Gadgetory

today's video is part of a series that I'm bringing back from the dead called ultimate question and final answer where I take a question that I've been asked a million times so examples of previous segments include intel versus AMD or air-cooling versus water-cooling and arm you guys with the tools to answer it not only today but well into the future so what is the best choice for a computer motherboard let's answer it shall we the gtx 980ti VR edition from EVGA provides an industry-leading graphics experience as well as a five and a quarter inch bay with easy access inputs for your VR device learn more at the link in the video description there's a fundamental problem with the way that many people tackle choosing the best motherboard I mean we've all seen that forum post that's all like yo I just want a million dollars check out this sick build yo I'm gonna buy it ignoring that the poster is usually a teenager who just learned how to sort by price and through all the most expensive components many of which aren't even compatible half the time let alone optimal into a shopping cart the underlying issue here is that people are assuming that if they pay more they will end up with a better experience but that isn't always the case let's take these two products both of which that I have used as examples each of these motherboards sits in that top-of-the-line $600 price range but while this one is suitable for a general consumer and light workstation use you know we're talking gaming ripping blu-rays listening to music video editing this one is better suited for installation in a server that will do complex video or 3d rendering or run a large number of virtual machines or a demanding database or I mean with the horsepower that can be equipped with some combination of those things but this is where it gets kind of tricky as we demonstrated in this video aside from the hardware that can be plugged into a motherboard the board itself doesn't meaningfully impact raw performance anymore so unless you're looking at some kind of semi custom super computer hardware or like RISC architecture stuff any board that takes an Intel x86 processor can do all of those things that I listed before the difference then is in the features that the manufacturer has spent money developing and implementing and that therefore you will pay for that only benefit certain use cases not to mention that on top of ending up with if you don't need you're going to have to live without or pay extra to enable features that the manufacturer didn't bother to put on this server motherboard would make for a real downer of the gaming rig it doesn't have SLI or crossfire support from multiple graphics cards limiting your gaming performance to the best single card available forever it doesn't have onboard Wi-Fi or USB 3.1 or even onboard audio it lacks the capability to add a Thunderbolt card for prosumer external storage it doesn't have overclocking features and finally it has the kind of rear i/o that you'd expect to find on a $50.00 motherboard on a shelf at Best Buy six years ago four USB ports of which only two are USB 3 even but and this is the first main point today get a product that's actually designed for your use case because there's a reason that this is still expensive even with all that stuff missing the server board has two CPU sockets with quadruple the memory slot count giving it the capability of supporting much more RAM and much more CPU horsepower something that consumers will be hard-pressed to benefit from since very few workloads can actually utilize up to 36 processing cores on their own the variant of this board that costs the same as this consumer one has got dual ten gigabit network ports only useful if you want to also drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on a 10 gigabit switch and other clients it's got onboard VGA which is a must since you won't necessarily be putting a graphics card in it and VGA is still very widely used more than you'd think in server level gear it's got and this is tied in to the VGA a dedicated network port for what's called IPMI remote management this was a must for me for my off-site backup server because it lets me monitor vital information like CPU temperatures install software off of virtual media and see what that VGA port sees over the network or even read or power the system on from a completely off state from hundreds of kilometers away and it's got other stuff that you might not even think would be useful like dedicated hardware jumper switches for things that consumers would normally prefer to be handled in a software switch within the UEFI BIOS so then for contrast let's take a look at the strengths of the consumer motherboard this is the Maximus 8 extreme assembly a very premium consumer board so surprisingly it actually has a 10 gigabit network card bundled but aside from that it's highlight features are very very different it's got a breakout fan controller module for intelligent and quiet system operation something that doesn't matter in a data center it's got thermal probes that you can place yourself for system monitoring it's got this rocking onboard audio with the front headphone jack something I can't imagine to many IT pros using in their server room designed to drive high-end audiophile headphones it's got an easy memory compatibility button support for multiple graphics cards full overclocking support including a liquid-nitrogen mode I mean all of that it's got our DB lighting for crying out loud all of that stuff is like yeah that's pretty cool for consumers and enthusiasts but would be completely meaningless in a server where they'd be like I'm sorry it supports only for processing course which leads us to the second main point don't buy stuff that you don't need once you're looking at the right category ask yourself do you really need liquid nitrogen mode or whatever because both of these examples are premium products and the reason for that is because it's easier to demonstrate the feature differences when both products are fully loaded so to speak but here are a couple of boards in the $200 price range where the main difference is still that the consumer gaming motherboard has more i/o and better audio and is better looking and the professional server motherboard has remote management and better networking leading us to the final point and that is that there is no single answer it's not that simple if you wanted to hear you know buy the most expensive gigabyte board or asus rog is the best or Supermicro never-fail or whatever even that's not possible because any one of those companies can make a winner or a total dud from my experience so I always use consumer reviews usually from verified owners on Newegg or Amazon whenever possible for motherboards because it's my belief that it is simply impossible for a single person with a single test bench to adequately test the motherboard for all the different things that might be thrown at it in the real world so in summary determine the features that are meaningful to you understand that spending more doesn't necessarily yield any sort of benefit and make sure to get specific feedback on the models that you're comparing and on that subject mass drop mass drop is the online community where basically the community says hey we want to deal on like this thing and they've got on different stuff they take that to the manufacturer or an authorized distributor to make sure they're getting genuine product they go hey we've got a bunch of people who want to buy this what do you say the more people who agree to buy the lower the price goes sounds good sounds good and that's pretty much the way it works and right now they've got a mass drop exclusive product thus entrance and DAC port slim the slim builds on the success of the DAC port classic bringing the power of the classic into a two and a half ounce package it features a max output power of 450 milliwatts and output impedance of 1 ohm a 20 decibel gain switch between the minimum and the maximum it resolutions it features a dynamic range of 109 decibels and again it is mass drop exclusive and available for a very limited time and quantity with only 350 units available at the time of filming this spot it's already reached its lowest drop price of $99.99 and there are over 80 orders so to check it out head over to draw dot slash LTT - centrist to learn well - check it out but I already that and if that's complicated there's a link in the video description just click it and go so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions for which for up there buying a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum which by the way is awesome you can get answers to your tech questions there it's linked in the video description now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch that so check out this recent video on channel super fun I guarantee you it will be fun and super and it will be on a channel yep it's all right in the name