Gadgetory

hey guys build Zoid here from actually hardcore overclocking and today we're gonna be doing an m4 motherboard highlights kind of thing so basically I've built a list of a m4 motherboards that I think are good I've pulled the prices for them from Newegg there are obviously there's sales going on right now so the prices aren't like if you see this video and like you know maybe a week some prices may not be very accurate anymore but uh yeah basically here's a list of motherboards that I think are good in some way shape or form so if you're looking for an a m4 motherboard these are motherboards I think you should consider and we're gonna start at the high end and then we're gonna work our way down with some you know subcategories along the way as well before that this video is brought to you by us and the just buy it code unlike real time ray-tracing our merch actually exists to commemorate the most memorable quote of the year and also Black Friday but mostly the first thing everything on the GN store is 10% off with a discount code just buy it at checkout that includes our most popular item the critically acclaimed GN mod mats our shirts ceramic coffee mugs and GPU component posters and everything else as a bonus this is also a great way to support jion's work the code last through November 26th go to store doc gamers access net or click the link below so in the top end if you like tweaking things if you like be CLK overclocking if you want to mess with precision boost overdrive and if you want to buy a 2700 X I'm gonna point you towards the X 470 horas gaming 7 Wi-Fi and the reasoning for this is very simple gigabytes implementation of BC LK overclocking technically violates AMD specifications for how BC LK overclocking is supposed to work but since AMD specifications are in my opinion completely bloody stupid similar to how AMD broke HBM overclocking on fury cards which again that's AMD spec I still think AMD spec is dumb the thing is that ultimately be CLK overclocking on gigabyte motherboards works better than on every other motherboard I've tested so far and the reasoning is very simple you change the BC LK and the CPU acts like the BC LK hasn't changed so you get a junk bump in performance but you don't run into any issues whereas on like ASUS motherboards and asrock motherboards and msi motherboards if you bump up the BC LK the CPU will immediately go into will just get locked at base clock and bow and I think asus has workarounds to get around that but those workarounds are way way WAY clunkier than gigabytes implementation of just not doing any like it just doesn't do it you just raise the BC okay and the motherboard acts like nothing changed which is much much more convenient as far as I'm concerned now it is worth noting that this feature is super neat as far as I'm concerned because basically if you're gonna be overclocking with the BC okay you need to keep in mind that it can cause m2 SSD corruptions it can cause incompatibility with GPUs and all kinds of other issues because when you're overclocking with the BC LK everything gets overclocked and the benefits to it are is you're gonna get slightly more single-core boost and slightly more multi-core boost as well because the whole idea behind BC LK overclocking is that you basically take like the the way I do a be CLK overclock for a 2700 X 4x or 70 or s gaming seven is basically I'd go into the BIOS I'd go into the precision boost overdrive settings I'd max out all of the current and power limits then I would raise the BC okay and then tweak the core voltage offset up or down until I get stability the thing is at best after you do all of this and initially this sounds really simple after you do all of this at best you're probably gonna get about 5% more performance because that's roughly the clock speed increase you get from raising the bcl-2 on V cell K to 105 megahertz instead of the stock 100 megahertz right and it's really not like you're gonna hit a hundred and ten megahertz especially considering that the pcie 3.0 breaks completely at around one hundred and seven so do keep that in mind like there's the the performance gains are very very limited and it causes all kinds of stability issues as I mentioned the M del 2 SSDs and you know some GPUs not playing well with it but the other issue it tends to cause is that you need to stress test your CPUs stability on single core dual core quad core six core and eight core workloads because you're essentially changing the boost speed for all all of these different configurations at the same time and you need to revalidate that in all of these workloads it's still stable because you can run into situations where okay you're all core boost is completely stable but at four core workloads you're getting you know you're getting let's say 4.25 gigahertz and the voltage is too low to actually sustain that 4.25 gigahertz clock speed and the CPU crashes I had a CPU that behaved like that which is why I'm pointing this out so ultimately while you know BC LK overclocking with precision boost overdrive can help you eke out every last percentage point of performance out of your CPU at the same time it's really tedious and ultimately what you're gonna like the primary concerns with PBO I think are just having negative voltage offset because at least that's not nearly as difficult to fine-tune basically if you run like a minus 100 or a minus 50 millivolt offset you get a bit more boost because the CPU isn't so thermally constrained and it's not such a big role tidge drop that it actually causes any issues once you start playing with the BC okay you may find that you need even the stock voltages that the PBO applies which are insanely high mind you you might actually need those voltages to just run stable at all and overall it's just like messing with the bc okay in my opinion not really worth it but if you are gonna