Gadgetory

hey what's up YouTube Jay's 2 cents here and I think new buyers who are looking at building their first computer or even building another computer but haven't done so in a while are getting really caught up and confused on how to choose the right motherboard and I don't blame you guys there's a lot of crap on motherboards with the new silencio performance optimized fans the cooler master Neptune 240 M delivers the perfect balance of noise and performance click the link in the description to find out more so over the past couple of weeks I've done a few how-to by style videos recently how to buy a power supply and how to buy a graphics cards you can find those videos here and here and you guys have really liked that in fact you've asked me to do more in fact you've asked me to do an entire computer on how to buy when it comes to understanding what all the crap means when you're reading the specs so I said okay we'll do it and today we're gonna go ahead and take a tour around my Asus x99 deluxe motherboard because it's got an awful lot of in it and if you guys were just looking at the specs on this you probably would feel upside down backwards inside out and discombobulated and have no idea what any of it means so today hopefully we're gonna solve that now before we dive into this and I'm gonna try and make this as non confusing as possible because there's a lot of information on this and it's really difficult to ascertain what's important and what's not important and my job today is to try and make you understand the basics and some of the little more advanced stuff you'll find on a motherboard so you can determine whether or not the motherboard you may be looking at is overkill for what you need oftentimes that's the case motherboards tend to include a lot of candy features on here that you don't really need which takes up some of the money into this when you really should be putting it somewhere else so hopefully today we're going to arm you with the information you need to determine if the motherboard you're currently considering falls in that category now when it comes to motherboards AMD or Intel they're gonna you're gonna find some parts of the motherboard that are the same regardless of the brand now for instance there gonna have a socket they're all gonna have RAM slots they're all gonna have input IO or input and output and they're all gonna have PCI Express slots per that's never going to change until the entire way a computer works changes a computer works changes that's that's probably one of the silliest misspeaks i've had in a while but I think you get what I'm saying now when it comes to the socket it means that only CPUs that match that socket are going to fit so the x99 here being a 2011 - 3 means only 2011 - 3 socket of CPUs will couple with this motherboard and work z97 and z87 have 1150 a z77 has 11 56 I believe it is so before you buy your motherboard you need to decide what CPU you are going to run I would not recommend picking a motherboard first and then putting a CPU in it that's a little counterproductive because you need to know what CPU you're gonna buy first because quite often those features on here that will be wasted if you don't choose the right CPU for instance these zseries Intel motherboards like the z97 I have here or the z97 I have here these in the z87 I have here these are overclocking motherboards that is basically what the Z stands for it's going to give you a lot of unlocked functionality when it comes to the motherboard that is going to be appealing for overclockers so if you're not gonna be buying an overclocking CPU it seep CPU that's kind of a cool one a CPU then you're not going to need to buy yourself a Z branded motherboard that's one thing to keep in mind but on the flip side if you're gonna be buying some sort of a Black Edition AMD CPU or a case Q on the Intel side which are unlocked overclockable CPUs you don't want to limit it either by getting a non overclocking motherboard so keep that in mind as well now when it comes to the RAM on modern motherboards and current gen and even a past couple of gen motherboards you're gonna notice that there is only going to be either a dual channel or a quad channel config now the x58 platform actually had triple channel that's an aged obsoleted platform right now when it comes to building new equipment you won't be able to go out and buy an X 58 so we're not going to talk about that but oftentimes people get confused on how many RAM sticks they need and how many channels they have on their motherboy because more often than not you're gonna find that there are more RAM slots and there are channels for instance this x99 motherboard has eight Ram slots but it is not an 8 channel motherboard in fact I'd be pretty damn awesome if it was but it's not most of the time motherboards will allow 2 slots per channel that's why more often than not you're gonna find a tram slots on x79 and x99 motherboards and you're gonna find 4 Ram slots on z-series and AMD motherboards typically like I said they give you 2 Ram slots per channel they do that because they want you to have expandability now lower end motherboards may have only one Ram slot per channel to try and save on costs or on a low low end motherboard you might find that there you might find there's only 2 Ram slots period it doesn't mean it's a single channel it just means there's one Ram slot per channel so you're gonna want to check the specs on the motherboard that you're looking at and see how many channels are available to it I can pretty much guarantee you will never find more than 2 channels on a zseries processor like z97 or a Z series motherboard I should say and an X series is always going to be 4 channel maybe in the future we'll get 6 channel or 8 channel who knows but right now at the time of making this video that is the case now here is the part that most people get confused on and I don't blame them because it is probably the most confusing when it comes to specs and that being the PCI Express slots now you're gonna find that there are usually more PCI Express slots then there are capabilities when it comes to SLI or crossfire in this case we've got 1 2 3 4 5 PC full-length PCI Express slots leading most people to believe you could more than likely put 5 graphics cards in here but that's not the case I almost dropped it now here's the skinny when it comes to graphics cards neither AMD or Intel support more than 4 Way SLI or crossfire or quad fire or whatever you want to call it the extra slots on here are for peripherals things like SSD PCI Express SSD cards raid controllers sound cards things of that nature and what you're going to notice it that is that you're going to see PCI Express 16 X 8 X 4 X and one X now the part that makes people confuse is you're going to see PCI Express 3.0 PCI Express 2.0 or referred to as Gen 2 or Gen 3 and that's going to make people very confused because they're gonna notice on their new graphics cards they're pretty much all PCI Express 3.0 but if you're building an AMD system you're gonna see PCI Express 2.0 as being the supported architecture here when it comes to the PCI Express slots