Motherboard Specifications on MotherboardDB | Hacker News Reader

Motherboard Specifications on MotherboardDB

motherboarddb.com

131 pointsaspenmayer35 comments

I found this during research and thought I'd share. It could be better, but it's a one-person project labor of love, so I'm pretty forgiving.

For new-ish parts, PCPartPicker.com is still the single best resource for this info, but their info isn't always entirely accurate. For a given board I was researching with USB3.0, PCPartPicker listed it as having USB3.1Gen1 support. For compatibility its built-in checking is pretty good for what it does, but if your use case demands specific I/O ports/functionality, especially dicey things like Thunderbolt over USB-C, always discover the ground reality for yourself from first-party sources, such as the OEM/vendor.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/

Here's some other motherboard research links I found:

https://acme.com/build_a_pc/boardfinder/

http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/stats.html

> but their info isn't always entirely accurate. For a given board I was researching with USB3.0, PCPartPicker listed it as having USB3.1Gen1 support.

This one is just USB being USB. USB 3.0's 5 Gbps Superspeed mode was renamed to USB 3.1Gen1 with the release of USB 3.1.

Yes, this is why I always list specs to other humans as "USB 3.x 5/10/20/whatever gbit", just to sidestep this issue and make it obvious.

USB did it semi-stupidly by allowing 5gbit USB PHYs (which is really enough for anyone, tbf) to implement the protocol enhancements offered by newer versions of 3.x (since those are almost entirely software/firmware features).

Of course, now that you mention it, I can remember enough of what I read at the time to corroborate this. I actually feel a bit silly for not remembering, then I remember that I’ve been alive for every USB revision, and it’s hard to keep up with this stuff.

I’m reminded of the WiFi renumbering scheme that dropped with Wi-Fi 6, and yes, that is the way that it’s written. I never write it out hyphenated, or usually with numbers, because that’s not how most equipment with those features is labeled; only modern Wi-Fi 6 devices, and those older spec devices produced since its introduction, use the new numbering scheme, rather than 1-2 letter revision name.

Thanks for the correction, and the reminder.

The names changed out from under us. It’s hard because some people expect to see 3.0, while others expect to see 3.1gen1. Whichever one we pick we end up confusing the other side. In the end we went with the current industry naming because that’s what people will see on manufacturer spec pages and most retailers. Had our specs differed in naming between those (even if we were specifying the same thing), we’d end up getting a lot of confused people thinking our specs were wrong. We ended up doing the same rename for WiFi numbering - both those name changes went in about the same time, though I stubbornly held out as long as I felt we could...

May I suggest adding some information that enthusiasts are interested in? For instance, VRM, debug LEDs, RGB headers, pci-e conflict information (eg. if you use pcie_0 alone, it runs at x16, but if you have pcie_1 populated they both run at x8).

basically this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IY6W6YhyjnzSvi8BqEqi...

That's a really well done spreadsheet. It's not my project, but I believe the creator invites contact via email.

It's a shame I see so many good spreadsheets like yours, almost always on Google Sheets. A social network based on spreadsheets would help surface this content, and if clear licensing were included, instant remixable data would have me beating down that site's door.

I've found that geizhals.eu is great for this sort of stuff. Here's an example for Intel LGA1151v2: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=mbp4_1151v2

You can filter by details like the LAN chipset (e.g. Realtek RTL8111E, AQuantia AQC107, etc), the audio chipset, etc.

If I could upvote you twice, I would. This is even better than PCPartPicker.com. You really did a good thing with this post.

Its terrible to buy MB. I want the best possible MB for my 3950x that supports 128ram at the highest possible clock etc regardless of pricr and i just get lost with all the possibilities.

I didn't have much to go on, but I was able to narrow it down to 87 motherboards for you. Give me some more info on your RAM clock or desired CPU clock and I can help a little more.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#s=33&D=137438...

Here's a spreadsheet from Tom's Hardware for AM4 mobos which may be just what you need:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/x570-x470-x370-b550-...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmsTYK9Z3-jUX5LGRoFn...

Agreed! I am currently planning out building a similarly spec'd machine (or waiting for zen 3), and trying to pick out a motherboard that is a good balance of features has been a headache.

Unless you actually require 128 GB of RAM for what you're doing getting less will let you push the memory and fabric clocks further (on any board). I went 2x16 GB for this reason.

