(motherboards crashing)
(thunder booming) - There can be only one motherboard. Because your system needs only one CPU. But with so many options, all with different configurations of power phases,
(lighting sizzling) PCI express lanes,
(robotic bleeping) and M.2 slots,
(computer buzzing) how do you choose which
one is truly the best? Is it actually worth
it to spend more money (cash register ringing)
on a higher end motherboard? Well, Micro Center sponsored this video and sent us 10 motherboards from various manufacturers to test. And let me put it this way, if the results surprised us, then they're almost definitely
going to surprise you. Like this
(box thudding) was not the biggest loser,
(words popping) not by a long shot (box thudding)
and neither is Micro Center. Get the best prices and best
selection on PC hardware and other technology at any
of Micro Centers 25 locations across the United States. New customers can get
a free 240 gigabyte SSD at Micro Center. Offer valid in-store only,
no purchase necessary. (computer beeping) (upbeat music) For every motherboard, we tore down and rebuilt
the exact same test bench, reusing the same memory,
CPU, cooler, power supply, SSD, and graphics card. We even made sure to
grab the exact same type of thermal paste for the last few boards when our first tube ran out. This is to control our variables
as tightly as possible. We even tested every system in the same climate
controlled environment. After building each bench, we'll have affiliate links down below for everything we used by the way, we immediately found an important reason to choose one board over the other. Not every UEFI BIOS is created equally. Some of these didn't even
allow us to change the PL1 and PL2 power limits that much, if at all. And while most of them did, we had to dig through
advanced CPU settings to find them in some cases. After powering on, we updated the BIOS, enabled XMP, and maxed out our long
duration power limits whenever possible. We could have gone for a more, you know, vanilla configuration here, but given this is a more
enthusiast-oriented exploration and that we are looking for benefits of more premium motherboards, we felt this was the right approach. The reality is modern CPUs
have gotten really good at knowing exactly when
it is okay to boost and when it is not. These days, it's actually
pretty hard to break a CPU. And on most boards, you'll get some kind
of warning when you toy with the settings that can do so. Enthusiast cooling has
also gotten really good with most performance-tier
gaming systems being equipped with a 240 millimeter AiO water cooler or a large tower heatsink. We used a Noctua NH-D15,
(screen whooshing) which will run you about
115 bucks at Micro Center and should give our
processor plenty of room to stretch its legs while providing some
incidental cooling to the VRMs, which could help performance. Something to note is that
even with a great cooler, our Cinebench and Blender tests never saw our CPU push
past the 250 watt mark and this is in spite of
setting the power limits to the maximum of like
4,000 watts in some cases. So what gives with that? Well, the thing is, even if we do find some
performance differences from board to board, changing the power limits is kind of like removing the governor on a car. Yes, theoretically,
the speedometer goes up to 300 miles an hour, but your engine is still
going to max out on its own and like a car, you can open up some more headroom by increasing voltage,
adjusting load line calibration, and manually changing the
frequency of your chip, but that's a topic for
another video, like this one, or for you to explore by subbing
to an extreme overclocker like der8auer. This video is all about
out-of-the-factory performance and right out of the gate, I'm really surprised. Our big winner was MSI's Godlike Z590, which ended up with the
highest Cinebench score and the fastest Blender render times. To be clear, (screen whooshing)
this is a $900 motherboard, competing against boards in
the 100 to $200 category. But I mean, even in the days when motherboards affected
system performance by a lot, it was common to see expensive boards that were loaded up with features. In this case, Thunderbolt 4, Wifi 6E, obviously super premium power delivery, but it didn't actually offer
a clear performance advantage unless you were trying to break sub zero overclocking records. Of course, that performance advantage
was still pretty small. So let's take a look at the
board that came in second place, at least in terms of Cinebench. Our ASRock Z590 Pro 4 was
behind by just 19 points in Cinebench and ran only
a couple of seconds slower in the renders, yet managed a
whopping 1% more FPS in CS:GO. Okay, that last bit doesn't
sound that impressive, but it costs a fraction
as much, at 185 US dollars and while it only has 14 power
phases with 50 amp chokes, 2.5 gigabit LAN, and no onboard wifi, the choice is pretty clear
if you care about value. Buy one of these instead, and maybe use the money you saved (screen whooshing)
at lttstore.com. The beanie and the water
bottle are a great combo. As for the rest of our results, they're mostly what we were expecting. CPUs are more integrated
than ever these days. So motherboards don't
contribute like they used to, but there are some outliers. For instance, MSI wins the crown for the best microATX B560 board as well, beating out three other Z590 boards, at least in Cinebench. The B560M MAG Mortar was slower to render by eight or 7% in BMW and
Classroom respectively, but it had the third
highest Cinebench score, the second highest FPS in CS:GO and the second fastest turn time in Civ 6. B550s aren't supposed to overclock, so picking up a supposedly
lower tier board for its performance is
