Mothboards

[Serendipity86]

I'm confused about the motherboards. I went with the gigabyte z97-hd3 because I thought gigabyte was a good one for gaming (and I didn't need the z97x gaming as I have no intention of using 2 graphics cards)... But I've just noticed the asus one's are more expensive... that could just be because they're a well known brand I suppose. I don't really know anything about motherboards :/ What are the differences between the Asus H97M-E, the Asus Z97M-PLUS and the Gigabyte Z97-HD3? And which one is better? Mostly just going to be playing games like WoW, elder scrolls online, minecraft, diablo etc, and then doing usual browsing/streaming, have got a quad core i5 and 8gb ram to go with it... Thanks

 

[keynes]

Any motherboard will offer the same performance for gaming. The ones ending with M are micro-ATX boards, smaller than the regular ATX and with less expansion slots. If you don't plan to add a 2nd gpu the hd3 is fine

 

[mantadog]

Asus and Gigabyte are 2 of the biggest names in the industry, they are both rock solid in terms of reliability and for gaming offer 0 performance gain.

The difference is in the detail, how they implement fan speed control, what overclocking features they have, how they physically lay out the boards and just small stuff like bundled software/colours/bios options