UD Was 20 Points Behind in Cinebench and So, It Unfortunately Got to Hang Out Down Here, Despite Performing Significantly Better in Render Times and Performing the Best When it Comes to CS:GO at Nearly 560 FPS Average.

The one that was bad across the board is a few reasons for this. First off, its 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.

So make sure you get subscribed so you don't miss it. 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 speed 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.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en(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 configurationsof power phases,(lighting sizzling)PCI express lanes,(robotic bleeping)and M.2 slots,(computer buzzing)how do you choose whichone is truly the best?Is it actually worthit to spend more money(cash register ringing)on a higher end motherboard?Well, Micro Center sponsored this videoand sent us 10 motherboardsfrom various manufacturers to test.And let me put it this way,if the results surprised us,then they're almost definitelygoing 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 bestselection on PC hardwareand other technology at anyof Micro Centers 25 locationsacross the United States.New customers can geta free 240 gigabyte SSDat Micro Center.Offer valid in-store only,no purchase necessary.(computer beeping)(upbeat music)For every motherboard,we tore down and rebuiltthe exact same test bench,reusing the same memory,CPU, cooler, power supply,SSD, and graphics card.We even made sure tograb the exact same typeof thermal paste for the last few boardswhen our first tube ran out.This is to control our variablesas tightly as possible.We even tested every systemin the same climatecontrolled environment.After building each bench,we'll have affiliate links down belowfor everything we used by the way,we immediately found an important reasonto choose one board over the other.Not every UEFI BIOS is created equally.Some of these didn't evenallow us to change the PL1and PL2 power limits that much, if at all.And while most of them did,we had to dig throughadvanced CPU settingsto find them in some cases.After powering on,we updated the BIOS, enabled XMP,and maxed out our longduration power limitswhenever possible.We could have gone for a more,you know, vanilla configuration here,but given this is a moreenthusiast-oriented explorationand that we are looking for benefitsof more premium motherboards,we felt this was the right approach.The reality is modern CPUshave gotten really goodat knowing exactly whenit is okay to boostand when it is not.These days, it's actuallypretty hard to break a CPU.And on most boards,you'll get some kindof warning when you toywith the settings that can do so.Enthusiast cooling hasalso gotten really goodwith most performance-tiergaming systems being equippedwith a 240 millimeter AiO water cooleror a large tower heatsink.We used a Noctua NH-D15,(screen whooshing)which will run you about115 bucks at Micro Centerand should give ourprocessor plenty of roomto stretch its legswhile providing someincidental cooling to the VRMs,which could help performance.Something to note is thateven with a great cooler,our Cinebench and Blender testsnever saw our CPU pushpast the 250 watt markand this is in spite ofsetting the power limitsto the maximum of like4,000 watts in some cases.So what gives with that?Well, the thing is,even if we do find someperformance differencesfrom board to board,changing the power limits is kind oflike removing the governor on a car.Yes, theoretically,the speedometer goes upto 300 miles an hour,but your engine is stillgoing to max out on its ownand like a car,you can open up some more headroomby increasing voltage,adjusting load line calibration,and manually changing thefrequency of your chip,but that's a topic foranother video, like this one,or for you to explore by subbingto an extreme overclockerlike der8auer.This video is all aboutout-of-the-factory performanceand right out of the gate,I'm really surprised.Our big winner was MSI's Godlike Z590,which ended up with thehighest Cinebench scoreand the fastest Blender render times.To be clear,(screen whooshing)this is a $900 motherboard,competing against boards inthe 100 to $200 category.But I mean, even in the dayswhen motherboards affectedsystem performance by a lot,it was common to see expensive boardsthat were loaded up with features.In this case, Thunderbolt 4, Wifi 6E,obviously super premium power delivery,but it didn't actually offera clear performance advantageunless you were tryingto break sub zero overclocking records.Of course,that performance advantagewas still pretty small.So let's take a look at theboard that came in second place,at least in terms of Cinebench.Our ASRock Z590 Pro 4 wasbehind by just 19 pointsin Cinebench and ran onlya couple of seconds slowerin the renders, yet managed awhopping 1% more FPS in CS:GO.Okay, that last bit doesn'tsound that impressive,but it costs a fractionas much, at 185 US dollarsand while it only has 14 powerphases with 50 amp chokes,2.5 gigabit LAN, and no onboard wifi,the choice is pretty clearif 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 waterbottle are a great combo.As for the rest of our results,they're mostly what we were expecting.CPUs are more integratedthan ever these days.So motherboards don'tcontribute like they used to,but there are some outliers.For instance, MSI wins the crownfor the best microATX B560 board as well,beating out three other