Gadgetory

hey guys build Zoid here from actually hardcore overclocking and this will be a sort of very general a.m. for motherboard roundup and we're gonna start right at the top of the price points with the well with the three hundred and fifty dollar crosshair six extreme before we get into that this content is brought to you by the Thermaltake flow RGB closed-loop liquid cooler which is a three hundred sixty millimeter radiator plus three 120 fans that are RGB illuminated if then we'll take it ring fans at that this is a 4.5 done a stack pump which one of the faster pumps you can learn more at the link in the description below here's the problem with the crosshair six extreme the crosshair six hero exists and basically what happened when they made the extreme is they took a hero they made it a bit wider as you can see the you know your screw holes finished right here instead like you have a screw hole right there and then the board still extends past that which the crosshair six hero doesn't do but the crosshair six extreme basically uses that extra width to tack on a million fan headers like it has a ton of fan headers slightly to let relay out the overclocking features like the start button post code reset switch island to jumper lnto mode 2 jumper slow mode switch our SVD switch voltage read points retry button safe boot bus and all of these are located in a better part of the like are better laid out in my opinion they're in a better position more accessible more usable but ultimately ignoring you know the our SVD switch which the our SVD switch is exclusively for ln2 overclockers it's not like it doesn't literally could not matter less to anybody else on the planet then Alan to over like and even if you're an Ellen to overclock or the our SVD switch is not all that useful like it is handy but you can do like you can make do without it it's not absolutely necessary it does make things a bit simpler though the the thing is that this literally is just sort of a feature relay out it does get some extra handle to support it does get a lot a lot of extra fan headers it does get a vrm upgrade the this is a still the same eight plus four phase arrangement it's just 60 amp international rectifier power stages instead of 40 amp dual and fats know that you can actually see them under the heat sinks but you know not that different both of them are like the crosshair six hero is very overkill for isin the crosshair six extreme is more overkill for Eisen in fact the crosshair six extreme has one of the strongest like is literally in terms of current capability one of the strongest VRMs on on am four there's only one other motherboard that matches it for current throughput capability but you know it's like you get all the same buttons and switches except the our SVD on the hero that you do on the sakes on the extreme and the hero is a hundred bucks less so the extreme really doesn't make a lot of sense even for extreme overclockers so this thing has a ridiculously strong vrm and that's the only good thing about it by far you know this is a 12 phase using 40 amp duel and fats from texas instruments so same MOSFETs as what you'd find on the crosshair six hero there's just twice well fifty percent more of them in the v core section so the vrm on this thing is ridiculously strong the problem is the rest of the motherboard kinda isn't I have the Taichi the memory overclocking is not great you know I mean for daily it's doable it's just there's a lot of other motherboards out there which do it better a lot better and the BIOS general it like you know you have a lot of settings you have a lot of options but I can hit the same clocks on other boards that don't have those up at all and I can hit those same clocks on motherboards that cost a lot less so you know this thing it doesn't carry itself like it doesn't have some killer feature that may justifies that two hundred and fifty dollar price point unless you consider having the most powerful vrm that you will never ever ever ever ever get close to using at full capacity a killer feature like you know yeah it does have the the nicest vrm of all the rise in motherboards it's just too bad that everything else on the board is kind of mediocre in my pain for like everything else on the boards is kind of mediocre which to the daily user I think that's more handy and even for the extreme overclocker the Taichi and the professional gaming both lack a few settings that are kinda necessary for liquid-nitrogen overclocking and just in general on ln2 the tai chi is really badly behaved in fact it's completely like it was a complete catastrophe when I tried it so I'm actively looking for a replacement motherboard for my ex 370 Taichi because I can't use it on liquid nitrogen because it just doesn't work so yeah a strong vrm you know can certainly complement a motherboard it doesn't make a board it can break one this is the same PCB as the professional gaming it leaves you know I really I honestly wouldn't recommend like I wouldn't buy them like I bought the Tai Chi I wouldn't buy it again is where I'm with it and same goes for the professional gaming especially at two hundred and fifty dollars you can just go buy the crosshair six hero sure the vrm is weaker but the rest of the board is a lot better so yeah moving on I think the best in the two hundred dollar sort of 200 to 250 dollar price range the best balance I think would probably be of sort of price features VRM overclocking support is probably the ax a X 370 gaming k7 and there's a very good reason for this while I have the X 370 gaming k5 which is the stripped down version of this as in it lacks quite a lot of the like this board like the k5 is really good at memory overclocking the k7 takes everything that's good about the k5 and puts a much better vrm on it a better BIOS and fixes a lot of the problems I have with the k5 which means the k7 is like I especially at you know 210 dollars it's a killer board in my opinion absolutely killer because you get my the best clock gen a rise in motherboard could possibly have the you know the clock gen is a necessary feature on a rising motherboard for BC LK overclocking which really isn't that handy to most people but if you want BC LK overclocking done right gigabyte has it the best because they go the the clock gen on these boards goes to one one hundredths of a megahertz which is just like completely insane levels of like accuracy kind of actually completely pointless levels of accuracy cuz you're never gonna need to fine-tune the the CPU clock that much or the memory clock of that much but it you know it's nice