and that tends to freak people out because they go oh my god my new power my new graphics card it's not gonna work because the PCI Express 2.0 and I know they're now I want to go Andy but it isn't people get really confused by that they think that if they go with PCI Express 2.0 motherboard that their PCI Express 3.0 graphics cards are going to be dare I say bottlenecked no guys it doesn't work that way PCI Express 2.0 at 16x is the same bin with this PCI Express 3.0 at 8 X and here's the real kicker most of the time when you run an SLI or crossfire config the slot is going to downgrade to an 8 X anyway skunkworks behind me has three gtx 980 s in it but did you know it's actually running 8 X 8 X 16 X 1 card at 16 X the other tube down scaled to 8 X did that lower my scores and lower my fps absolutely not so guys don't get hung up on the PCI Express 2.0 vs. 3.0 thing we are still not maxing out the bandwidth period even at 16 X 2.0 don't worry about it guys in the future may become a problem right now current gen and a few years into the future it's still not a problem the only thing you need to know is that there are 4x slots that like this one right here this would be for a sound card or a network card or something of that nature other than that don't get caught up on it really it's not that big of a deal now other little things you're gonna find on here are going to be like USB 3.0 plugs on here for front side USB 3.0 plugs on your case USB 2.0 some motherboards have onboard reset and power buttons on there this is useful if you're going to be putting this in a test bench like I am in that guy right there that's a case labs test bench can't wait to build that out and just makes it so you don't actually have to plug in front side panel connectors which would go under these slots these little bitty pins got a pain in the ass to get in there you technically don't have to plug those in you can control the motherboard right there a lot of newer motherboards come with trouble code readouts right here gives you a number on there if you have some sort of an error it'll display a number you go to the manual you look up the number huh magic it tells you what's wrong that's actually really cool some of them have clear CMOS buttons in red right on the motherboard makes it simple to clear your CMOS without having to pop out of battery because that was the old way overclockers had to reset and clear their CMOS was pull out the battery and do a jumper and wait 10 seconds now you just push this little fandangled red button and you're up and running new overclockers just don't know what we used to have to deal with back in the day all motherboards are gonna have a plethora of SATA ports because SATA ports are actually becoming obsolete we have maxed out how fast you can actually transfer data on SATA port which is six gigabits per second you're always gonna want to make sure you plug in your optical drives your hard drives anything you're plugging into SATA always utilize the SATA 6 gigabits per second some of the older motherboards still have a three gigabit per second and six gigabit per second some are using the chipset some are using built on controller you're gonna always want to use the Intel if possible if it's an Intel motherboard and six gigabit per second otherwise you could actually be slowing down your SSDs by half that's not a good thing some motherboards like newer motherboards like this or six gigabit per second only and brand spanking new motherboards like x99 are starting to feature PCI Express our CD SATA Express ports which are for a new standard of connections for SATA you're also going to notice something called it MDOT - and basically that's an itty-bitty little PCB SSD that mounts directly to the motherboard you don't have to run SATA power and a SATA cable it just hooks right onto the motherboard in this case there's a slot right here it stands straight up kind of like a motherboard boner if you will and it not necessarily any faster but it is just a lot more convenient to plug it in and be up and running with your SSD and you don't have to change it out or remote mount it somewhere in your case now when it comes to the back of the motherboard they all are gonna have a different array of input and output this one happens to have 2 4 6 8 10 PCI Express 3.0 or SuperSpeed ports has a BIOS reset right here on the back which is convenient once again for over Fockers this one how also happens to feature a wireless on there and a built-in audio most motherboards are now going to include built-in audio PCI Express 2.0 excuse me you have to be up to that in the past USB 3.0 and 2.0 for backwards compatibility and Ethernet cards on there what's gonna vary is the amount of ports you have for USB 3.0 and 2.0 how many Ethernet you may or may not have a BIOS clear button on the back but again those things are all gonna vary based on the level of where the motherboard sits on the tier the higher the tier the more stuff you're gonna have so guys that's pretty much it my computer went to sleep so I guess that means it's time to start ending the video and actually that has nothing to do with the video I'm yeah I just kind of toss that out there so hopefully this has helped you guys understand motherboards what all the stuff means and you guys can already see if you're not gonna be plugging in 2 4 6 8 10 SATA ports optical drives hard drives SSDs and you know you can save some cost by finding a motherboard that has other features you need but don't have as many of those SATA ports maybe you're only gonna be wanting one running one graphics card so you don't need 5 PCI Express slots with a PCI Express 4 so giving you 6 PCI Express slots I'd be a little overkill right so guys hope this videos helped you in some way I hope it's basically simplified some of the stuff for you as always we got a pretty decent community following this channel and some very knowledgeable people who are fans of this channel who are always willing to help down in the comment section if you're one of those people I greatly thank you for that I'm only one person I cannot get to even a fraction of the comments that this channel gets so I deeply am showing gratitude to you guys for helping out all of the newbies down in the comments who genuinely need your help keep it up guys it's almost like a really cool community that I should almost have a forum or something going huh sad part is I do at Jay's $0.02 calm been too lazy to be able to keep the website going but it is a work in progress guys I'm working on it once again guys thanks for watching today's video follow on Twitter if you have any questions put any topics you guys would like me to cover down in the comments and we're gonna keep this whole how-to by series alive we're gonna do how to buy a CP you already did how to buy a graphics card how to buy a power supply we're gonna talk about how to buy I guess SSDs and things like that we're gonna cover the entire computer in this series guys so as always thank you so much for watching you guys make this channel pretty awesome to keep working on I love doing videos for you guys as always I'll see you in the next one