Are More Expensive Motherboards Better Motherboards? - [H]

The Titans are never worth it for gaming. You'd have been just as well off with the 780tis and 1080tis, respectively.

Titan's are absolutely worth it, but only at their launch date. You get 8ish months of tippy top performance, then about 14 months of +/-5% top performance, rinse (sell it) and repeat (buy next gen titan).

If you don't pick it up at or near launch, your absolutely right, but remember that Pascal is going to be old news as soon as Turing/Volta/Ampere launches late this year, and that 1080ti will likely be beat by 30% or more. If the cycle is consistent with history, the Titan GTX will be launched 5 months after, and the Ti version will be another 8+ months.

As for motherboards, the one I regret is the Sabertooth, died on me and now I'm dealing with Asus RMAFML. Love their ROG line so far, never had a problem.

Edit: Yes I would take a new GPU that offered %30+ performance. Yes I considered Titan V, but its really not a consumer card and the Prosumer features would be wasted on me.
 
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Over the past 15 yrs or so, I have used mid-line and upper mid-tier mobo's from all mfgr's, but have stuck with Gigabyte for the past several years because they have the features, price points and reliability I want and demand without alot of BS I don't :)
 
Over the past 15 yrs or so, I have used mid-line and upper mid-tier mobo's from all mfgr's, but have stuck with Gigabyte for the past several years because they have the features, price points and reliability I want and demand without alot of BS I don't :)

I think it's just a crapshoot, I gotta send the evga in now. when I first got it it didn't post immediately but finally did then was great everything fine for about month..then it shut down out of no where with a code with a memory issue...swapped memory clrd cmos was fine again...then it didn't want to post throwing some mores codes something bios related, idk..
send back to them to figure it out.

I'm waiting on the Gigabyte to return and have another board. And I just ordered a pretty cool looking 1366 board, should have one of those again because I have like 3 920s and a 5650 might be able to use.

It's corrupted data center over here Dude Lol
 
I can't say I've been particularly brand-loyal, other than that I want to know what my father was smoking about two decades ago when he built me an AMD K6-2 box around a PC-Chips M598 mobo with an AT case and PSU right around the time ATX was being standardized and AGP slots were a thing (this board had its interface hogged by the truly execrable SiS 530 integrated graphics).

The integrated C-Media CMI8338 audio codec never worked, so he dropped in a Sound Blaster Live! Value (which I consider a good thing, given that hardware sound acceleration was still relevant back then, but would've went Aureal Vortex2 in hindsight).

The rear I/O header layout was seriously WTF-inducing, with some ports having to run their header cables between expansion card slots.

And despite being a K6-2 350, it was running at 366 MHz... precisely to run at a 66 MHz FSB rather than 100 MHz, which made the system BSoD for whatever reason. Couldn't have been the RAM; that was PC-100 or PC-133.

So yeah, cheap boards were godawful back then... but since then, I had an Abit BP6 (whose caps haven't blown on me yet!), a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P 2.0 (which I'm now kinda wishing I went with something with beefier CPU power delivery if that's what it takes to get the Q6600 stable at 3.6 GHz), an Asus ROG MAXIMUS VI HERO, and... nothing really beyond that yet, though I slipped a Z87-A in a client build back when the $200 4770K sale at Micro Center was still going.

Only time will tell if I go Asus, Gigabyte or MSI next.

I probably don't use the really high-end features a mobo would offer, like all the ridiculous overclocking tweak options the ROG boards give you, but I appreciate things like having a quality Intel NIC backing up the Ethernet port, a sensible board layout, and most of all, something reviewed to have low DPC latency. That's critical for a system to feel smooth, and is largely overlooked by most hardware reviewers on the 'net, perhaps because a lot of that depends on proper software setup and good driver choices.

Other than that, it's harder and harder for mobo manufacturers to set their products apart since most of the functionality that used to be done through northbridge/southbridge and all sorts of add-on chipsets is now part of the CPU core itself. It's raised the baseline for a good computer considerably, like the car example in the article, but it does mean that wanting things like 44-60 PCIe lanes across all those expansion slots necessitates an expensive upgrade to HEDT. (And, believe me, between sound cards, PCIe x4 video framegrabber/capture cards, PCIe x4 USB 3.0 quad-channel controller cards for hosting a bunch of Oculus Rift sensor cams, NVMe SSDs usually using 4 lanes as well, and the impractical-but-still-possible SLI/CrossFire setup, I have plenty of uses for all those lanes if given the capability.)
 