to have the option I personally only use it at like tenth of a megahertz increments not the full hundredth range but it's nice to have the option the board also has dual BIOS so if your BIOS flash goes wrong the board will literally just trying to turn the board on will reek will recover a bad BIOS flash it has a clear bias button it has a power button and reset button and a postcode admittedly they put the postcode in the wrong place you know down on the bottom edge but it's still there and honestly with the k5 I didn't find myself needing a postcode so you know it's a really good mix of overclocking features on this board really really good makes and you still get you know you don't get a particularly strong you get a six phase well a six plus four phase with six phases for recore using international rectifier 3553 s which are 40 amp hour stages so as far as the you know $200 plus motherboards go this is definitely the weakest vrm and even if you go a little bit below $200 yeah this well actually now now there's one motherboard that has a worst vrm it's called the X 370 X power and it's made by MSI but the this you know this is literally barely above what the MSI can do and you know it's still it's not gonna limit you and overclocking it just means that the vrm on this thing tends to run a bit warm especially because the vrm heatsink isn't that great but the rest of the board like I personally I feel the rest of the board more than makes up for the anemic well it's not anemic it's just not very like you know the vrm could still be better it could certainly have a better heatsink but uh it's not like it's gonna stop you from hitting 4 gigahertz if your chip is capable of hitting 4 gigahertz it's just gonna do 4 gigahertz while running slightly warmer so you know that's kind of that and personally I think I that is a trade I'd be willing to make because at this price point your only other real option is the Strix X 370 - eff board or the Tai Chi which we've already went over the Tai Chi in my opinion is not fun to overclock on it complains too much too often and you know I guess for if you're doing some very mild overclocking and not doing too much fine tuning you're not gonna complain but basically the moment I with the Tai Chi the moment I go below like C L 16 the board just keeps failing to post all the time and it's infuriating because going below like doing 34 it like 3466 CL 16 works 3466 CLS 14 doesn't work unless I've booted 3466 CL 16 before which you know it's just like it only bored I have that does that the Tai Chi and I find that kind of like that's a bit of a deal and that in my opinion is a complete deal-breaker other than the k7 your option is the Strix ex 370 - eff the thing is this loses the postcode it loses the buttons it doesn't have to a while it does still have a clock chin it doesn't go as it's not as granular it does have a lot stronger vrm this uses 60 amp international rectifier power stages and it has six phases for vcore so this is like the second highest motherboard in terms of peak erm current capability this is you know is this thing strong so if you want a great VRM and you know don't mind losing things like a postcode and the buttons and I do believe the k7 is actually regarded as the best memory overclocking motherboard for m4 as of right now if you don't mind losing some of the overclocking ability capabilities that the the k7 may offer this is a really strong option which I I think for the casual user this is probably that this would probably be the best and you do save 20 bucks over the k7 on that so you know goes either way personally as a you know more advanced overclocker I would buy the k7 but if I was doing a build for a friend and I would never ever have to see the system again I wouldn't mind using the X 370 to uh you know the Strix X 370 - F either so both very very you know both nice boards I just kind of like the feature set of the X 370 k7 better than the X 370 - eff moving on well we kind of hit a dead zone here between between the straight and the well this and there's a very simple reason alt for that okay the vrm on this that well all the MSI boards like this vrm is terrible well it's not terrible it's just not great this one's not great this one's not great like none of these is particularly impressive and they all cost more than this which the thing about the you know the the okay the thing about the X 370 - Pro is you get your Texas Instruments 40 amp duel and that's the same MOSFETs you would find on the crosshair 6 here oh except now there's six of them instead of eight of them so you don't get a huge vrm downgrade it's still plenty for overclocking risin it's you know it's roughly on par in fact with like the gigabyte gaming k7 arguably but you do lose a lot of features on this motherboard again no dual BIOS no buttons no postcode but you do get a strong of erm there's also no clock general in this thing so you know if you want to strongly RM at a budget well at a lower cost because we're really not in the budget range according to most people I'd honest personally I consider 100 and thought the $30.00 a budget motherboard because once you go below this price point the boards start getting really really bad really really quick as literally like the motherboard manufacturer just start accessing features and well quality left right and center in order to try fit the you know the really low price points but this is a this is a really strong board this is like probably the last thing I would consider using in terms of vrm quality for a daily build though honorable mention if you if you don't mind having a anemic for phase vrm with a inadequate heatsink on it this thing has a real like keeps the k7s clock gen and it has troubleshooting LEDs no postcode no buttons it does have dual BIOS and it does have the really really strong clock you know the clock gent is really really nice on this thing I really like this board for everything except the vrm and then there's the X 370 where I like the vrm but I don't really like the rest of the board so you know at this price point you can sort of swing between these two moving further down the motherboard line up this is a really popular board with a lot of people but you see this and that and this has a real like 40 amp dual end fits from Texas Instruments six-phase and that's a 4 and an anaemic for phase at that like this has a VR I'm roughly on par with what you find on the gigabyte gaming k5 so yeah and it doesn't really like it doesn't add anything there's no clock gen there's no post codes or buttons or yeah so you know if you're considering