Motherboard Supertest

Find the right Intel 9-series board for your gaming PC.

Dave James gives seven 9-series motherboards a test drive, and finds the best one to buy

When you’re putting together your own PC there’s only one place to start, and that’s with your choice of motherboard. Very little else in PC componentry has such a deep impact on what your final PC will be like. Whether that’s in terms of general system performance, connectivity or even size, the choice of motherboard can either open or close a lot of doors in your new build.

So what are my options?

The first choice is what processor you want—Intel or AMD. Frankly, you always want Intel—it’s whether or not you can afford it. The PC Gamer Rig has been Intel-based for the longest time, mostly because the top Intel chips place no restriction on the performance of your graphics card. Cheaper AMD processors most definitely do, so they’re only an option for a budget gaming PC.

Intel it is. What next?

Now you have to decide how big you want your PC to be. One of the biggest bonuses of the migration of old motherboard technology onto the CPU— memory controllers, etc—is that you don’t need a lot of components on the board any more. That in turn means there’s no need to have such large motherboards or large PCs.

Small motherboards can be just as powerful as their larger ATX equivalents and just as feature-rich. Pick a mini ITX if you want the smallest of all and have no interest in multi-GPU arrangements. Go for a micro ATX if you want to hedge your bets but still want a relatively svelte machine.

What’s all this about ‘9-series’?

The new 9-series chipsets are no more expensive than the 8-series they replace, but come with extra features and offer the tantalizing possibility of compatibility with the next Intel CPU architecture, the 14nm Broadwell. They also take existing Haswell CPUs as they use the same LGA 1150 socket.

The ones we’re interested in are the Z97 and the H97 chipsets. Z97 comes with all the bells and whistles, the most impressive of which is support for the newest forms of storage. Sounds boring, but the new M.2 and SATA Express interfaces are the first designed with SSD as a primary concern. SSD is a gamer’s friend, and these new interaces push past the speed limit the current SATA interface has put on the tech.

Z97 also officially supports overclocking and multi-GPU gaming, while H97 officially doesn’t. However, motherboard manufacturers have become a little lax in following Intel’s guidelines on these things, and to be honest Intel doesn’t seem that bothered either. So in fact the H97 can also overclock, and offers support for CrossFireX and SLI.

Who makes the best boards?

That’s what we’re here to find out. I’m reviewing a selection of both H97 and Z97 motherboards over the next few pages, in a variety of sizes, to answer that very question.