Overpriced mainboards,worth it?

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Florin22xxl

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
216
I was wondering why do people buy overpriced mainboards,when i say overpriced i mean over 200$. I had an msi board pushing my 8400 for about 3 and a half years. The board costed me 100$,around the best for this price and it ran my cpu at 3,8ghz from first day without a glitch. Atm im runing an asrock pushing my 2500k to 4300 at low volts(to go up i have to get close to 1,4 v and it doesnt make any sense, the extra heat and power...). this costed 150$. So i would think a decend 150-200$ mobo(with crossfire| sli) can overclock extremly well, and has pretty nice features also. Why some people spend 250,300,400 even 500$ on a board that will be absolite in 2,3 years? I could never find justification in buying a mobo that costs as much as a video card,when a cheaper brand mobo cand do the same thing. From what i know a 400$ mobo helps u get 100 to 200 more mhz when overclocking,at least this is what i see in reviews,is this really worth paying double or even tripple the price? Just curios dont need to get flamed here :)
 
You get what you pay for. Cheap boards use cheap power components. This is fine if you're running at stock speeds and voltages for the most part. Where it is NOT fine is when you are pushing the CPU and board in any meaningful way. A cheap board might do fine forever, or it might blow caps and destroy your hardware on day one. That doesn't happen too often with higher end boards. Just my .02, your mileage may vary.
 
Its been my experience the more bling on the board, the more problems with the board. People may bitch and complain about micro boards or lower end boards, but after building hundreds of systems, the cheap "budget" boards are usually the easiest builds and have zero problems installing an OS on them. That being said, I usually buy a board with more "bling" on it. Having things like onboard sound, RAID and tons of USB slots is pretty normal these days though. It will be a cold day in hell before I spend $300 on a high end Asus or Gigabyte board though. I'll be more then happy with my Asrocks and pay a shitload less money.
 
It's the quality of the capacitors and VRMs, as well as the power phases on the board I'm concerned with, not the "bling". Sure, your cheap boards will work fine....for a while. Try an extended heavy overclock with one, and let me know how that $100 board works out for you in the long run.

I would agree with you about ASRock, as the Extreme9 is really feature rich... if I hadn't had the experience of trying to get to their customer service, which, by the way, is even worse than Asus. Also, I've seen first-hand 2 out of 10 ASRock boards be DOA out of a shipping box direct from the manufacturer, so I'm not too thrilled with them. Again, YMMV.
 
I have two X58 systems. Screw you guys bitching about $200 motherboards :p
 
Tsumi said:
I got my x-power for just over $100 ;)
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I got it right when it came out :( $299. I also have an EVGA X58 SLI that I got new. Those were some expensive motherboards. They have both performed like champs though. I don't think this XPower has even seen less than 4.0GHz.
 
Florin22xxl said:
Why some people spend 250,300,400 even 500$ on a board that will be absolite in 2,3 years?
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Why some people go every morning to their work driving a 2000cc car, instead of a city car?

I could never find justification in buying a mobo that costs as much as a video card,when a cheaper brand mobo cand do the same thing. From what i know a 400$ mobo helps u get 100 to 200 more mhz when overclocking,at least this is what i see in reviews,is this really worth paying double or even tripple the price? Just curios dont need to get flamed here :)
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I 've been buying nothing than Asrocks since the socket 939 days. Because like you, i can't find a good reason to why give double the money for a more expensive board, when i can get 2 Asrocks for the same money. The main problem with Asrocks i 've seen is: a) often they come with something DOA, b) usually you lose something in overclocking limit (but i only mildly overclock so why should i care). VRMs are known to be good enough (heck, MSI boards were more expensive and went on fire) and now most boards have all solid caps, which is the most often cause of death for mobos.

Enjoy your board, you will probably change your rig before the board goes bad...
 
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Faethon said:
Why some people go every morning to their work driving a 2000cc car, instead of a city car?



