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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Wednesday, 16 August 2017 11:01
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Written by garfi3ld
If you aren’t into flashy builds or if you are building a PC to be used in an office environment it seems like it is getting harder and harder to find simple but feature filled motherboards. Thankfully a few of the manufacturers like MSI have Pro focused lines. This is especially important with X299, a platform that overall seems better focused on workstation builds. Well MSI just happened to send over the X299 SLI Plus from their Pro lineup and today I’m going to check it out and see what it has going on.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 03 July 2017 16:25
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Written by garfi3ld
After taking a look at the new Intel Core X CPUs and one X299 board I took a quick break to check out Gigabytes new Mini-ITX board for AM4 and now I’m back at it checking out the second X299 board to come into the office. This time the board is from Gigabyte and it is a little more down to earth compared to the Asus X299 Deluxe’s nearly $500 price point. Today I’m going to check out the Gigabyte X299 Gaming 3 from the Aorus brand. It isn’t Gigabytes lowest priced board, but at just under $280 for the MSRP it is down close to the range that people who aren’t shopping for $1000 or more CPUs would be looking. So today I’m going to see what it’s all about, test it, then run down where it stands in the market.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 26 June 2017 17:32
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Written by garfi3ld
It’s hard to believe that the Ryzen 7 launch was three months ago but with the Ryzen 5 launch and the recently Intel launch, things have just been crazy. During that time though I have been constantly on the lookout for ITX boards. AMD spoke about their X300 and A300 chipsets at the Ryzen 7 launch but things have been suspiciously quiet about them for the last few months but a few motherboard manufacturers have been working on their own ITX AM4 boards using the X370 or B350 chipsets. Gigabyte has finished up their variation and it came in late last week. I immediately started in on testing to see just how feasible Ryzen is in ITX. So let's take a closer look at the Gigabyte AB350N Gaming WiFi and then see how it performs!
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Wednesday, 21 June 2017 19:35
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Written by garfi3ld
So yesterday I took a look at the controversial Core-X CPUs from Intel. One of the best parts about a new enthusiast chipset and CPUs though are all the amazing motherboards that come along with them. During Computex, all of the boards were shown off but availability right before the launch was tight so the only board to come in time was the Asus Prime X299 Deluxe. Being a Prime board it isn’t super flashy but Asus didn’t skimp on the features at all. On top of being packed full of anything you can ask for the board even has unexpected features like a Wireless AD adapter in addition to the standard a/b/g/n/ac adapter and it even has a what they call LiveDash, a small display that is customizable and goes well beyond the standard LED post indicator. So today I’m going to try to get through all of the features of the Prime X299 Deluxe and see what else Asus is hiding.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 09 June 2017 12:39
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Written by garfi3ld
So I had the chance to check out our first ITX Z270 board with the Gigabyte Z270N Gaming 5 just last week. As soon as I was done testing, I swapped it out and jumped right into the second board that came in, the Asus Strix Z270I Gaming. This board was sent specifically for an upcoming project build, just like the Asus Strix GTX 1080 11Gbps that I also took a look at last week. While I wait for a few of the last components for the build I wanted to take a closer look at the board and make sure it was going to be what we are looking for.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Tuesday, 30 May 2017 22:00
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Written by garfi3ld
Surprisingly, even though we covered a whole list of Z270 motherboards after Intel’s launch, it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that we ended up with any ITX boards. The first ITX Z270 board to come into the office is the Z270N Gaming 5 from Gigabyte. This is their higher end ITX offering. It has a touch of orange in its styling and I’m excited to see what Gigabyte has to offer the LAN rig and higher end SFF build market so today I’m going to check out its features then take a quick look at the performance.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 14 April 2017 09:01
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Written by garfi3ld
