Hello wow friends, I’m interested in building a desktop computer in 2024 and I’ve been doing some research on this for the last year or so and I think I’m ready to do it now.
During my research I saw or maybe read that ASUS motherboards were strongly advised to avoid, have things cleared up here or should I consider another brand instead like Gigabyte or ASRock? maybe MSI?
I am looking for something maybe on the Intel platform I7 or I9, No plans to do any overclocking yet but maybe in the future once I educate myself a little more on it.
Any recommendations?
Games I typically play : Wow, Overwatch 2, Diablo 3 , Diablo IV, POE, Last Epoch.
I recommend you use a site like pcpartpicker dot com to ensure the pieces you found are compatible. It’s not 100% foolproof, but catches many things. I wouldn’t worry too much about overclocking. If you buy a K designated CPU it will probably have its own overclocking modes built in. Many online games don’t really utilize all the extra cores of an I7 or I9. I’d pick the fastest CPU possible and go from there. If you also use processor heavy applications like CAD/CAM, etc. then go for the I7 or I9. Gamers need heavy duty GPUs. Get as nice as you can afford.
I watched a ton of youtube stuff. The channels i like are gamers nexus, hardware unboxed and jays two cents. A good one for combo choices and budget is pc builder channel. Take your time and don’t pay attention to the trolls.
I bought an msi z790-a pro it was the cheapest board I could get at the time with ddr 5 ram. I wanted a I5-13600k but they were sold out so I got a 13900k. That cpu caused cooling issues so I then got a corsair 360mm aio that didn’t fit in my case lol. Bought a corsair 5000d airflow case with extra rgb fans. Its very easy to blow your brains out when building a pc.
Yeah… Id take that with a grain of salt. I build gaming rigs for a living and have been doing so since the 90s. 70% if not more are Asus Strix or MSI motherboards. What motherboard do our Customers swap out most? Asrock. Most of our Asrock builds come back and they wind up swapping to MSI or Asus. Asrock BIOs is complete junk. Gigabyte is decent too. But out of all Motherboards Asus Strix and MSI come back the least
The two best high end Motherboards are Asus and MSI. Gigabyte is close behind with their Aorus Series motherboards. None is better than the other. They are about equal on features, quality and price. If you are NOT going for a high end motherboard like an ROG Strix Series? I would 100% agree avoid Asus. Their mid/low tier motherboards are trash imo. The ROG Strix series? They are top notch Just join a few PC Builders Facebook groups. You will see most gamers using Strix or MSI motherboards. ESPECIALLY intel users.
With that said I would highly advice NOT to your build yet. Arrow Lake from intel is dropping later this year along with Ryzen 9000 series. BOTH Arrow Lake (intel) and Ryzen 9000 (AMD) will blow ALL current CPUs out of the water. This is going to be more like a 3 generation performance leap. BOTH new Intel and AMD cpus that drop in Q3 of this year are fueled by competition. So so expect them to be HUGE leaps. ALL current CPU leaks confirm this btw. If you can wait? Id 100% wait till Q4 of this year and make your platform choice then.
Save your $$ in the mean time and do your build later this year after both Arrow Lake and 9000 series drop.
You need to specify your monitor resolution and your target max budget. Hard to recommend without a budget target. Unless you want someone to put a $5000 build.
ASUS motherboards are better if you update the BIOS first. Mine was notorious for damaging CPUs but the update was available when I bought it so it didn’t bother me. I did get a couple crashes and luckily a Gamers Nexus video fixed it for me. I couldn’t pinpoint the issue and I thought my RAM was bad, but it ended up being an ASUS overclocking setting being enabled by default. I went in my BIOS and turned EXPO back on and disabled the overclock and everything’s been great ever since. I understand enabling EXPO/XMP but the overclock setting annoyed me.
Just did another 7950x3D build for a Gamer/Video Editor. He went with the Asus Strix x670e Gaming-E Wifi. Before I even put in the CPU I used Bios Flashback to update the Bios. He loves his build. Yet to see any issues from AMD in the last 8 months+
Strongly disagree, from experience. I’ve been building gaming PC’s for close to 30 years. Asus is one of the most consistently reliable brands out there, IMO. But, knowledge comes from experience.
This man knows what’s up. Same I’ve been doing this since the 90s and there is a reason the customer almost always request an Asus Strix build. I went with a strix motherboard on my own rig and I absolutely love it. I could have just been lucky but out of all the brands I have tried asus is the one brand I’ve never had to RMA.
As a side note I also normally default to it just because I find the ROG series motherboards to be the most aesthetically pleasing
Technically, both. ASUS got a lot of crap because their boards were among those most commonly frying 7800X3Ds, and they fought customers on the warranties. I saw some reports of it happening on some MSI and Gigabyte boards, but not much. Never any on ASrock, so I gave them a shot this round and have been happy, since I don’t like MSI boards in general. These days, all of that has been fixed with BIOS updates.
If you’re a big MMO gamer, the extra cache on AMD’s X3D CPUs (namely the 7800X3D for pure gaming) are the best options.
Going Intel, probably get a 13700k or 900k. There isn’t really an incentive to purchase the 14k series, yet, but you could grab one if you want to, since they’re supposedly working on their APO software for that–in the latest Gamers Nexus news on it, I saw “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands” listed in the games, but it was greyed out. They run hotter and perform within margin of error on most things with their 13k counterparts. They are very power hungry, so be prepared to compensate with a stronger PSU and AIO cooler, especially if you plan to overclock down the line.
Personally, liking ASrock. No issues. I put a little more into my MOBO because I wanted the 4x Gen4 NVMe slots for the storage expansion.
If you’d like some benchmarking resources on games testing (none of your games are in the listings, so you’d need to find random videos of it), look to Gamers Nexus or Hardware Unboxed for all-encompassing testing. Daniel Owen is good for just GPU testing.
In general you should look more at specific products instead of brands. I can’t speak for anything current generation intel, but for my 7800x3d I’ve had no issues at all with an MSI x670e Tomahawk.
Just join a few PC Builders Facebook groups. You will see most gamers using Strix or MSI motherboards. ESPECIALLY intel users.