I 've been buying nothing than Asrocks since the socket 939 days. Because like you, i can't find a good reason to why give double the money for a more expensive board, when i can get 2 Asrocks for the same money. The main problem with Asrocks i 've seen is: a) often they come with something DOA, b) usually you lose something in overclocking limit (but i only mildly overclock so why should i care). VRMs are known to be good enough (heck, MSI boards were more expensive and went on fire) and now most boards have all solid caps, which is the most often cause of death for mobos.

Enjoy your board, you will probably change your rig before the board goes bad...
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This is all I need to rest my case LOL.
 
ugapug said:
This is all I need to rest my case LOL.
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I find that rather humorous considering there are no 50+ page "support" threads about Asrock boards, but there are on Asus motherboards...on this site and plenty of others.
 
ugapug said:
This is all I need to rest my case LOL.
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It's a risk worth to take. It happened to me with an AM2+ board, i RMAed and got back new board after 1 month. Considering you save 50% or more over the competition, i think the risk is acceptable. For the time being i got 2 AM3+ board like the one on my signature for 63 euros each, no problems. So they have poor quality control and they ship DOA boards. I can accept that for 63 euros. :D
 
I had a $80 ASRock board running in my sig rig for a while and it got the job done. I recently swapped in a $190 Sabertooth and I'm getting overclocks 200MHz higher overclocks, better stability and MUCH more options for expanding and upgrading not to mention the best BIOS in the business.

As has been said, you get what you pay for. Your motherboard is the foundation of your entire rig and determines how much performance you're gonna be able to get and how much upgrading you can do. Higher priced boards have better build quality with higher quality components and more options.
 
Pitbully said:
...there are no 50+ page "support" threads about Asrock boards, but there are on Asus motherboards...
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To me that's more an indication of popularity rather than quality. Asus sells 3-4 times as many boards as Asrock, only natural to see 3-4 times as much discussion about the 'more popular' and better selling boards. Especially on a forum that has official Asus reps who actually started and support a lot of those 50+ page threads. I know bashing on Asus has become the cool thing to do lately, but all manufacturers are equally bad imo.

As far as buying 'overpriced' boards, I'm willing to spend more to get more features, higher quality components, longer warranty etc. I'm definitely not willing to spend more to get bullshit 'fatal1ty', 'extreme' or 'big bang' labels and shiny heat sinks shaped like bullets and machine guns...something all manufacturers are guilty of in some form or another. For such a technical product they all sure seem to be taking such a gimmicky and flashy approach to the marketing lately...
 
jthomas said:
To me that's more an indication of popularity rather than quality. Asus sells 3-4 times as many boards as Asrock, only natural to see 3-4 times as much discussion about the 'more popular' and better selling boards. Especially on a forum that has official Asus reps who actually started and support a lot of those 50+ page threads. I know bashing on Asus has become the cool thing to do lately, but all manufacturers are equally bad imo.

As far as buying 'overpriced' boards, I'm willing to spend more to get more features, higher quality components, longer warranty etc. I'm definitely not willing to spend more to get bullshit 'fatal1ty', 'extreme' or 'big bang' labels and shiny heat sinks shaped like bullets and machine guns...something all manufacturers are guilty of in some form or another. For such a technical product they all sure seem to be taking such a gimmicky and flashy approach to the marketing lately...
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For some people, those gimmicks sell.

Other people would look past that to the hardware. But if you're walking down an aisle at Fry's, what is going to grab your attention more? Would you look at a bunch of random numbers and letters you don't know the meaning of, or the board labeled "Extreme" or "Big Bang?"
 
jthomas said:
To me that's more an indication of popularity rather than quality. Asus sells 3-4 times as many boards as Asrock, only natural to see 3-4 times as much discussion about the 'more popular' and better selling boards...
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So what your basically saying is that you'd buy something that's popular even if its shitty....:rolleyes:
 
teletran8 said:
ASUS boards = 1 dollar extra for every 1 MHz CPU speed increase :D
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Seems a bit steep.

I typically go for mid-range boards. I lightly overclock the CPU on occasion, and haven't had a problem thus far.

I can see the reason for people wanting a $300 board, but I have a feeling that most people who buy one really don't utilize it's potential over a $100 - $150 board.
 