After the Intel 200 Series launch, I took a look at a range of boards on the Z270 chipset all in the mid range as far as pricing and features. The Asus Strix Z270E board ended up being great and I have been using it with all of the Ryzen testing as well for comparison testing. Well, a shipping mix-up when waiting for a Z270 ITX board for an upcoming project build meant I ended up with an Asus Strix H270F Gaming in its place. It might have been an accident, but it is a good chance to check out a similar board but from the H270 line. H270 drops overclocking and gives a lower number of PCI lanes from the CPU which means less for PCIe options, fewer M.2 storage options, and less for USB. But it still gives a lot of features at a lower price point, so today I'm going to check out the Strix H270F and see if it’s a good option for someone who might not be planning on overclocking their new build at all.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 13 March 2017 10:44
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Written by garfi3ld
It’s crazy to look back at the original Crosshair and see just how much things have changed. Hell, the original was running on a Nvidia nForce 590 chipset, how many people even remember that Nvidia had their own chipsets! Anyhow, even all the way back to the original Asus has always packed the Crosshair boards full of features and from what I’ve seen of the new Crosshair VI Hero it looks like they have done the same thing again. This is one of the two boards that came with our initial review setup for the new Ryzen processors. So today I’m going to check out the new Crosshair VI Hero and see what it is all about and find out if it is a good option to consider for those of you excited to build a new high-end AMD build.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 06 March 2017 17:23
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Written by garfi3ld
Beyond the exciting new CPU and the nice wooden box that came with our Ryzen review kit, down in the bottom I found an awesome looking motherboard to test with. AMD and MSI had slipped us an X370 XPower Gaming Titanium along with the rest of the kit. While I’ve taken a look at a lot of MSIs boards, I haven’t had the chance to check out any of their Titanium boards and it is an area where I think MSI has really been showing some creativity, so I’m excited to take a closer look at the new board and find out if the Titanium has the features to back up its good looks.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Thursday, 02 March 2017 09:03
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Written by garfi3ld
Part of the excitement about the Ryzen launch is the possibility of getting high performance at a much lower price than the premium that Intel has had on it recently. With the new CPUs, some of the new X370 boards have pushed their pricing up with all of the added features. Well, this is where the B350 chipset comes in. AMD dropped the number of USB and SAT ports on the B350 and you can’t get SLI on a B350 board but they still allow overclocking and the prices for B350 boards are a lot cheaper. This will come into play more with the mid range Ryzen CPUs, but even paired with the Ryzen 7 1700, a B350 board can be a good value. So today I’m going to check out the AB350 Gaming 3 from Gigabyte as it seems to fit the bill perfectly with a good feature list at a good price.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 10 February 2017 09:06
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Written by garfi3ld
It's just about impossible to check out all of the different Z270 boards offered by all of the manufacturers, but I have at least taken a look at a mix so far. Missing though was Asus, so today I’m going to be checking out the Asus Strix Z270E Gaming. Asus’s Z270 product lineup is broken down into four categories, Maximus as their high-end gaming boards, the Stix line as their gaming boards with lighting, the TUF series that is well tuff, and the Prime series are simpler for styling but still packed with a lot of the same features. Asus even put together a nice website to help you figure out what fits you best. So the Strix Z270E Gaming that I’m going to check out today is a full ATX board up at the top of the Strix lineup. I’ve only checked out Strix video cards, so I’m excited to see what Asus has going on with the Strix boards.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Monday, 30 January 2017 13:30
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Written by garfi3ld
So not everyone looking for a Z270 board wants or needs all of the gaming-focused features that most of the Z270 boards have. Specifically, some people just want something clean and simple looking without any special lighting and MSI seems to have just the thing. Their Z270 SLI Plus has a black and silver theme without any RGB lighting. It’s a lot closer to a budget board but it still has a few of the features you would need/want when building a simple gaming PC including the SLI support. So today I’m going to check it out and see what it has going for features, software, and performance. Let’s dive in!