mess with it this motherboard does it the best at the same time you know you get a really good vrm heatsink and it really solid ten phase V core V curve erm using 40 amp hour stages from international rectifier and just really this this is a solid motherboard if you want to mess with that kind of thing so that's why it gets much you know gets on to the high-end portion of my list of motherboards worth considering now then oh and it also costs two hundred and thirty dollars now then moving on to the other high-end candidates we have the x4 70 taichi ultimate this does not have the great BC lko great AMD spec violating BC LK overclocking implementation that the gigabyte motherboard has now this has the main reason this call here is because it has at quanti a 10 gig LAN which I think you know if you want a 10 gig network controller this is the only board you can get so that is you know that's that's pretty neat you get a much you actually get a better V curve erm so you got a 12 phase but the heat sinks are not so great however it is worth noticing that the vrm here is so freakin overkill that you don't actually really need a heatsink in the first place anyway so the fact that the heatsink is more work of art than an actual heatsink doesn't actually negative negatively affect the vrm in any way shape or form the board does have working net negative core voltage offsets and it does have working precision boost overdrive so you can still you know achieve the same kind of like you can achieve all of the same performance as you would with gaming 7 if you just didn't bother with the BC LK overclock which again if you're planning to run em dull to SSDs I would strongly recommend that you just don't mess with the BC LK because I haven't heard at least one horror story of an end to SSD just getting completely braked afterwards so yeah and overall at the same time it causes issues like them Dell - SSDs just not getting detected a lot of the time so if you don't want to mess with BC ok overclocking and you just want a you know one to just run precision boost overdrive and then a negative voltage offset this is gonna be a really good choice for that because it does do all of those things and you get the the 10 gig LAN of course the Gigabyte motherboard does it - and in this case this board is 255 dot 255 it of money if you go with the gaming 7 here now then this motherboard doesn't actually make it onto the list of motherboards I think you should consider but I will give it an honorable mention and the reason why it's getting an honorable mention is because I have one of these I like it a lot as an extreme overclocking motherboard I think on liquid nitrogen this motherboard is absolutely amazing it has a great like the vcore vrm on this thing is the best week or vrm you can get on x4 70 it's a 10 phase because at the time aces still knew what a doubler was you know you have a 10 phase 60 amp hour stages absolutely amazing the RM and it doesn't really do anything other than that like the problem is you know on ambient cooling it basically like it over clocks basically the same as the Tai Chi or the gaming seven so I don't really see a good like that's why it you know it's getting an honorable mention because this thing is two hundred and fifty five dollars and I don't think most people buying this thing will actually run it on liquid nitrogen and if you're not gonna run it on liquid nitrogen this is kind of like buying a rally car to go shopping in it technically you can fit shopping you can technically fit shopping bags in a rally car but there's no AC you know it's really expensive there's not really it's not very comfortable and just overall it there's no real reason I would get this motherboard for a daily system right like this does everything that this does literally everything you could want on ambient cooling that this does and this does more than what this does and this is even cheaper like two hundred and thirty dollars so you know great extreme overclocking motherboard but just I don't think it's worth it for for a daily system it just doesn't make sense like I wouldn't put this in a daily system it's just really really expensive and it doesn't do anything that makes much of a difference in a daily scenario so yeah that's why it gets the honorable mention but I wouldn't actually buy this motherboard for like a daily build just unfortunately just doesn't do anything that all that special and it costs a lot so then now we get into the hundred and eighty dollar price category with a whole bunch of motherboards at one hundred and eighty dollars now there's the X 470 Taichi which you know how I like this month this vrm great VRM yeah you get that same great vrm you don't get the 10 gig lan unfortunately they've also decided to remove the two like the power and the reset button you do still have the postcode which is actually kind of a killer feature at this price point because this has troubleshooting LEDs and this has like this has four LEDs for troubleshooting this also has four LEDs for troubleshooting this has a post code if there's something wrong this is much easier to understand then you know four LEDs telling you roughly that oh there's something wrong with the RAM there's something wrong with the GPU there's something wrong with the CPU well this gives you much more detail because it has the postcode so much much more useful also has a better vrm than the other two motherboards in this price category that are worth considering and it still has you know it has the negative voltage offset it has precision boost overdrive overclocking support you're gonna stick a 2700 X into a hundred and eighty dollar motherboard as of right now this is probably the best choice mostly because this is on a pretty deep discount right now at least at the time that I was writing up the script so yeah for $180 I really like this like this is