Thanks for another great article [H]
Also, liking the numerous references here to PC CHips, lol... those were the days.

My gigabyte board has been great and still going strong after ~7 years... BUT I don't think I'll be going Gigabyte when I FINALLY UPGRADE... TO RYZEN 2700X. As I've noticed from reading [H] reviews they STILL SUFFER FROM REBOOT LOOP. IMO Gigabyte is usually the bang for the buck winner, but reboot loop is such a freak'in PITA! Reboot loop takes all the fun out of tinkering and playing around w/settings. Oh I'm underclocked? yeah whatever I want to actually use my computer today....

I was originally leaning toward MSI because of the M.2 shield... but my pci-e infatuation has wore off and I'm realizing a quality 2.5" SSD is the way to go for my needs. What I'll prob end up doing is sorting X470 and B450 MB's by price, and then choose based on price points that have the intel ALC 1220 sound codec.
 
I've actually had a pretty good track record with Halo or near-Halo products., but only when bought right at launch.

I'm still using my X79 and Sandy-E i7-3930k in my main desktop I bought for what I thought was a ridiculous amount of money ($600, $400 for the motherboard), at launch in late 2011. I had buyers remorse right after buying it due to having spent $1k on a motherboard and CPU (which is funny considering some of the pricing since then) but if I knew then what I know now, that I would still be using the system in 2018 and it would be performing comparatively well overclocked compared to newer systems, I wouldn't have had the buyers remorse.

Same with my 2013 Kepler Titan. the $1k pricetag gave me buyers remorse in 2013, but if I had known then that I would not have to replace it after my usual 6 month to a year timeframe for GPU's, but rather would keep it in my system until August 2015, followed by serving in my stepsons system for 1080p use still today in 2018, I would have felt a lot less badly about it.

I spent $1,200 on my Pascal Titan X. and at the current rate I'm probably going to get close to two years out of it as well, so I'm not disappointed.

My bigger regrets have to do with when I tried to right-size my purchases, when I didn't build in enough of a buffer, when I felt I was being smart and frugal when I bought it. These things rarely lasted very long, pissed me off along the way, and required me to replace them much sooner than was worth it.

In November 2013 I bought a 3930k, 16gb Vengeance DDR3, and an Asus Rampage IV Formula from phillyboy in the FS/T forum. Paid $695 for everything. I've owned it so long that I literally forgot how long I've owned it, I just had to go look at my old pm's. I've never had a system last me even remotely near that long.

Now I'm about to gift it to my nephew and upgrade my own system, but if he didn't need a pc I wouldn't even think about replacing it right now. It's still doing everything it needs to do, the other day I noticed 6 cores / 12 threads running in AC Origins.

I don't remember the last time I saw a BSOD, a system hang, or any problem for that matter. It just works. Just picked up an 8700k and a Maximus X Hero.

I used to love Abit motherboards. When Abit went out of the motherboard business one of their key bios programmers went to DFI. I want to say that his name was something like Andrew Chen, or something similar. After he started at DFI it felt almost like they picked up where Abit left off.
 
I've built computers for about 30 years. I've used the good, the bad and the ugly. Here's my take on this in the current market:
1. Asrock Low-mid range motherboards are not half as bad as everyone says, and they support a lot of features at a better pricepoint than the other manufacturers. I have only ever had one go bad on me, and that was because I was overclocking the snot out of it for years and the fets finally gave up. By features - I mean: V-TD/IMMOU support, sometimes slots which other board manufacturers don't have (see Asrock z97-extreme6 for instance, which I had and is a beautiful motherboard) and other niceties. I have B85m-pro4 in my home server which has been going strong for about 5 years now, probably more. Just doesn't miss a beat.

2. Asus low end boards are rubbish. They have very little in the way of amenities and have cheap components.

3. Asus mid range boards are much better, I currently have an x370-prime pro and I'm very happy with it. I bought it primarily as it has more power phases than most other things around the same price range and an intel nic (which I value, but ironically don't use at the moment). If I had one gripe about it, it's that bios support is slow to reach me, but that has become less of an issue, it's a stable platform.

4. Gigabyte boards are very flashy, but I've found have always had bios support which was mediocre. Either features aren't implemented properly or they're simply not implemented. Their dual bios stuff is nifty, but that doesn't make it worthwhile.