a little un-intuitive. Meanwhile, MSI's Z590-A
Pro lost in Cinebench by just 17 points. But how? Well, you could explain
this with some simple run to run variants. That's such a narrow victory that it's barely one at all. You'd think that, but we actually reran our
benches on every board and these margins between
them, while narrow, were surprisingly consistent. One of the major benefits
we saw with MSI boards was when you set them up, it asks you what kind of
cooling solution you have. The more robust solution you pick, the higher they push both the long and short duration power limits. Since an NH-D15 is basically as good as a solid water cooling setup, we chose water-cooled
instead of tower cooler and it maxed out the limits
for us at 4,000 watts. You could easily achieve the
same on a different brand, but this kind of
user-friendliness is something the others could learn from. Of course, performance
isn't the entire story. MSI's Z590 board managed to stay about 10 degrees cooler on the VRMs. So while the 90 plus degrees of our B560M MAG Mortar isn't out of spec for these kinds of components, a hot day could easily
push that to 100 or 110. And remember, we have some
air flow around the socket. If you're using an AiO or
you're in a tight case, you might not. As for our losers, well, as you could have guessed, it's mostly the B560s and
our solitary H510 board. The Gigabyte Z590 UD was 20 points behind in Cinebench and so, it unfortunately gets to hang out down here, despite performing significantly
better in the render times and performing the best when it comes to CS:GO at nearly 560 FPS average. So if you're purely
after gaming performance, this one might call to you
from Micro Center's shelf or in one of their custom prebuilts, despite being down here
in the loser's bracket. As for the one that was
bad across the board, there are a few reasons for this. First off is their inability
to set higher power limits. Most of them capped out
at 125, 150, or 200 watts and increasing the duration
limit didn't help all that much either. Most of them aren't running too hot. And if you chose a matching mid-tier CPU, they would most likely be fine, but they're just not able to live up to the 11900Ks full 250 watt potential. They typically have fewer power phases and a less robust power delivery system with just one 8-pin EPS connector. Speaking of phases, we're building out a DIY
phase change CPU cooler with some help from ♪ Brian the Electrician ♪ - So make sure you get subscribed so you don't miss it.
(bell ringing) Back to our B560 boards though. These power draw limits aren't surprising, but what is surprising
are the bottom two boards. You might be shocked to learn that the ASRock H510M
(cardboard scratching) wasn't in last place. It has no XMP option and memory can only go as
high as 3,200 megahertz. So it did see the worst CS:GO
score at 472 FPS average. However, it absolutely
crushed our loser board in Cinebench by roughly 4,000 points. Render times were also won
by nearly an extra minute in the BMW render and two
minutes in the Classroom. As impressive as this is, these results are still
significantly lower than the B560M board above it. But what the heck is going on
with our Gigabyte B560M DS3H? Well, power phases
don't seem to matter all that much until they do. This thing starts out strong and the initial render in
Cinebench R23 finishes quickly, giving you hope, but with
each subsequent render, the score goes down and down and down, all the way to about 7,688 points. Ouch. If we check our clock speeds and power, they're all over the place while CPU temperatures are
mediocre at 80 to 84 degrees. What gives? Well, our VRM temperatures are terrible, quickly hitting 112 degrees Celsius. This board is trying to squeeze
all the power it can out for our CPU, but the
load is simply too much for the system to bear and it buckles under the pressure, dropping wattage and clock speeds in an effort to lower the temperatures, bringing them back up
to see if it's okay yet and then quickly settling back down again. It's like a person trying to
take a bath in boiling water. The toe dips in, they recoil, and they wait a moment
and then they try again and it just keeps going like that. How other CPU heavy tasks saw
similarly poor performance, with this board seeing the
worst turn times in Civ 6 and the second worst FPS in CS:GO. I have a hunch that if
the memory had been set to 3,200 megahertz, it would have lost the battle
to the ASRock H510M as well. So our winner is obvious, but it's not the Godlike. As it stands, the best board of the bunch, with prices we can actually recommend, is the ASRock Z590 Pro4. It didn't come out on top in any category, but it was always near the
head of the pack at $185. The BIOS was relatively easy to use. It has a lot of options
for expansion and storage, and it comes with ASRock's
base frequency boost technology that supposedly pushes
non-K CPUs past their limit through base clock overclocking. So theoretically, you should
be able to buy this board, put a lower end chip in it, and still get pretty good performance until you can afford something better. Our honorable mention is
MSI's B560M MAG Mortar. For a smaller machine on a
budget, it's a great choice, just like Micro Center, today's sponsor. Get the best prices and the
best selection on PC hardware and technology at any of the
Micro Centers 25 locations across the United States. New customers can get
a free 240 gigabyte SSD at Micro Center, offer valid in-store only,
no purchase necessary. Thanks for watching, guys. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to check out
our How Motherboards Work, Turbo Nerd Edition for
a better explanation of how some of this works. I'll have that linked down below.
More money means Anthony Young.