Pitbully said:
So what your basically saying is that you'd buy something that's popular even if its shitty....:rolleyes:
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No, I said they are equally shitty, but Asus just happens to sell the most shit. So you see the most discussion about Asus. I didn't say to buy what is most discussed.

I'm willing to spend more to get more features, higher quality components, longer warranty etc
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I didn't say anything about buying what is popular.
 
I don't think I've ever spent much more than $100 on a board, though I usually end up buying them used or open-box.

I've used almost exclusively MSI boards since the early Duron days and can't say I've ever had a problem with one.

I'm also the kind of person that is quite content with my 2500k @ 4.2. Like the OP, I need to bump the voltage quite a bit to get much over 4.3 even.
 
Considering I have a friend who owns a computer store who once got in 3 cases of ASRock motherboards of the same model. Out of like 36 boards, 8 were DOA. That's over a 20% failure rate. On the flipside, I helped him do about 50 builds with the same model Asus mobo. Guess how many DOAs we had there? Yeah. Zero.
 
ugapug said:
Considering I have a friend who owns a computer store who once got in 3 cases of ASRock motherboards of the same model. Out of like 36 boards, 8 were DOA. That's over a 20% failure rate. On the flipside, I helped him do about 50 builds with the same model Asus mobo. Guess how many DOAs we had there? Yeah. Zero.
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Yeah, that's a classic Asrock story. :D The funny thing with Asrocks is also that often the board itself isn't DOA, but only a specific component on them. In my case it was just the integrated video, the rest of the board was working fine and if i hadn't tried to use the integrated VGA, i would have never known it was DOA. :D

When i order an Asrock board, i always have this agony feeling when unpacking. I think "oh please, let it be a working one". And i rush to try it. Hey, consider it a bonus! Asrocks spices up things! :D

Anyway, the good thing about Asrocks, is that if you go beyond the initial stage of "DOA fright", they are really ROCK stable and cost half or less than ASUS. That's why they sell like crazy in Europe. In my country Asrock is easily the 2nd most selling company after ASUS and the longevity of the boards has been tested again and again by thousands of users that post in fora.

Of course if OC is your main concern, yeah, you should pay double or triple the money and get your extra 200-400Mhz. Luckily Americans don't have VAT tax or this ASUS sport could possibly become a tad too expensive for some although by reading this forum it seems that most have too much money. :p
 
better looks and extra heatsinks
better OC potential (maybe worth it for extreme overclocking only)
can take more GPU’s (more than 2)
extra useless gimmicks for overclocking and other

so yes you get what you pay for but what if you won’t benefit from what you get? how many extra frames in games would going from ASUS P8Z68-V PRO to ASUS Maximus IV Extreme give? and I don’t think the second has less failure rate
 
ugapug said:
It's the quality of the capacitors and VRMs, as well as the power phases on the board I'm concerned with, not the "bling".
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Don't think so. They are all made from the same components and overclocks pretty much the same. It's the features what separates them.
 
Typically the boards I've used have been under $200 (usually around $150) which I'm comfortable with. When I built my X58 based system a year ago, I went with a $300 board because it had the features that I wanted, good solid reviews and also had the aesthetics I was looking for. As long as I'm building every 3 years or so, I don't mind paying that much if it's warranted. If I upgraded more often I would probably find a board closer to $150.
 
All of that, plus bragging rights/power. More power to those that can afford more expensive boards.
 
JCNiest5 said:
All of that, plus bragging rights/power. More power to those that can afford more expensive boards.
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Ah, yes, bragging rights. It's how i got stuck with Asrock. I remember the days of the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2 (my first Asrock board, very afraid at the time because it was obscure brand for me) and how a 60 euro board was spanking in most benchmarks the nforce "hot" chip of the time. It was so funny watching "nforce loyalists" from brands like ASUS and DFI eating their hearts out and having steam coming out of their ears while reading about that "el cheapo" board. :D Apparently Nvidia went steaming too, that's why they bought ULI to effectively kill it...