5. ECS and Biostar used to have decent boards, but I have no idea in the current market.

6. I've had two MSI boards, both of which were good value for money at the time, though one blew out a ram channel at one point. This was in the socket 939 days.

7. Tyan boards don't have a lot of features but are built like tanks

I've found:
  • Motherboard flex is a good thing, I don't want my boards snapping under strain
  • intel nics are very nice
  • Buy more memory slots than you're going to use if possible (you may need memory later)
  • Buy some pci-e slots you're not going to use. I've run short on multiple occasions. Useful having 1-2 extra 1x slots...
  • Buy a motherboard based on the features you need, not the brand. You're not going to be staring it in the face every day, so it doesn't need to look amazingly pretty, just needs to work and do what you want it to do. This was my rationale purchasing my current x370 board - I wanted lots of vrm support as I knew ryzen can be hungry for it and I knew I would mess with overclocking. Nothing below what I have (at the time) had more, and few above had more. Turns out I got exactly what I needed as shortly I ended up using both x16 slots for machine learning.

I have never found a use case for asus' rampage/hero top of the line boards. I honestly haven't. Maybe I'm not in their target market, but I have had a perfectly acceptable experience without having to spend 2x on one of those. Would overclocking results be slightly better? I'll let you in on a secret - 100-200 mhz extra at 3700mhz ain't going to make a hell of a lot of difference, and for the majority of things, you're limited more by your cpu than you are your motherboard, provided you're not going for the cheapest thing on the market.

If I were to throw $200 at a motherboard these days, I'd be looking at Asrock's range and Asus' midrange, and comparing features. MSI wouldn't get a look-in, and Gigabyte would only be another option if the other two didn't have a specific feature I wanted.
 
30 years experience building computers; 25 years as an IT professional. There are many companies that make good motherboards but I now only buy Asus. Even their less expensive boards will be reliable. It is always better to spend too much than too little. Cheap stuff will break and you will have to spend more to replace it.
Used to be in the same boat.
My primary win 2012 DC is on asus desktop mb, same for the 3/4 of the file servers.
But novadays asus mobos are overloaded with unnecessary stuff which are possible point of failure and for the last two builds I went with supermicro.
 
Comparing manufacturers is a crapshoot. I spent a bunch of money on an Asus X79 Deluxe v2. Almost swore off Asus when it died (starting with the wifi and then component-by-component things started not working) but then I ended up going with a Prime X370 Pro for my current Ryzen build and it's worked out fine. Meanwhile I also have a ~$100 socket AM3+ Gigabyte 990FX UD3 that's been running an FX-8320 @ 4.5+ GHz for years.

Now I just buy whatever looks the least like a flaming gay transformer. From gold plated everything to RGB everything... Chinese aesthetics are practically a crime against humanity.
I moved from asus when an x79a and x99 deluxe failed in short time frame . Never had such experience with asus's mb before.
My humble opinion is too much extras , especially OC bullshits.
 
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I've never gone with the top of the line motherboard. I always seem to fall in the middle somewhere. Never had a failure.. knock on wood. Now hard drives have let me down in the past.
 
I've only had 2 flagship motherboards. MSI 875P Neo and a MSI K8N Diamond Plus.
The 875P was a flawless mobo that saw much abuse from a number of CPU upgrades and OC's, than I retired it to server duty. It then developed swollen cap syndrome and I gave it away.

The K8N allowed me to OC the snot out of a 3700+, Opty 154 and a 4200+ and it ate RAM for breakfast. I killed it by hooking it up to a custom USB port I had modded into a case.

Will I ever pay over $300 for a mobo again? I think not. I have gotten conservative in my old age. But I won't be low ballin' it either.
 
I am an unabashed bargain shopper, cobbling together my systems from used (usually) parts that are at least one generation old. That being said I always try to buy the top end parts, albeit just a couple of generations behind the current role outs of CPUs. I pretty happy with the last few AMD FM2+ systems I've built (usually 860K and A88 chipset based) that perform really well (on a dollars/performance basis) with a quality board that overclocks well.
 
As just a quick anecdotal story about mobo bells and whistles: I recently added a new (to me) mobo to an older HP FM2 based system. The increase in sound quality from the old stock HP mobo to a gigabyte GA-F2A78M-HD2 was just un-be-lievable!

truly a "night and day" difference.
 
