Motherboard Gurus
LeatherGryphon
Posts: 12,096
in The Commons
I've decided to build a new computer for lower middleclass DAZ work. I know can do it. What I don't have is experience of comparative brand name quality.
MOTHERBOARDS: Is there any wisdom out there about motherboard brand names? Like MSI, ASUS, GigaByte, EVGA? All good, or are some better than others?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I would just get a used workstation and add ecc ram and upgrade the xeon processor. Most business class pc's are great computers but businesses rarely put alot of ram and better processors. This is easier than building one from scratch. Check craigslist locally.
Asus is my preferred board but Asrock, Gigabyte and MSI all make good ones as well. I'd avoid the brands generally only sold in China which can be found on sites like Aliexpress.
As to buying used, you might find a quality used one but tbh the Xeon based ones are all essentially obsolete. You'll get far more use and capability from even a budget build made from new parts today.
Make your self an account at PCPartsPicker.com and choose one of their recommended builds and customize that suggested built as you like.
https://pcpartpicker.com
My first choice is always ASUS, MSI is also a good dependable brand.
I’d avoid any that are labeled ACME... a certain coyote has proven their products to be fairly unreliable and dangerous.
What about EVGA? Their prices seem to always be much higher.
Not that I want to pay more, but do they have some attribute or value that other brands don't?
The CPU and chipset determine the number of PCIE lanes. Not the mobo.
Also a GPU to be used just for rendering only needs one PCIE lane, you just need a riser to go from a half length slot to a full one. x16 slots are important for cards that will drive video but not for additional cards.
Argh..., so many options, so few brain cells left.
I miss the days of about a hundred switches and a hundred lights on the computer's control panel, a dozen steps to completely power up the computer, the necessity to remember which card decks to load into the reader hopper for that particular day's tasks. The big books of schematics to use to find the correct wire-wrap pins to add or remove connections necessary to enable or disable cpu functions or apply manufacturer suggested h/w patches. The necessity to write one's own floating-point arithmetic subroutines and disk drivers. It was all so "simple" back in the '70s. 
I always buy Asus (mobos & graphics cards) and I've never been disappointed yet. Especially mobos. (I find choice of card is a bit more personal for most folk, so that's up to you).
But no matter what, when you build your own, the research will always end up taking a LOT more time than the build itself. But it's fun too, and YouTube is your friend.
Before you buy, poke around on the support forums for that motherboard. If I had done this, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache from the Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7 that I bought. All the problems that I was experiencing with video cards and RAM were experienced by other people, and Gigabyte's slowness to fix these problems with BIOS updates were all documented in Black and White if I had just done my homework.
Thank y'all for the replies.
Signposts on a long journey.