Motherboard pricing and specs

[jaydam]

Out of interest what is the difference in motherboard pricing and specs?

What is it I am to be looking for in terms of motherboard specs for performance,

What is the difference between a £100 board and a £400 board?

I need a new mobo and have no issue paying 2-300 pound but what will I gain ?

I need a z390 mobo with dual mic and more usb / io but sure this isn’t the only relevance to price point.

Especially as most mobos do not have gpu built in,

Can you recommend a good z390 i9 mobo with the above features please?

 

[EsaT]

Amount of marketing BS...
Efficiency/quality/strength of CPU VRM...
More add on stuff like ports, bigger PCIe slots and such...
In case of Intel they limit overclocking only to the most expensive chipset.

But unless CPU VRM in other board is too weak for gaming, there's very little performance difference.
And in case of Intel there's no future proofness for any amount of money.
Because Intel apparently plans to butt rape and mug consumers again with next Skylake rebranding needing new mobos.

 

[pastymuncher]

Gigabyte Z390 boards seem to have the best VRM setups and UK support but the bios layout is terrible. My Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro has been solid as a rock and is a cracking board but the bios is so bad it put's me off going back into it to tweak things further. Asus used to be my go to brand for motherboards but after being with them since the 965P chipset on Socket 775 I ditched them due to ever increasing prices for poorer quality boards. For example, up until last November I had a Asus Z87 Maximus Hero VI which was a quality board with high end features and cost me £140 brand new. The current equivalent costs £270 yet is a lower quality than my old board was. I have had bad experiences with MSI boards due to every one I have ever had has failed so I wouldn't touch one of theirs even though people say they have improved a great deal. I nearly went Asrock this time around with the Asrock Z390 Extreme 4 but I found the Aorus Pro online for a fantastic price and included freebies so the lure of a higher end board for less money won me over. If you really must go with Intel then take a look at the Gigabyte Z390 boards. You are going to need the higher quality VRM's, especially if you are going to be overclocking a 9900k. Just be warned that the bios layout needs a lot of work.

If you don't already have the 9900k wait a couple of months for AMD's Ryzen 2 launch. If the rumours are true then Intel is going to be in a world of pain. They are going to be facing cpu's that have up to 16C/32T on AMD's mainstream AM4 platform that cost less and could potentially out perform Intel's offerings. They even appear to have caught up in clockspeed with boost clocks of up to 5Ghz. I know I wished that I had waited.