570 Tomahawk is £209.
And besides properly designed mostly passive chipset cooling (unlike Asus boards) and Wifi that gives also off the charts bat crazy overkill VRM.

 

[pc-guy]

overkill VRM.

that’s exactly it. Overkill for almost any scenario you have. It’s not good value in that instance tho.

 

[3t3P]

Tend to like aesthetics of pricier boards

Gone from £80 specials at uni to my most expensive board to date in sig. Thought I might use the watercooling header but don't
I do use high amp fan header but maybe other boards have that.

 

[M1k3H]

I always buy an expensive board as I tend to upgrade the CPUs for the next decade or so. Even if the features are overkill for the time, or the VRMs, they won't be in 5 years. E.g. my Asus P6T Deluxe came with USB2.0 and Sata II at the time!!!!!! Those quickly became obsolete. VRMs also degrade over time, so overkill now, might be enough for a future upgrade in 5 years time.

 

[robj20]

I'd say no. I used to just buy the best money no object. Now I get the one that has just what I need.

 

[EsaT]

I always buy an expensive board as I tend to upgrade the CPUs for the next decade or so. Even if the features are overkill for the time, or the VRMs, they won't be in 5 years. E.g. my Asus P6T Deluxe came with USB2.0 and Sata II at the time!!!!!! Those quickly became obsolete. VRMs also degrade over time, so overkill now, might be enough for a future upgrade in 5 years time.

There are no new CPUs for any 5 years old platform!
AMD's next DDR5 based AM5 platform will be best hope for that, but updating BIOSes to supprot all newer CPUs would quite nightmare for support.
So couple CPU generations is really best you can hope.
And in case of Intel you'll only get multiple sockets per same architecture...

 

[M1k3H]

There are no new CPUs for any 5 years old platform!
AMD's next DDR5 based AM5 platform will be best hope for that, but updating BIOSes to supprot all newer CPUs would quite nightmare for support.
So couple CPU generations is really best you can hope.
And in case of Intel you'll only get multiple sockets per same architecture...

Yeah I know, doesn't mean that I myself in 5 years won't pick up a 5000 series chip off the bay for 20 quid. That is what I did before, replaced my i7 920 with a Xeon 5650, for 20 quid. It could be a 16 core or more chip, so need to make sure my board from now can handle it, even with the degradation of power components.