But yeah, Asrock despite the "DOA risk" still gives me bragging rights. It's probably a cultural thing. I see things in the opposite manner. I consider myself the one that should brag, when i am doing the same job with someone else that paid double the money i did. :D Maybe because i don't like so much consumism and buying useless stuff. I mean, i understand someone who wants to get the last Mhz out of a board and has the money. But there are also tons of people that do the same or less than i do with the PC and pay the double just because it's ASUS and funny enough often end up with an unstable system, just because they have software trouble that are unable to troubleshoot. I use the main computer for video encoding and it does so almost 24/7 and it doesn't break a sweat. Even my little mAtx Asrock would go over a week without reboot encoding to x264 all time. The vast majority of people don't punish so much their hardware, yet they pay to have "ASUS", because they 're afraid that their email or internet or occasional 5h a day gaming will blow up the cheap Asrock. To me it's hilarious. :D
 
wtburnette said:
Typically the boards I've used have been under $200 (usually around $150) which I'm comfortable with. When I built my X58 based system a year ago, I went with a $300 board because it had the features that I wanted, good solid reviews and also had the aesthetics I was looking for. As long as I'm building every 3 years or so, I don't mind paying that much if it's warranted. If I upgraded more often I would probably find a board closer to $150.
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This, my X58 is a $280 asus p6t deluxe v2. It has more features on it than I ever knew was possible, coming from a mid grade 775 asus motherboard and (before that) a cheap pentium 4 board. Worth it for someone who only upgrades once every couple of years. If I were someone who only used a computer for a year or so then parted it out and got a new one I could see the benefit for going with a lower budget board.

In the end I think the stability is worth it, though I've also had a cheap ECS (yes, ECS) board be more stable than two asus boards that were either both broke or improperly configured.
 
Pylor said:
In the end I think the stability is worth it, though I've also had a cheap ECS (yes, ECS) board be more stable than two asus boards that were either both broke or improperly configured.
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IMHO, unless there is an obvious hardware issue (my last ASUS board on socket A, would randomly reset the BIOS and it wasn't a battery issue, it was something wrong with the board, since the beginning) , the stability 99% of the time has to do with drivers and programs that people run at startup. But they tend to attribute everything to the motherboard or to somehow correlate driver errors with the motherboard manufacturer. Part of the problem in drivers is that new hardware comes out all the time and newer drivers are often more optimized for new hardware and break the older one. But that's not the hardware's fault.

There are dozens of people everyday in italian fora, with expensive boards that ask for help with BSODs. It's not their board's fault and being expensive won't save them from driver conflict or bugs.

My rule is: Once you find a set of drivers that is rock stable, don't change it unless there is impelling reason to do so. Once you 're sure about the hardware drivers, any BSOD will be fault of some other software you run. Unfortunately most people don't even run some simple software like Nirsoft's BlueScreen or Whocrashed to see WHAT crashed their PC. They start blaming the motherboard.

When i switched from my rock stable Asrock 790g (mAtx) to the Asrock Extreme3, the new system was much more unstable. Part was that i wasn't familiar with some BIOS features that i hadn't used before. Then, the older ATI driver that was stable on my old board, was proved to give BSODs in the new board, although it was supporting the chipset. I updated to the latest and it's fine and actually the new AHCI driver also seems more smooth. Also, for weird reasons, the LAN driver on Asrock's site is a tad faster than the latest i had downloaded from Realtek. And the last mysterious BSOD, proved to be the new Avast version. Switched to AVG and that was the end of BSODs. And i am not touching the hardware drivers again for as long as i can, as everything works like a swiss clock now. Unfortunately, most people are touching them all the time and then go to a forum and post "my board sucks, i get BSODs all the time".

Then, many people run a gazillion of programs at startup, many of which install kernel drivers. These are yet another source of possible conflict with a hardware driver and of course, it's once more "the board's fault".

Otherwise, a board that has sound capacitors, isn't overheating and isn't exceeding its voltage specs, will be stable, be it a cheap or an expensive one, unless it has a design defect. After all, the chipsets that do the job on various boards (realtek, ATI, nvidia, Jmicron, VIA, etc), are the same and use the same drivers. It's the combination of various drivers that brings trouble. The exception is boards that ship with half-baked BIOS, but that's temporary and solved with new release. But having used cheap Asrocks for years, i can't say i 've seen any serious issue with BIOS.
 