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I have used Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and Abit (no more) throughout my PC gaming years but settled on Asus in recent years. I just upgraded from a Hero VI to a Code XI and am very happy with the usual comprehensive features that the ROG Maximus brings to the table. OCing the i9-9900K was fairly easy, both thru the AI Auto OC feature or manually in the BIOS and Asus caters to both the enthusiast and noobie crowd which Im the latter when it comes to OC. I was originally eyeing the ROG Strix Z390-E but decided on the Maximus XI Code as I wanted a fairly lower-high end board to make the best of my i9-9900K, and the XI Code certainly didn't disappoint. I think there are tangible benefits from buying a more premium mobo (eg better VRMs) but if one don't do OC then it isn't necessary. I had wanted an E-ATX board as I do SLI but the price of Asus' higher end E-ATX board exceeded my budget and I don't need the more professional features they offer.
 
I buy motherboards based on a simple caculation - is the extra money, if spent in some other component, going to give me more or less performace. The same goes for all components. More often than not, for the things I do - a cheaper motherboard and spending more on ram, cpu and gpu turns out to be the performance maximizing choice. But it really depends on what you are looking for. There is no objective "better" - cheaper boards are often better for me beacause they let me enhance the performance of my pc by letting me buy better components otherwise.
 
Better memory support is why I went for a mid/high end board.
Higher clocks and better overclocking.
 
I've had some pretty good luck with some lower end boards. I have gotten rated memory speeds off my entry level Z370's (running 16GB, at 32 the timings won't stick. Maybe a higher end board would resolve this issue but I don't think so. I don't know anyone running 32 GB at 3868, it will hit those speeds on 16 GB tho). Boards are listed in my signature.

As far as the AMD stuff goes, after they finally got their Microcode updates in, I have had no issues running my RAM at 3200 Mhz, and have heard people punching higher. Memory Clocks help the first gen Ryzen because it determines the Fabric Interconnect speed.

I have owned a number of high end boards, most people don't need half the features on these boards. The ones that do, do. In my experience, if a board is gonna work you can get a entry level one or a high end one and get close to the same results if you know what you're doing. I gave up spending 300+ bucks on motherboards. Shooting around the 100-150 dollar mark you should be able to satisfy almost any need in the desktop class. HEDT is hard to avoid high dollar components.
 
+ I have always found that taking that extra $200 and buying a better processor, RAM or Graphic card will yield higher performance.
 
Simple fact that today (some) companies can't even bother to put flagship into ESD safe bags says it all to me.
Reliability isn't their target although it's much better than the capacitor fiasco a few years back (which probably skew a lot of opinions even today).

You pay more, you get more... but less ROIC per say. the GM only increase when you go up in price. It's mind boggling.
There should be minimum care taken to consideration (ESD precaution, packaging, quality of components, quality of RMA service....)

Anyway, going on a rant :)
 
Simple fact that today (some) companies can't even bother to put flagship into ESD safe bags says it all to me.
Reliability isn't their target although it's much better than the capacitor fiasco a few years back (which probably skew a lot of opinions even today).

You pay more, you get more... but less ROIC per say. the GM only increase when you go up in price. It's mind boggling.
There should be minimum care taken to consideration (ESD precaution, packaging, quality of components, quality of RMA service....)

Anyway, going on a rant :)
Mitch,

What is ROIC? Return on (O ?? ) Investment? Why companies don't put their motherboards into ESD safe bags?

x509
 
Mitch,

What is ROIC? Return on (O ?? ) Investment? Why companies don't put their motherboards into ESD safe bags?

x509

I meant you get less for your money when you pay more, every feature gets a price tag. I could use Car manufacturer for example where if you want heated steering wheels you need to buy the lane keeping assist (wild example).
These companies only aim for better gross margin on every product and it's even more flagrant on high end. Well I understand how capitalism works and what is a luxury item so yeah, it's understandable and I'm gullible since I buy said products.

My grip is they do not do enough to make sure we get the quality we deserve, for example freaking ESD bags LOL. Another one I experienced first hand is asking customer to pay for shipping fee while device is under the 1year warranty for a known issue (PS4 controller, left joystick becoming dirty on the Y axis). I had to pay 18$ to send it to them for a 70$ item.

Your sentence almost sound like you mean they're doing intentionally for "future sales" ? ;)
 
I meant you get less for your money when you pay more, every feature gets a price tag. I could use Car manufacturer for example where if you want heated steering wheels you need to buy the lane keeping assist (wild example).
These companies only aim for better gross margin on every product and it's even more flagrant on high end. Well I understand how capitalism works and what is a luxury item so yeah, it's understandable and I'm gullible since I buy said products.

