 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? INTRO The GTX 980 Ti VR Edition from EVGA provides an industry-leading graphics experience as well as a 5.25-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 won 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 threw 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 it 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 supercomputer 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 stuff you don't need, you're gonna 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 a gaming rig. It doesn't have SLI or Crossfire support for 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 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 10 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 into 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 reboot 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 VIII Extreme Assembly, a very premium consumer board. So surprisingly, it actually has a 10 gigabit network card bundled, but aside from that, its highlight features are very, very different. It's got a breakout fan controller module for intelligent and quiet system operations, 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 too 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 RGB 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 four processing cores, 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 a 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, Massdrop. Massdrop is the online community where basically the community says, hey, we want to deal on like this thing, and they've got tons of 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 Massdrop exclusive product, the Sentron's DACPORT Slim. The Slim builds on the success of the DACPORT Classic, bringing the power of the Classic into a 2.5 ounce package. It features a max output power of 450 milliwatts, an output impedance of 1 ohm, a 20 decibel gain switch between the minimum and the max, and supports 16 and 24-bit resolutions. It features a dynamic range of 109 decibels, and again, it is Massdrop 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.slashltt-sentronce to learn, well, to check it out, but I already said 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 are up there, by 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 next, so check out this recent video on channel SuperFun. I guarantee you, it will be fun and super, and it will be on a channel. Yep, it's all right in the name.