Cheap Motherboard vs Expensive

[toostrike]

Hello,

I have a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3.This board is around 100 dollars,overclocks well,and has  8+2 power phase.I was using an amd 955 in this board,and it worked fine for the last year.I then bought an amd 965,and then bought another GA-970A-UD3.I figure I will use the second board for a back-up in case the new board goes south.The only issue I have with this board is the northbridge heat sink.Held on by plastic push pins lol,but I never had any issues with it.I also use a program to monitor NB temps while gaming,just in case.My 955 is fine.These chips are so cheap I had to buy another one.I have the 965 oc @ 3.8 gigs with 1.37v on cpu v-core.It idles ate 30C,and never goes above 55C while gaming for hours.

Is it better to buy 2 or 3 cheaper board vs 1 expensive board.It seems to me cheaper is a good option.I always have a back-up.I plan on building an i5 gaming rig soon,so I might use this philosophy.

[absic]

I think it is really one of personal choice. Often a lower spec'd board (cheaper) will work just as long as a higher spec'd board but the obvious thing is that sometimes certain features are not present, for example you may not get firewire or many SATA ports on a cheaper board.

I have built many PC's over the past 12 years, using lower priced Gigabyte motherboards and many of these are either still working, or have been updated as newer technology has come along, but I have never had one fail due to components on them.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

As absic has already told you there is next to no difference between the cheap and expensive ends of the price spectrum as far as quality of components goes. There might be the odd part that is of better quality usually the capacitors etc but it is really down to the options that are available. If a cheap board has everything that you require why spend more money on something else.

[toostrike]

Some good points.Don't get me wrong,I love laid out mobo,but as both of you expressed, it comes down to need and personal choice.Off topic here,but I don't want to start other topic.16 gigs of ram vs 8 gigs of ram for gaming.Lets assume you have at least a GTX560,Win7 64Bit,ssd, ect...

[Dark Mantis]

To be fair 8GB will do for most any program games included. It is really only programs that need a lot of memory for doing  things like video and graphics rendering and some audio work too that warrant 16GB or more. People that use these sort of programs often use 32GB where they can.

[Vezina]

I am not sure this is a good idea ,keeping more boards around for back-up unless you really need 2 systems up and running..

I have had like 3 7xx chipset based boards one year ago.Finally i had to build systems around them and sell those PC-s to be able to upgrade CPU or video card ,those money being practically wasted money.

So don t buy expensive boards , neither 2 cheaper ones , if you are not an overclocker 
I wouldn t say 970A-UD3 is cheap ,it simply has the right price for a normal motherboard.

UD 3 series should be just fine quality wise.


Like Dark Mantis said  ,you don t need 16 Gigs of ram  ,as games barely use 8 gigs even in a x64 OS .You can rarely  see heavy ram usage in actual  PC games at this time (even though there were times when games like BF 2 would require huge amounts of RAM in relation to what most people had in their PC-s ).
Good looking games rely now more on the VGA ram ,so buying 2 Gigs based video cards should be more suited for your gamer needs.
But if you really have money to spend it s ok ,but keep in mind it s not a necessity.