My grip is they do not do enough to make sure we get the quality we deserve, for example freaking ESD bags LOL. Another one I experienced first hand is asking customer to pay for shipping fee while device is under the 1year warranty for a known issue (PS4 controller, left joystick becoming dirty on the Y axis). I had to pay 18$ to send it to them for a 70$ item.

Your sentence almost sound like you mean they're doing intentionally for "future sales" ? ;)

Well, somewhere along the line those margins translate into lower prices and more innovation. It's the same as airplane seats I think. Everyone complains about the crammed space. But if it weren't for the crammed spaces the fares would be higher and you'd be traveling to your loved ones comfortably - but far less often.
 
Well, somewhere along the line those margins translate into lower prices and more innovation. It's the same as airplane seats I think. Everyone complains about the crammed space. But if it weren't for the crammed spaces the fares would be higher and you'd be traveling to your loved ones comfortably - but far less often.

You're right, more equals less (More product sold = price drop) BUT that's for the price/perf category. The High end is not handled like this. They're price gouging everywhere and will make the lower end more lower end to justify the gross margin on the high end.
Competition is good to keep this in line I'll add.

The main issue for me is the planned obsolescence or if I may say, the lack of consideration from OEM for the quality and longevity of the product. No manufacturer will build a device to last forever, that would mean no more sales. A good example of this is older clothes drying machines... those were made to last but nowadays if you do 5~10years you're lucky. (Take that from someone who worked there)
 
You're right, more equals less (More product sold = price drop) BUT that's for the price/perf category. The High end is not handled like this. They're price gouging everywhere and will make the lower end more lower end to justify the gross margin on the high end.
Competition is good to keep this in line I'll add.

The main issue for me is the planned obsolescence or if I may say, the lack of consideration from OEM for the quality and longevity of the product. No manufacturer will build a device to last forever, that would mean no more sales. A good example of this is older clothes drying machines... those were made to last but nowadays if you do 5~10years you're lucky. (Take that from someone who worked there)
Oh, I don't disagree with you that they are perhaps charging more for premium than the worth when you scale what it costs to make it vs cheap. Companies, Tesla being the latest example on car, often just make the premium version and software disable feature for the basic version.

I think every industry has a threshold for safety margin - the more high-tech the industry, the higher the safety margin to absorb the shocks of failed products, launches etc.. That also makes them look like they're making off like bandits - unless the improbably event happens.
 
A year later and I have changed my tune.

I am now running a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra

Not top of the line, but certainly not far from.

I had high hopes for ASUS board I had, but it died (maybe I’m unlucky but every ASUS board I have had has died, vs 1 from Asrock, and zero from the other brands).

So why the Ultra?
-VRM setup for a power hungry chip
-Bluetooth & wifi
-NVME slots
-solid Audio
-VRMs
-fan headers

Did I mention VRMS? Modern high performance processors work better on boards with better power supplies. Especially when tweaked.I had an Asus Z370 pII as a stopgap and it’s chalk and cheese.

I say tweaked cause overclocking seems to have evolved into a competition about who can keep the turbo clocks up the most rather than the top end speeds these days. I guess when you’re drawing 150+w for an extended period, you need very solid infrastructure.

The gigabyte keeps higher clocks more consistently without droop. Doesn’t miss a beat. Easier to configure, easier to work with. Better layout. Much more polished product.

To get the same in Asus I would be paying 30% more, and for that I could get more in the gigabyte range.

Asrock doesn’t really have a direct competitor.
 
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A year later and I have changed my tune.

I am now running a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra

{stuff deleted}

To get the same in Asus I would be paying 30% more, and for that I could get more in the gigabyte range.

Interesting how you get the same functions as an ASUS board for so much less. Something for me to think about for my next build since I have always used ASUS.

Compared with the ASUS boards you have owned, how do you like the BIOS on the Gigabyte board? I helped a friend who got a Gigabyte board, admittedly a low-end board, but I really didn't like the BIOS. Garish colors and confusing, in comparison to all the ASUS boards I have had.

x509
 
When I think about these things (user interfaces), I consider how much time I am actually going to be spending using them.

The answer with Bioses is typically that after initial mucking around and figuring out what works for me, very little time will be spent in the bios unless I need to upgrade the bios or change a single setting (which doesn’t take long on either bios, once you familiarise yourself with it). Therefore it doesn’t really matter if it’s a little tricky.