Z590 boards,at least in Cinebench.The B560M MAG Mortar was slower to renderby eight or 7% in BMW andClassroom respectively,but it had the thirdhighest Cinebench score,the second highest FPS in CS:GOand the second fastest turn time in Civ 6.B550s aren't supposed to overclock,so picking up a supposedlylower tier boardfor its performance isa little un-intuitive.Meanwhile, MSI's Z590-APro lost in Cinebenchby just 17 points.But how?Well, you could explainthis with some simple runto run variants.That's such a narrow victorythat it's barely one at all.You'd think that,but we actually reran ourbenches on every boardand these margins betweenthem, while narrow,were surprisingly consistent.One of the major benefitswe saw with MSI boards waswhen you set them up,it asks you what kind ofcooling solution you have.The more robust solution you pick,the higher they push both the longand short duration power limits.Since an NH-D15 is basically as goodas a solid water cooling setup,we chose water-cooledinstead of tower coolerand it maxed out the limitsfor us at 4,000 watts.You could easily achieve thesame on a different brand,but this kind ofuser-friendliness is somethingthe others could learn from.Of course, performanceisn't the entire story.MSI's Z590 board managed to stayabout 10 degrees cooler on the VRMs.So while the 90 plus degreesof our B560M MAG Mortar isn't out of specfor these kinds of components,a hot day could easilypush that to 100 or 110.And remember, we have someair flow around the socket.If you're using an AiO oryou're in a tight case,you might not.As for our losers,well, as you could have guessed,it's mostly the B560s andour solitary H510 board.The Gigabyte Z590 UD was 20 points behindin Cinebench and so, it unfortunately getsto hang out down here,despite performing significantlybetter in the render timesand performing the best when it comesto CS:GO at nearly 560 FPS average.So if you're purelyafter gaming performance,this one might call to youfrom Micro Center's shelfor in one of their custom prebuilts,despite being down herein the loser's bracket.As for the one that wasbad across the board,there are a few reasons for this.First off is their inabilityto set higher power limits.Most of them capped outat 125, 150, or 200 wattsand increasing the durationlimit didn't help allthat 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 upto the 11900Ks full 250 watt potential.They typically have fewer power phasesand a less robust power delivery systemwith just one 8-pin EPS connector.Speaking of phases,we're building out a DIYphase change CPU coolerwith some help from♪ Brian the Electrician ♪- So make sure you get subscribedso you don't miss it.(bell ringing)Back to our B560 boards though.These power draw limits aren't surprising,but what is surprisingare the bottom two boards.You might be shocked to learnthat the ASRock H510M(cardboard scratching)wasn't in last place.It has no XMP optionand memory can only go ashigh as 3,200 megahertz.So it did see the worst CS:GOscore at 472 FPS average.However, it absolutelycrushed our loser boardin Cinebench by roughly 4,000 points.Render times were also wonby nearly an extra minutein the BMW render and twominutes in the Classroom.As impressive as this is,these results are stillsignificantly lowerthan the B560M board above it.But what the heck is going onwith our Gigabyte B560M DS3H?Well, power phasesdon't seem to matter allthat much until they do.This thing starts out strongand the initial render inCinebench R23 finishes quickly,giving you hope, but witheach 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 placewhile CPU temperatures aremediocre at 80 to 84 degrees.What gives?Well, our VRM temperatures are terrible,quickly hitting 112 degrees Celsius.This board is trying to squeezeall the power it can outfor our CPU, but theload is simply too muchfor the system to bearand it buckles under the pressure,dropping wattage and clock speedsin an effort to lower the temperatures,bringing them back upto see if it's okay yetand then quickly settling back down again.It's like a person trying totake a bath in boiling water.The toe dips in, they recoil,and they wait a momentand then they try againand it just keeps going like that.How other CPU heavy tasks sawsimilarly poor performance,with this board seeing theworst turn times in Civ 6and the second worst FPS in CS:GO.I have a hunch that ifthe memory had been setto 3,200 megahertz,it would have lost the battleto 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 thehead of the pack at $185.The BIOS was relatively easy to use.It has a lot of optionsfor expansion and storage,and it comes with ASRock'sbase frequency boost technologythat supposedly pushesnon-K CPUs past their limitthrough base clock overclocking.So theoretically, you shouldbe able to buy this board,put a lower end chip in it,and still get pretty good performanceuntil you can afford something better.Our honorable mention isMSI's B560M MAG Mortar.For a smaller machine on abudget, it's a great choice,just like Micro Center, today's sponsor.Get the best prices and thebest selection on PC hardwareand technology at any of theMicro Centers 25 locationsacross the United States.New customers can geta free 240 gigabyte SSDat Micro Center,offer valid in-store only,no purchase necessary.Thanks for watching, guys.If you enjoyed this video,make sure to check outour How Motherboards Work,Turbo Nerd Edition fora better explanationof how some of this works.I'll have that linked down below.\n"