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 27 January 2017 09:32
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Written by garfi3ld
So it's almost tax time and this year we couldn’t ask for better timing on hardware launches. Intel launched their new chipsets and CPUs around CES time and AMD has their new CPUs and Chipsets coming here soon as well. So it looks like this year might be a big year for hardware, especially with more companies refocusing again on the PC. Well, Gigabyte introduced a whole selection of Z270 boards at CES and along with that they also expanded the reach of their Aorus line. It used to just be their gaming laptop lineup, but they have now brought together that brand with their gaming peripherals, motherboard, and video cards as well. The first Aorus product to come in is their new Z270X-Gaming K7 board. Let’s take a look and see what it’s all about.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 26 February 2016 11:11
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Written by garfi3ld
With companies finding ways to pack more and more features into Mini-ITX motherboards the small form factor market has flourished over the past few years. We are finally seeing a lot of people running smaller builds at events as LAN rigs and the idea of a higher end build doesn’t require a case that hardly fits in your car and needs a backbelt to pickup anymore. In fact, even when looking past the smallest builds we have been seeing cases designed for Mini-ITX that are still more mid tower designs. This is because most builds only need a single video card these days and built in NICs have improved in quality, ITX boards now sometimes have wireless, and even onboard audio has improved (and some people have moved to USB audio). All of that means most people don’t really need huge builds. I already took a look at MSIs Z170 ITX gaming board and today I’m checking out the Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5, Gigabytes highest featured ITX board to see what they have packed into the ITX form factor.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 15 January 2016 21:17
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Written by garfi3ld
Over the last few years small builds have been becoming more and more popular. Both for LAN rigs like we have been using for a long time, but even for main PCs. This is partially due to more parts being available but mostly some people are tired of dealing with huge heavy cases, especially when you can do nearly anything you want in the Mini-ITX form factor. Late this fall I started thinking about a new LAN rig, maybe even another iteration of our LunchBox series, before I did that though I really needed to check out the new Z170 boards. That leads me to today where I’m going to check out MSI’s gaming focused Mini-ITX board, the Z170I Gaming Pro AC. I’ve used a few of MSI’s ITX boards in builds before and I’m excited to see what this one has to offer.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Wednesday, 23 September 2015 23:22
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Written by garfi3ld
With the launch of Intel’s latest chipset and the i7-6700 CPU it’s no surprise that they brought along with them a long list of new motherboards from every manufacture. At the launch I took a look at one of MSIs boards. After the launch though we jumped into GPU mode and covered the latest budget cards. Past that I slipped in a vacation and then of course our 17th LAN event. With all of that past us I can finally revisit Z170 and take a look at the Gigabyte GA-Z170X Gaming 7. I’m excited to see what Gigabyte has packed into the board as far as features go and to find out how it compares to the MSI. So today I’m going to dig through the Gaming 7s features then put it to the test, let’s get to it!
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 07 August 2015 16:33
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Written by garfi3ld
We can’t very well launch a completely new CPU with a new chipset without a motherboard right? Well MSI sent over their new Z170A Gaming M5 motherboard for us to test out Skylake and also to see what MSI has to offer in their new Z170 boards. Today I will be taking a look at their mid ranged gaming motherboard. We have already seen how Skylake performs with our i7-6700K review, now I’m going to dig into the Z170A Gaming M5 and see what sets it apart from the competition. Enjoy!
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Wednesday, 22 April 2015 17:53
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Written by garfi3ld
So what is now years ago Adam and I were at a press event for Gigabyte at CES. At that event I spent some time playing against a pro gamer and we also had the chance to see them introduce their new games series of motherboards. At the end of that speech they slipped in a quick sneak peak of a new line of overclocking motherboards with an orange theme that they called OC Orange. Now I think everyone knows just how much I love orange and OC orange to me is LanOC orange, a color that we have used on the website from nearly the start. At that time Adam wrote that he imagined that I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I got my hands on one of the boards. Well it has been a long few years, but today is finally the day. Gigabyte sent over their new X99-SOC Champion flagship overclocking board and today I’m going to dig into it and see what it is all about. Oddly enough now that I can sleep, I want nothing more than to stay up and see what sets the board apart from the competition.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 26 December 2014 13:18
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Written by garfi3ld
So last week I took a look at Asus’s AM3+ board, today I have the chance to take a look at a more recent AMD based ROG board called the Crossblade Ranger. Asus launched the Crossblade Ranger not to long ago and as you can tell from the lack of any numbers in the name this is their first Republic of Gamers FM2+ board. Why did they take so long to bring one out? Frankly the FM2+ platform was always designed to be more of a mainstream platform but that didn’t stop some people from using them for gaming. Asus noticed there was interest in a gaming focused board and here we are. Today I’m going to dive into the Crossblade Ranger and see what kind of features Asus packed in then after that I will get it on the testbench and make sure it performs like it should as well.
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Category: Motherboards
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Published: Friday, 19 December 2014 11:08
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Written by garfi3ld
Due to Intel releasing new chipsets often a lot of people might think that the motherboard market has a big focus on Intel boards. As I have seen in the past on our forums, our Facebook, and even at our events there is still a large AMD following that is hungry for the latest and greatest to support their preferred vender as well. Well when looking to lock in a board for future AM3+ testing I ended up with the Asus Crosshair V Formula in my hands. Today I’m going to dig into it and see what makes it Asus’s flagship AMD board.
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