That said, I didn’t find it tricky at all, and it was much of a muchness vs the Asus boards I have used.

I did need to update the bios with a USB stick rather than via network(which works on Asrock and Asus) on the first update, but it’s safer to do that anyhow.

I would have also liked to know that I could boot into bios safe mode by turning off the psu, waiting 5 seconds then turning it all back on, but this is my fault for not reading the manual, rather than Gigabyte’s.

Colours and logo etc matter very little to me. There was a time when the background in all bioses was the same blue as the old bsod, that was garish, modern day bioses are a treat in comparison.

TLDR: no I didn’t find it hard to use, there was a setting or two I needed to google, but overall it’s straight forward.
 
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Are there any motherboards that have open source firmware that support Ryzen? A lot of us want to get away from Intel's and AMD's "management" backdoors.
 
Are there any motherboards that have open source firmware that support Ryzen? A lot of us want to get away from Intel's and AMD's "management" backdoors.

While there is the possibility of this, the reality is that every intel chip back to 2007(at least) and every AMD chip from about the same era have management backdoors.

Famously dell sell laptops to three letter agencies with this disabled, but you’ll be pressed to get one.

The question then becomes: how secure do you really need your machine to be? (Tinfoil hat?)


https://libreboot.org/amd-libre.html

If you really want a machine without this feature, consider the open source risc-v
 
While there is the possibility of this, the reality is that every intel chip back to 2007(at least) and every AMD chip from about the same era have management backdoors.

Famously dell sell laptops to three letter agencies with this disabled, but you’ll be pressed to get one.

The question then becomes: how secure do you really need your machine to be? (Tinfoil hat?)


https://libreboot.org/amd-libre.html

If you really want a machine without this feature, consider the open source risc-v

Some of us have doorways lined with degaussing strips leading to our command centers offices. "Don't you dare! You don't have the STONES to take that machine out of this room!" Then Paul Blart three-letter-man hooks you up with a fresh wipe. Not nearly as useful nowadays, but there was a time...
 
The extra cost is more about extra features and better pwm. So if you don't plan on o/c or need the extra features don't waste money on a more expensive board. Since most in here do some o/c and wants better features, then they buy more expensive boards in the middle group, a few do extreme o/c and buy the most expensive boards suited for that, some needs tons of PCIe slots and buy the expensive boards with that feature, and some need 10Gbit support etc. And that is why PC building is fun, you can get a board that has exactly the features you want, and is not limited to one vendor.
 
I design for longevity - For something to prematurely fail in a span of 2 years is not acceptable... hence the extra on the vrms..
 
While there is the possibility of this, the reality is that every intel chip back to 2007(at least) and every AMD chip from about the same era have management backdoors.

Famously dell sell laptops to three letter agencies with this disabled, but you’ll be pressed to get one.

The question then becomes: how secure do you really need your machine to be? (Tinfoil hat?)


https://libreboot.org/amd-libre.html

If you really want a machine without this feature, consider the open source risc-v


Ya but don't these management backdoors require software to work? If you have a Linux box with an encrypted hard drive, then how could the management backdoor be used to exploit you? Maybe it could get the volume's private key off of memory - but how could they compromise you over the web at all?
 
Ya but don't these management backdoors require software to work? If you have a Linux box with an encrypted hard drive, then how could the management backdoor be used to exploit you? Maybe it could get the volume's private key off of memory - but how could they compromise you over the web at all?

The biggest concern I've noted is that these questions cannot really be answered with any specificity due to the extremely closed nature of these CPU management engines.

When the answer is, 'it has root access and I don't control it', there is a qualitative security concern.
 
The biggest concern I've noted is that these questions cannot really be answered with any specificity due to the extremely closed nature of these CPU management engines.

When the answer is, 'it has root access and I don't control it', there is a qualitative security concern.

True. I just hate that, so all we can do is put energy into deducing its possible vulnerability coverage.
 
All are a crap shoot on QC/RMA. Overclocking is a roll of the dice too, I got lucky with my 5820K /MB combo.
Depends what feature set you need, not want for e-peen.
I generally spend around 200 on a board, again X 99 is a premium.
RGB bling and flashy heat sinks can add to the cost.
 
The more features the more likely they fail.

Bottom line is, you dont know if it fulfills your wishes and demands until you run it as intended.
 
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