a really solid choice of a motherboard right especially considering the competition it has now then the next motherboard in this category the ROG Strix x4 70 - eff gaming so this has a six plus four phase VR I'm using 60 amp power stages so pretty significantly weaker than what you get on this motherboard however at the same time more than enough to run a 2700 X it's still not gonna overheat or anything like that especially because this has some reasonably substantial heat sinks like they're not great heat sinks but they're still a lot better than what a Sesana lot of their other motherboards which isn't really saying a whole lot because Asus tends to put terrible heat sinks on most of their boards but this is a lot better than like a lot of the other boards they make and so you do have negative voltage offset you have precision boost overdrive overclocking working it does technically rbcl K as all the same issues the crosshair seven hero has like you know if you're gonna put a 2700 X in something this is also a solid option but it's just like yeah I would I don't see a reason to pick this up over a Taichi as long as the Taichi is at the same price point as this is well actually the Taichi is currently cheaper as this is a hundred and eighty five dollars but nonetheless very solid motherboard and honestly kind of interchangeable in my eyes with the Taichi like you know pick your poison taichi's vrm is technically better I don't think you're actually gonna notice a difference Taichi does also have the postcode I actually like the post go to law I would probably go for the postcode here but uh yeah either of these boards you know they're they're pretty interchangeable as far as I'm concerned both have a like well this has a good vrm this has a better vrm but both are good enough for a you know anything you'd really want to do and BIOS wise they don't really different features all that much either now this gets an honorable mention this doesn't really deserve to be considered that much because this doesn't have negative core voltage offset so you can't actually like for the problem one of the core issues with precision boost overdrive is that AMD's precision boost overdrive likes to use way more voltage than is necessary like if you max out precision boost overdrive at four point three five gigahertz you're likely to see voltages of like 1.5 volts which doesn't actually help anything because normally the CPU hits four point three five gigahertz anyway and it does it with about 50 millivolts less or even 100 millivolts less in some cases so you know with with like the ASUS motherboards the asrock motherboards and the gigabyte motherboards when you max out precision boost overdrive the first thing you do is you also set like a negative 50 millivolt or negative 100 millivolt core voltage offset MSI doesn't have this functionality in their BIOS at all so while this motherboard has a plenty solid 5 phase VRM in fact I was really impressed by this 5 phase VR I'm at in my testing if you're gonna buy a 2700 X or a 2600 X this motherboards gonna actually limit you on overclocking with precision boost overdrive now if you just want to set up a static all core overclock this thing is great and quite frankly interchangeable with the other two boards in this price category so if you're unlike arisin 7 2700 you know it's basically choose a feature like that you you're basically going to be choosing one of these three motherboards on a feature you like or the way it looks or like the postcode right like that there's their overclocking wise these three boards pretty much interchangeable so you're gonna have to find something while static overclocking obviously if you're doing precision boost overdrive this isn't going to work as well as the other two but if you're gonna run a 2700 considering how cheap the 27 hundreds are currently might be a you know probably a better choice than 2700 X these are interchangeable for static overclocking these really interchangeable as far as I'm concerned so yeah that's the 180 dollar price price point now let's go to 140 dollars now here we have the X for 70 horas ultra gaming this is a motherboard I would straight-up not put anywhere near a 2700 X because let's say you have a room to like let's say you live somewhere where the summer hits say 35 degrees Celsius or even 30 this vrm is gonna overheat guaranteed it's gonna overheat if you're actually pushing a 2700 X on this board also the vrm is just really not that great and I'm pretty sure when I was testing with this motherboard it was actually limiting how much precision boost overclocking I was able to do with it so with the 2700 like the 2700 X is just too power hungry for the VR I'm on this board because this is just like it looks really like it looks like an 8 + 3 phase and gigabyte is still marketing it as an 8 + 3 phase it's a 4 + 3 though I'm pretty sure I made a pretty long video about how they need to stop well whatever it's a 4 + 3 phase I guess they changed the other boards just didn't bother with this one then it's interesting what's to miss that anyway it's a 4 + 3 phase VR I'm it's really not a good fit for a 2700 X if you want to max out like but if you want to mess with B CLK overclocking on a 2600 X this is a really good option because this is the cheapest board from gigabyte with B CLK overclocking so yeah that's that's like the one scenario where this motherboard makes some amount of sense but it's again it's not really practical you know it's a hundred and forty dollar motherboard for a six core xx set like the the 2600 X is just not exactly a good value CPU and then this motherboards kind of expensive so that even further lessens the overall value you'd be getting out of your build so yeah I just like this is an interesting motherboard to mess with it's not actually a very good but as far as being a good mother board goes it's not