going for third new Motherboard

Greg Salazar has a web channel where he fixes computers for free for people that live in Central Florida. On a recent video (Jan 4, 2024) he decided to fix his own computer. He couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work. When he finally found out why he was embarrassed to find out that there was a bent pin in the Intel CPU socket. He was lucky because he was able to fix the computer by straitening the bent socket pins. Note he discovered the problem around 9 minutes into the video.

Fixing a Viewer's BROKEN Gaming PC? - Fix or Flop S4:E20

For next build coming in couple of weeks I decided to break with tradition of using only full ATX motherboards. New, even cheap MicroATX have a lot of features surpassing former large ones. Even their VRMs are close to top, full size models. Surprised how much they can stick on a microATX, sub $150 mother board. Not only every single part is newest version but also amount of them well surpassing my 3 year old full ATX that cost almost 3 times as much. 3 M.2 NVME sockets, 2 are PCIe v4 and one v5, vs. old one with 1 v3 and 1 v2.
Two internal USB3.2 sockets vs. 1 USB3. One PCIe x16 v5 and one v4 vs, one v3 and one v2. Two USBc 3.2 gen 3 vs two gen 1. 6 PWM adjustable fan headers and 2 ARGB and one RGB header. Flashback BIOS feature and latest Thubderbolt to extend I/O multiple times, features found only on expensive full ATX boards of previous generation. 4 slots for DDR5 for 4 dual channel RAM vs 2.
Another break with tradition, this time ASrock MB that is better than than similar Asus with twice the price. MicroATX maylook fubby in my very large PC case but cable management will be amazing.
For those interested it's AMD platform with R7 7700x Ryzen + 2* 16GB Kingston DDR5 6000NHz Cl32 of RAM but there are very similar ones for Intel

I can honestly say that I've never used an ASRock motherboard, Mike. Are we still allowed to say motherboard these days, or am I gonna be cancelled for being sexist?

Maybe they're good. I've had no experience with them. I'm sure you'll hear some comments from people who have used them. All the best with it, mate.

There are lots of other components that you have to think about also. You've probably already got that worked out.

Dwarfr66 said:

For years I also used Gigabyte until my current build as ASUS was just cheaper here in Australia at the time (also delivery times).

Click to expand...

Cheaper is a relative thing. I could find boards from other vendors, including Asus, that were "cheaper" than what I paid for my Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme board, even from within Gigabyte, but that doesn't mean they're of the same level - features, quality, build.

Thus, when you say your Asus board was cheaper than a Gigabyte board, that may be true... but are you comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges? That's the real question?

Stigg said:

I can honestly say that I've never used an ASRock motherboard, Mike. Are we still allowed to say motherboard these days, or am I gonna be cancelled for being sexist?

Maybe they're good. I've had no experience with them. I'm sure you'll hear some comments from people who have used them. All the best with it, mate.

There are lots of other components that you have to think about also. You've probably already got that worked out.

Click to expand...

Just wanted to point out that it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to all but double performance over 3 year old system. Those are only things I'm changing, I have others only few month old. PSU 750W, GPU and 5 NVMe SSDs, All will cost me about $900CDN, less than monthly pension. Considering that it will have to last at least next 3 years that's much less than electricity bill during that span.

Dru2 said:

Cheaper is a relative thing. I could find boards from other vendors, including Asus, that were "cheaper" than what I paid for my Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme board, even from within Gigabyte, but that doesn't mean they're of the same level - features, quality, build.

Thus, when you say your Asus board was cheaper than a Gigabyte board, that may be true... but are you comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges? That's the real question?

Click to expand...

When I first started using GIGABYTE motherboards, I'd see the Ultra Durable logo at boot, and of course I just thought that it was just another marketing slogan, but it has been absolutely true for me for dozens of computers that I've built. And the driver support for GIGABYTE is amazing.

CountMike said:

Just wanted to point out that it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to all but double performance over 3 year old system. Those are only things I'm changing, I have others only few month old. PSU 750W, GPU and 5 NVMe SSDs, All will cost me about $900CDN, less than monthly pension. Considering that it will have to last at least next 3 years that's much less than electricity bill during that span.

Click to expand...

Good on you, Mike.
I'll be keen to hear how good your ASRock gear goes. I hope it does well for you.

Dru2 said:

Cheaper is a relative thing. I could find boards from other vendors, including Asus, that were "cheaper" than what I paid for my Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme board, even from within Gigabyte, but that doesn't mean they're of the same level - features, quality, build.

