Going IB Route: Should I spend £80 or £150 on a mobo?

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Stuff

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Can some explain like I'm 5 what the main differences will be please? :)

I won't be overclocking and just want to know the key differences really. I'm not sure what you pay more for with a motherboard.

Also, are there any good mobo comparison sites at all?

Cheers fellas!
 
A hell of a lot more features and a shinier board. Get a board of at least £130~ the higher up boards of £160+ just have added features etc compared to the lower costing boards.
 
ahah. well the £80 boards don't usually have SLI/Xfire capabilities. And there's other things that each manufacturer adds in themselves. I'm not well educated in motherboards though.
 
normally, the advice given is to you buy one based on needs - ram speeds, expansion slots (pcie3, pcie2, pci), size. then you can consider extras, like "ultra durable" or heatsink shields covering the entire mobo, or expensive ethernet chips(?) and sound chips, super charge usb ports, and all kinds of fancy gadgetry that individual manufacturers add to their incarnation of the chipset. more expensive ones also come with better power phase designs for very high overclocks, but the average overclocker won't spend hundreds in water-cooling, or 200+ for a motherboard. i got a budget motherboard with advice from forums that even budget boards hit respectable overclocks.

here's a warning though: the z77a-g43 from msi seems to have either teething issues, or a "budget" bios. voltage controls go from "auto" to a whopping "+0.06v" in 0.02 increments :p. for an "overclocking-friendly" board, that's worse than my friend's £45 am3+ board. could be because msi are giving bios update priority to their expensive boards? comments online suggest it's feasible to ask msi for better voltage control in future bios updates. it's a nice board, but its overclocking features are not an option with this bios when "auto" sends my voltage up to nearly 1.2v at stock speeds. so the bios of a board -is- something to consider with price. read in-depth reviews if you plan on going budget. manufacturers may update the bios in future, but who knows? might be better to spend a little more than £80 and be safe!
 
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If your not overclocking, cheep and chearfull is normally the way to go, the only thing you need to think of is will you in future want to dual sli/xfire your GPU.

If you think you might get one with support and prefferably two x16 PCIe slots that will run in at least 8x8x8 mode. (its in the fine print)

most of the expensive stuff added to boards is in the same bracket as the bundled services from your bank account, if you intend to use them its good value to get them on the board rather than buying expansion cards later but if you dont need a will writing service dont pay for one.

not sure 3 year olds know bank accounts but best i could do at this time of night.

Just thought of an example,on the asus Vgeane boards there is a high quality isolated sound daughter board, if your using £10 logitech speakers you dont need it, if your plugging into a high end 7.1 system then its a good value extra. obviously there are other bits on it too but thats the easiest thing i could think of to illustrate.
 
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