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Pitbully said:
I find that rather humorous considering there are no 50+ page "support" threads about Asrock boards, but there are on Asus motherboards...on this site and plenty of others.
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That is because ASROCK has just recently started making some boards that have more features and are compelling to the enthusiast crowd.

They do make some nice vanilla boards, but the last two reviews of their high end boards got less than stellar reviews on HardOCP. In fact one was a flat out fail.

Give it time, once there are enough failures, there will be threads written......not picking on Asrock..........never owned one.

That said........in the last 3 years I've had a new evga X-58, traded it up for an X58 Classified (great board but it died from memory issues), Asus Rampage Formula, Formula III and now a Formula IV........not sorry about owning any of them.:D
 
magoo said:
That is because ASROCK has just recently started making some boards that have more features and are compelling to the enthusiast crowd.

They do make some nice vanilla boards, but the last two reviews of their high end boards got less than stellar reviews on HardOCP. In fact one was a flat out fail.

Give it time, once there are enough failures, there will be threads written......not picking on Asrock..........never owned one.

That said........in the last 3 years I've had a new evga X-58, traded it up for an X58 Classified (great board but it died from memory issues), Asus Rampage Formula, Formula III and now a Formula IV........not sorry about owning any of them.:D
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In Europe Asrocks sell a lot and in my country's fora, the Asrocks are under observation by many since the socket 939 ULI chipset time. That was the time when you could see a boom of Asrocks users. Ever since, the Asrocks users are second in quantity only to ASUS users. The usual problem of Asrocks is DOA. Past that, their longevity problems are i 'd say "normal". I still run a 939 Dual Sata2 on a secondary rig with a Venice 3200 and a 939 x2 3800 with 939NF6G-VSTA and has no problem. I 've used for 2 years a mATX 790g board that was encoding to X264 constantly. Still no problem (i was worried about the caps, but it has solid caps for the CPU power, the rest of the electrolytic are still fine). In the fora we 've seen failure, but in no different rates that all brands. Asrocks, as long as you don't treat them badly, will most probably last till your next upgrade. Of course, if your PC is an oven and you 're running a high wattage setup that makes it like hell in there, an Asrock with no heatsink on the mofsets, will most likely die before a more expensive with heatsinks. Or, compared to my socket A era ASUS board, the Asrocks look a bit thinner (less copper i guess). So, if you intend to wrestle with your board or you install cards pushing with all your weight, yeah, Asrock board may have some bad incident easier.

But, on newer Asrock boards, you have all japanese solid caps (Nichicon if i remember correctly the colour), often heatsink on mofsets, ferrite chokes and digital voltage modulation. Less copper= more heat, but nothing a bit of ventilation can't fix (my motherboard is at 33C while encoding video). This should guarantee longer life than most boards in the pre-solid caps era, so if before that was enough, it should be now too.

Asrock goes for the essential. You won't get fancy heatsinks with a dozen colours and tigers painted on them. You will get heatsinks that do the job. You won't have pseudo 8+1 phase VRM, but you will get decent VRM (i was running the 1090T on a mATX 4+1 phase that wasn't even openly certified for 125W and it didn't catch fire like the MSI boards did). You won't get double copper layer like in Gigabyte, because anyway, your board will be thrown in a trash bin as hardware gets obsolete, before you will ever need the use of the second layer. You won't get fancy LEDs onboard, you troubleshoot it the old way.

On the other hand, you will get some really useful software (XFast USB and AXTU being my favourites).

But you will get enough longevity. Treat it nicely and it will treat you nicely. And at that price, you can get 2 (or up to 4, depends how you see it and if mAtx are ok for you) for the money of 1 very expensive (you wouldn't believe how many Asrocks boards i have. So many that i have started donating them and i could still have spares for me and for my brother's office PC, since i also have lots of RAM and 4 spare CPUs (from Venice 3200 to Athlon II 605e). All thanks to some crazy prices Asrock was making all these years. And i have yet to see a bulged capacitor yet.