this board buy that one but let's move out of the 120 dollar range and into the garbage bin okay it's not quite that bad but we're getting there so here's the problem I see with a lot of these boards right here at this price point right these are all around a hundred bucks for 24 well okay well as for 30 bucks more you can have a way better motherboard than any of these you know like these have all of these boards down here need a significant amount of airflow over the vrm if you want to run an overclocked eight core and you know that's just that's just the way it is and if you move up to this thing you wouldn't need to worry about that as much because this actually has like this has a proper good six phase all of these are anemic for phase designs this is technically not an anaemic for phase design but the heatsink on that vrm is terrible and similar goes for this one oh and this one doesn't even have a heatsink so don't touch that with a ten-foot pole because well you know if the boards with the heatsink need a lot of airflow how much airflow do you think the boards without one need when they use the exact same MOSFETs in the exact same phase counts they just didn't bother to put a heatsink on those yeah not great really not great this thing's 90 bucks and well this this board gets an honorable mention for being like of the terrible V RMS this is the least terrible it looks like a six phase it's not a six phase it's a three phase but it has a lot of MOSFETs and it's honestly not that bad it's just also not great at least it gets a somewhat decent looking heatsink so this could be an option for a budget motherboard and its derivatives which it's derivative would be well it's sibling this the ABB 350 pro 4 same vrm different color scheme and the a/b 350m pro 4 same the RM different color scheme it's still that you know I am totally not a I am totally a six phase except running off of a three phase voltage controller with no doubling scheme whatsoever so it's a three but the extra components do mean that the V arm has slightly better thermal characteristics but yeah you kind of end up like with these boards like the ones with the heat sinks it's like you got to be prepared to throw airflow at all of these and then when you get to the boards with no heat sinks like this thing it's just don't even try like honestly I wouldn't even stick an 1800 X on this like at stock I wouldn't take an 1800 X put it into this board and run it at stock settings because that vrm has no heat sync those MOSFETs are rated for 105 degree well no the MOSFETs are fine well actually they probably won't be so this vrm because it has no heatsink I've I have a board with well actually a better version of this and she's depressing cuz okay well just know this is terrible okay so Asus has a similar four phase design to this it except it has two low side MOSFETs per phase here you have one low side MOSFET per space so basically the low side is gonna be dissipating roughly twice as much heat and even on the four phase design with two low side MOSFETs this vrm design gets really hot when you run an eight core and that's with a heatsink without a heatsink this is gonna end with you know the lowered fate MOSFET count this is gonna be hitting well over a hundred and twenty degrees no problem even with like an 1800 exit stock and you know what the funny though what the problem with that is MOSFETs at 120 are fine the bigger issue is that you know you have these capacitors right here and also right here and those are all rated for a hundred and five degrees centigrade and only for 5000 hours at that temperature level also all of these capacitors on this board are made in Taiwan they're not Japanese you know in case you actually cared about that because the our rating and the temperature rating doesn't give it away that you know if the if this area of the board hits 120 then the capacitors are gonna be going well over a hundred and five unless you have a significant amount of airflow over the board so just know just know like be 350 boards with no vrm heat sinks well at least this isn't be 350 but there are be 350 boards with no vrm heat sinks and those like like this this okay well here we have the the version with all the extra MOSFETs and the this still completely no it's a be 350 Ward so it technically supports overclocking but I wouldn't overclock anything other than a quad core on this because this VR has no heatsink and even with the quad-core I'd be very concerned about those MOSFETs and the capacitors especially the capacitors because those are a lot more temperature sensitive than the actual MOSFETs you know right next to them so yeah if it doesn't have a heatsink just don't just just ignore that it exists uh terrible terrible boards but hey at least they're cheap so yeah that's that's pretty much it for all the m4 motherboards that are currently available you know ignoring the whole gap of you know basically this from from the tight between the tai chi and the and the k5 it's just kind of ignore all of that also ignore this thing because this this board right here at one hundred and thirty dollars uses the same four plus two phase v RM design that you would find on way let me find it well it's this v RM that one yeah this board has the same v RM as that board you know so yeah there's and that's X 370 versus B 350 but ultimately like what chipset the manufacturers stick on the board doesn't matter what matters is well what they decide to do to the v RM and in this case they decided that they wanted to make a crap one whereas this one that this one is actually good though this one's on a really steep discount which yeah it just means once this thing is back at normal price you're kind of like you kind of end up with motherboards that all need a lot of airflow it's just yeah you're you're gonna need a lot of erm airflow and there's no getting around that at the 120 down price points so yeah that's it all of the a well pretty much all of the m4 motherboards covered hopefully this stops you from buying a motherboard that'll die in a year or two well stop from buying a motherboard that's completely inadequate or for overclocking and killing it because that's probably what would happen but yeah that's it thank you for watching like share subscribe leave a comment down below if you would like to support what we do here at gamers Nexus there is a patreon link down in the description and if you would like to see more content from me then I have a channel called actually hardcore overclocking where I do a lot of very overclocking focused things that's it for the video and goodbye