Beyond that most anything with a half decent VRM meets your listed requirements unless you plan on dunking it in LN2. The CPU just isn't that demanding and overclocking or boosting on this CPU isn't about how much power you can throw in it it's mostly about how cool you keep it and how lucky your chip is.

What are you going to do with all that ram?

no ideia, at 64gb ram im always at 50+, chrome being the heaviest consumer.

You want two community spreadsheets:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d9_E3h8bLp-TXr-0zTJF...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmsTYK9Z3-jUX5LGRoFn...

But I'll save you the work (since this is rather complex): Look at the Asrock X570 Taichi, MSI X570 Aorus Xtreme, and the MEG X570 Godlike, those are the three boards that have most overbuilt VRMs and least flawed designs.

Asus sold nothing worth mentioning for X570. Sadly the ROG Crosshair VIII Formula isn't as good as the other three, and Asus boards may have an issue with cooking CPUs due to subtle overvolting.

That should be "Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme", right?

Whoops, my bad.

Yes, Gigabyte. Too many companies with gamer brands, I usually refer to boards purely by their brand/product line, not their actual company, and that, apparently, finally stung me.

When last I built a PC a few years ago, I found that the best place for motherboard specs was their user manual, certainly not any "product" webpage nor even their "specs" subsection, which is overloaded with marketing BS.

The user manuals had accurate information on the number of ports, their capabilities, number of sockets, max RAM, etc...

I'm glad to see that MotherboardDB has direct links to the User Manual PDFs, and distills that information down.

Learned something new today from this site: there exists motherboards specifically designed for cryptocurrency mining, e.g., https://motherboarddb.com/motherboards/920/B250%20Mining%20E...

Wow, there's an ASUS mining mobo. I knew cryptocurrency boards existed, but I thought they were bespoke diy projects and random aliexpress jobs. Anyone else wondering, those are PCI-E x1 ports, 18 of them.

Consider adding a Crossfilter or something similar that shows how many results exist in the criteria you are narrowing by.

Eg: https://github.com/crossfilter/crossfilter

For a working example - see the flight search results on Kayak

It would be good to add the info on super I/O chip maker there.

This is useful to know when selecting a motherboard since for example Nuvoton usually provide documentation for their chips and ITE don't, that's why sensors work much better on Linux with motherboards that use Nuvoton.

This is a good resource, but I with it was easier to search for motherboard with 2x PCI-E @ 16x

Great idea, very useful resource.

First suggestion: make 0 results look different in https://motherboarddb.com/advanced-search/results/e1afe77e-f... -- way too many elements there for an empty list.

Secondly, it'd be a good feature to have a "None" option for drop-downs, as in, if I would like to find a motherboard without audio chip on it.

I wish it allowed me to search by CPU family instead of socket.

I care a lot more about the CPU family than the socket. There is no way I remember what socket the latest AMD Ryzen 4000 family uses.

While the general idea that discovering sockets for different CPUs can be challenging, all AMD Ryzen consumer CPUs use the AM4 socket, including the Ryzen 4000 APUs. That hasn't been hard to remember, in my opinion. (But sure, Threadripper and EPYC are different - TR4 and SP3.)

What I need is search by PCIe lanes/slots, comes from PCH or CPU. Whether the lanes come from PCH or CPU is important but rarely described in specs but on manuals.

This looks nice and detailed.

If I had one wishlist item, it would be the exact board dimensions. Occasionally there are boards smaller than what their form factor specifies. For example, the Asus PRIME A320M-K, at 226mm by 221mm, will fit in a CM NR200, which is nominally a Mini-DTX case.

This will make life simpler ... buying a motherboard with knowing exactly which chips come with the board (like Ethernet) is usually digging through bunch of online documents or reviews.

Unexpectedly finding a nic isn’t compatible is a painful experience. ESXi 7.0 had no support for some newer nics.

Audio is also a problem sometimes though generally the specs are pretty clear on it. I wish it had more details like USB layouts and PCI lane distribution

Before clicking, I thought this was another new database startup. But this is an interesting site, and appreciate the effort.

Cool site, but the hamburger menu doesn't open on Firefox Mobile :(

scrapping pictures from the manufacturer website might not be the most legal thing imaginable

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