PC cases have many fans nowdays. Use them, put mesh dush filters and clean the PC with compressed air and the Asrocks will serve you well as long as you don't abuse them. If you let the inside of the computer become a dust blanket or for some reason you enjoy frying eggs inside your case, i guess Asrocks will die faster than the "twice as copper" Gigabyte...
 
Faethon said:
Ah, yes, bragging rights. It's how i got stuck with Asrock. I remember the days of the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2 (my first Asrock board, very afraid at the time because it was obscure brand for me) and how a 60 euro board was spanking in most benchmarks the nforce "hot" chip of the time. It was so funny watching "nforce loyalists" from brands like ASUS and DFI eating their hearts out and having steam coming out of their ears while reading about that "el cheapo" board. :D Apparently Nvidia went steaming too, that's why they bought ULI to effectively kill it...

But yeah, Asrock despite the "DOA risk" still gives me bragging rights. It's probably a cultural thing. I see things in the opposite manner. I consider myself the one that should brag, when i am doing the same job with someone else that paid double the money i did. :D Maybe because i don't like so much consumism and buying useless stuff. I mean, i understand someone who wants to get the last Mhz out of a board and has the money. But there are also tons of people that do the same or less than i do with the PC and pay the double just because it's ASUS and funny enough often end up with an unstable system, just because they have software trouble that are unable to troubleshoot. I use the main computer for video encoding and it does so almost 24/7 and it doesn't break a sweat. Even my little mAtx Asrock would go over a week without reboot encoding to x264 all time. The vast majority of people don't punish so much their hardware, yet they pay to have "ASUS", because they 're afraid that their email or internet or occasional 5h a day gaming will blow up the cheap Asrock. To me it's hilarious. :D
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Wow, I think I might seriously consider an ASrock board now.
 
Thug Esquire said:
Wow, I think I might seriously consider an ASrock board now.
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The DualSata2 was of legendary value/performance. A ridiculously cheap board and a quick googling shows, that it lived a long enough life. Consider that it was 2005 model.

http://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=122980

http://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=101780

Mine is still working (although it runs on light loads), but i guess by reading the people in there, i should start worrying abou the caps.

And since then Asrock has improved quality. Just be aware of the DOA risk. If you get a board, try EVERYTHING onboard. Often Asrocks boards seems to work, but there is 1 USB port, or 1 SATA port that is DOA and unless you try everything you may discover it too late.
 
Faethon said:
Why some people go every morning to their work driving a 2000cc car, instead of a city car?



I 've been buying nothing than Asrocks since the socket 939 days. Because like you, i can't find a good reason to why give double the money for a more expensive board, when i can get 2 Asrocks for the same money. The main problem with Asrocks i 've seen is: a) often they come with something DOA, b) usually you lose something in overclocking limit (but i only mildly overclock so why should i care). VRMs are known to be good enough (heck, MSI boards were more expensive and went on fire) and now most boards have all solid caps, which is the most often cause of death for mobos.

Enjoy your board, you will probably change your rig before the board goes bad...
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2000cc = city car :)
 
Robstar said:
2000cc = city car :)
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Not in Italy. :D That's a family car. Ever wondered why most Fiat models are small? Because they are the only ones that you can use and park in the morning traffic jam. :D What's city car for you, here's called city nightmare. :D
 
I think a lot of people around here pay a premium for a modest gain, when it comes to motherboard purchases.
 
Thug Esquire said:
Wow, I think I might seriously consider an ASrock board now.
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Might want to read these reviews first:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/07/asrock_z68_pro3_lga_1155_motherboard_review/
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/09/asrock_z68_extreme4_gen3_motherboard_review/
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/12/asrock_x79_extreme4_lga_2011_motherboard_review/
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/02/09/asrock_x79_extreme9_lga_2011_motherboard_review/

While AsRock can make good motherboards, it appears that their QC and quality in general is all over the place. In addition, there are usually quality Intel mobos from Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI that don't cost that much more than a comparable AsRock Intel mobo. You don't have to pay twice as much for an Asus mobo over an AsRock. Not to mention that AsRock's mainstream motherboards only have a one to two year warranty here in the U.S whereas motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI have three year warranties. IMO, not worth considering AsRock unless there's no other options out there.
 
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