a good motherboard just has some interesting features that might be worth considering if you have some niche requirements but so that's why I'm considering this like an honorable mention again because yeah like I wouldn't put an eight-core on it and it's too expensive for a 6-quart really so then what would I put an eight-core in well there's this thing this is borderline K both like this is borderline able to run a 2700 X at you know one point four volts or all core and so if you wanted to do a static 2,700 overclock this is great but the issue is MSI makes a whole bunch of B 450 boards that have this exact same vrm or a very similar vrm and more substantial heat sinks so unless you desperately need the X 470 chipset for some reason I'm not sure what that reason may be but there might be some feature on this motherboard you want the vrm on this is solid enough but the thing is you can get this same VRM at the same price point this boards one hundred and forty dollars you can get this board for one hundred and forty dollars you get the same four plus two phase vrm it looks like an eight phase-- it's a four plus two phase they've fake like they're putting a whole bunch of components in parallel so this 4 + 2 phase and this 4 + souffles are exactly the same this one has a bigger heat sink where this is a be 450 board I think this board also comes with like Wi-Fi in things so there's like this is a better featured board but it's be 450 whereas this is an X 470 motherboard and it's a bit more barren but the vrm between them is the same and this one has better VR I'm cooling so this is kind of a case like if you can't think of a reason why you need the X 470 chipset get this for your 2700 like this is gonna work perfectly well as well now what if we want to or what if you want to go even cheaper on your motherboard well this works if you still have a substantial heatsink the v RM got a little bit downgraded at this point but it's still roughly the same the RMS here the heat sinks just a bit smaller so ultimately this will still probably have better vrm thermals than the x4 70 gaming plus just because the heatsink is so much more substantial here and that's also why this this has gotten on the list but all keep in mind all the MSI motherboards lack and negative core voltage offsets so if you're gonna be so you know your best gonna be certain maxy now to 27 like overclocking in 2700 I think for maxing out of 2700 you'd probably want this board just because the extra phases might actually help with your overclocking range and you know or this or that but uh and I'm not talking power K power delivery capability I mean the output power like the output voltage ripple of this five phase or this six phase or this twelve phase is just gonna be up quite a bit lower than what you get on these four phase designs but nonetheless this is like one of the best for phase V RMS on the entire X 470 like on the entire m4 platform so this is a solid v RM and you should get a good overclock out of a 2700 you can still precision boost over precision boost over dry overdrive overclock your 2700 X as well you're just not gonna you know you're just not gonna be able to minimize the voltages that it runs at and that's kind of true for all of the MSI motherboards so yeah as well as this one but for a 2700 or a 2600 this is like a great fit in fact for a 2600 that vrm is probably kind of like that the RM is cooling is kind of overkill the four phase i'd say is kind of a requirement for even a six core now what if you want to nem ATX motherboard well unfortunately it's yet more MSI and here's the thing MSI currently has like they're running the worst MOSFET they have on the beef like out of the motherboards I've gone through so far the B 450 mm mortar here has the worst mosfet out of the msi boards this uses a three million RDS on MOSFETs for comparison gigabyte typically like their low side masa is typically four milliohms RDS on which translates to roughly 33% more heat from the low side MOSFETs on gigabyte in gigabytes vrm so MSI just absolutely sweeps the competition when it comes to erm component quality and then they also have these massive heat sinks on all of them which is why we're you know if you're gonna go em ATX I'm gonna point you to the mortar if you're gonna be running like a 2,700 2,600 2,600 X or even 2,700 X right because ultimately there's not really an M ATX motherboard from anybody where it's like yeah sure they have the negative voltage offset but those motherboards have erm so bad that even within minus 100 millivolts offset on the CPU that vrm is likely to overheat if you run a long multi-core workload and I've tested that I've actually had a board do that already in my testing so yeah basically if you're gonna be going m ATX this is the only motherboard i would recommend for running at an 8 core or a 6 core really so that's that what if you want tonight and this thing comes in at just $80 so you know this is also pretty cheap so that's kind of neat yeah MSI is just like basically MSI is unlike all of these MSI boards are on this list because MSI has just used better MOSFETs than everybody else and then then they figured out hey if we just use a bigger slab of aluminum than everybody else our vrm is gonna run cool because it's gonna run even cooler because again MSI BRM is it tad more efficient than everybody else's right now so yeah that's why all of these MSI boards got onto the list now in Mini ITX land MSI has the B 450 I gaming plus AC and the reason why I'm putting it on the list is because this vrm right here is actually really solid this is a six phase using 60 amp power stages so you basically get the same vrm that you would get on the Strix right here of course the heatsink on this thing is much smaller it's an ITX board but if you're gonna be you know running an 8 core in an ITX setup your VR M is just gonna kind of