Thus, when you say your Asus board was cheaper than a Gigabyte board, that may be true... but are you comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges? That's the real question?

Click to expand...

Cheap is relative only to income or money willing or able to spend. If you spend more on features you will not or sparsely use and cheaper ones don't have or performance gain is negligible, then it's expensive.

CountMike said:

Just wanted to point out that it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to all but double performance over 3 year old system. Those are only things I'm changing, I have others only few month old. PSU 750W, GPU and 5 NVMe SSDs, All will cost me about $900CDN, less than monthly pension. Considering that it will have to last at least next 3 years that's much less than electricity bill during that span.

Click to expand...

Fortunately electricity here is cheap (geothermal etc) and pensions good too !!! It's amazing what you can do even with minimal knowledge of installing / replacing hardware - especially these days where there's reasonable instructions all over the web - including plenty of videos if that's your sort of thing.

The main problem often is that with increasing "minaturisation" and demand for micro size boxes and components it's harder to source and fit components -- even trying to replace a power supply fan is not easy -- people just often junk machines.

I've often found excellent components from junked computers at the local tip etc -- it's amazing what people junk.

I found an old server box with 64 GB RAM in it plus 2 physical XEON fast CPU's that someone had junked just because the PSU wasn't working. Got it home, cleaned it up, found the defect -- wasn't even the PSU but a microswitch which inhibited the thing from powering on in the first place. Fitted HDD's, a GPU and it's now running as a 2nd NAS I use at home. I can run around 8 Windows VM's concurrently on it and it still "isn't under stress" -- and for a cost of precisely €0.00 !!

If the box hadn't of worked I'd have canabalized the memory, dual CPU's, etc for another box - but fortunately everything working perfectly.


Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Fortunately electricity here is cheap (geothermal etc) and pensions good too !!! It's amazing what you can do even with minimal knowledge of installing / replacing hardware - especially these days where there's reasonable instructions all over the web - including plenty of videos if that's your sort of thing.

The main problem often is that with increasing "minaturisation" and demand for micro size boxes and components it's harder to source and fit components -- even trying to replace a power supply fan s not easy -- people jyst often junk machines.

I've often found excellent components from junked computers at the local tip etc -- it's amazing what people junk.
I found an old server box with 64 GB RAM in it plus 2 physical XEON fast CPU's that someone had junked just because the PSU wasn't working. Got it home, cleaned it up, found the defect -- wasn't even the PSU but a microswitch which inhibited the thing from powering on in the first place. Fitted HDD's a GPU and it's now running as a 2nd NAS I use at home. I can run around 8 Windows VM's concurrently on it and it still "isn't under stress" -- and for a cost of precisely €0.00 !!

If the box hadn't of worked I'd have canabalized the memory, dual CPU's, etc for another box - but fortunately everything working perfectly.


Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

That's why I like desktop PCs, with Youtube and some knowledge you can fix and make decent system.

Cheers and thumbs up. !!

BTW it also had 2 X 10Gbps LAN cards in it -- so I didn't even have to source those -- 10Gbps LAN is more than sufficient for a HOME LAN anyway.

Here's how HDD's configured -- OODLES of spare space !!!! It's running Arch linux with KDE desktop.



jimbo

CountMike said:

Cheap is relative only to income or money willing or able to spend. If you spend more on features you will not or sparsely use and cheaper ones don't have or performance gain is negligible, then it's expensive.

Click to expand...

Cheap is relative to a lot of things as I said.

I spend my money on what's important to me, not to what others think is important. Your income is your income, mine is mine.

I'm also of the opinion of never telling people how to spend their money cause no one is going to tell me how to spend mine.

Thanks

Stigg said:

When I first started using GIGABYTE motherboards, I'd see the Ultra Durable logo at boot, and of course I just thought that it was just another marketing slogan, but it has been absolutely true for me for dozens of computers that I've built. And the driver support for GIGABYTE is amazing.

View attachment 83780

Click to expand...

Yeah, Gigabyte really does make some durable boards. Of the 5 bords used and 4 replaced, none were ever replaced due to failure. And yes, support is great.

That said, I can't and won't speak on Asus, or other board brands as I've not used them. I'm only speaking from personal experience of Gigabyte's quality and durability. And the fact that they've not had me looking elsewhere.

(edit) Wanted to add... I don't keep stuff till it breaks, I replace on a time schedule. That's the basis of my opinion