like your VR M is just gonna suffer that's that's just what what its gonna because there's not a lot of space to put a heat sink or a very large v RM or even to spread the v RM over a large you know segment of PC because you can just lower the thermal density doing that a bit well you can't do any of that and so for that reason the B 450 I gaming plus IC from MSI is my pick for best ITX motherboard and you know it and the cool thing is it also only comes in at around 120 dollars you also get two 60 amp hour stages for your SOC vrm however I would not actually recommend this motherboard for running ap use msi APU overclocking support in their BIOS is just kind of terrible so yeah but that's just like basically the the the best way to summarize the MSI am for motherboard lineup is to say most of them are really great in the vrm department right like the this absolutely is the best vrm on ITX you can get at this price point there isn't a motherboard with a better vrn similar for this one and this one at these price points these just hands-down have the best VRMs but MSI's BIOS is kind of lacking when it comes to things like offset voltage VC LK APU overclocking support is just not great and so for that reason if you're gonna be looking at AP use I'm gonna point you towards this if you're gonna do an ITX apu build i'm gonna point you towards this and the reason why is simple you get a 4 + 2 phase of ER i'm using 50 amp power stages from international rectifier and unlike on MSI's motherboard gigabytes relative kind of clunky but you know once you learn the gigabyte bios it's pretty quick to get around gigabytes bios actually has all of the features they're just a bit difficult to find and all of the features also work it so yeah if you're gonna be overclocking an APU like a 2400 G or a 2200 G this is gonna serve you great and you know the weaker VRM being a 4 + 2 phase here isn't real concern because the AP us really don't pull that much like they're they're just oh quad core right with hyper-threading at most they really don't pull that much of e core power and the a GPU does actually pull a significant pretty significant amount of power once you start overclocking the memory and just overclocking everything really but ultimately the the - fais the the 2 phases for SOC power on this motherboard are still going to be able to handle that just fine so that's why you know if you're going to be doing an APU ITX build this would be my motherboard of choice for that just because this has the best balance of like features and we are like vile couldn't you know by Oh support and VR I'm components right there so then what if you want a ATX or M ATX APU build well I'm gonna point you towards Asus because again like well I'm gonna point you towards this and the reason I'm gonna point you towards this board is it has an SOC vrm heatsink now don't be fooled this may look like it's a 10/10 fait plus two-phase vrm it's still a four phase it's the same four phase asus has on all of their motherboards all of their other cheap motherboards but at the very least they've upgraded the vrm heat sinks and again the apos really don't pull that much power so you're not gonna need to worry about the like the main concern there is just getting the vrm heat sinks an asus has great apu overclocking support like i like there's basically i have an asus motherboard here that i'm only really holding on to because it's so good at APU overclocking compared to all the other boards so yeah the reason why I wouldn't recommend an Asus ITX motherboard for APU overclocking is because they have a single-phase SOC vrm which is just not enough as far as I'm concerned like you should have at least two phases for the SOC which Asus doesn't have on their ITX board but on their M ATX and their ATX boards the tough B 450 Pro Series this is like a new lineup of tough boards that they're doing they've upgraded the VR I'm cooling the VR I'm under the heat sinks is it still the same but the APU support is great so and unfortunately these motherboards are for pre-order currently only and I think this M ATX one might be somewhere around $90 I'm not sure about the full ATX one I'm gonna guess it's also gonna be about $90 so yeah that is all of the a m4 motherboards and which bit like that's all of the a m4 motherboards I consider worth considering most motherboards that I didn't address here I just think her straight-up terrible in some way shape or form it's anything from just vrm is awful which is true for quite a few of the asrock ones as well as the Asus ones and the gigabyte ones really everything that is in as I they're terrible a lot of the those are just awful but uh yeah a spent like at the lower price points it's just like that's kind of the case across the board but or and in some cases you know it's a case of like oh the BIOS is missing certain features or or memory overclocking just doesn't work very well but uh here but the board's I've just gone through these are all boards I consider like oh like that I feel like some all of these have a niche that they're actually good at there's a lot of other boys out there where it's just like why would you like why would you even get it so yeah that is the you know highlights list of a.m. for motherboards from me and thank you for watching like share subscribe leave any comments questions suggestions down in the comment section below if you'd like to support gamers Nexus there's the patreon as well as store gamers not Nexus store dot gamers Nexus dotnet did I screw that up I think I screwed that up anyway there's links to all of that down in the description below as well as probably in the comments and if you'd like to check out more of my content because I have a channel called actually hardcore overclocking where I do a lot more overclocking related content so that'd be cool as well thank you for watching and good bye you