MSI Announces B150M Gaming Pro Motherboard

[newtekie1]

The 79 dollar ASRock board only has a few differences that probably won't matter to some like 2 extra RAM slots or an extra 16x(4x) slot. With how budget oriented this board is we could be looking at a 40 dollar board. 40 dollars could be the difference between a new 960 and used 970, the difference which is actually noticeable. I don't want to argue for the sake of this board as I wouldn't personally recommend it (unless it was only 35 bucks or something), but I mean certain arguments can be held back. Like, I've seen people putting 1090t X6s on cheap 35 dollar Gigabyte 760g boards with 4+2 CHEAP phases which we all know sucks a whole lot more juice than say an i3 or even i5.

Forgot to mention, my Asus X79-E WS has the top PCI-E slot so close that the screw for the GPU heatsink barely touches the middle board heatsink and is so close I can't even put a backplate on the card. It's why I have it in the second blue slot. So even some expensive boards do this sometimes.

I think you are mistaken on the pricing of this board. The MSI H110M Eco is $60, and it is below the B150M Gaming Pro in the product stack. The MSI H110M Gaming, which again is below the B150M Gaming Pro in the product stack, is $70. So you are looking at least $70 for the B150M Gaming Pro, and likely more like $75-80.

And there might be some features on the Z170 board that some might use, they are features that a lot could. 4 Rams slots is nice for someone on a budget. Get 2 sticks now, add 2 more later. Having an M.2 slot is a nice bonus. Sure, M.2 drives are a little on the expensive side now, but upgrading to one in the future is a nice option to have.

IMO, if you are going to build a budget gaming rig, putting a very little bit more money into the motherboard from the beginning is the best thing to do. Then it is easier to do upgrades as you get the extra money down the road.

 

[PP Mguire]

I think you are mistaken on the pricing of this board. The MSI H110M Eco is $60, and it is below the B150M Gaming Pro in the product stack. The MSI H110M Gaming, which again is below the B150M Gaming Pro in the product stack, is $70. So you are looking at least $70 for the B150M Gaming Pro, and likely more like $75-80.

And there might be some features on the Z170 board that some might use, they are features that a lot could. 4 Rams slots is nice for someone on a budget. Get 2 sticks now, add 2 more later. Having an M.2 slot is a nice bonus. Sure, M.2 drives are a little on the expensive side now, but upgrading to one in the future is a nice option to have.

IMO, if you are going to build a budget gaming rig, putting a very little bit more money into the motherboard from the beginning is the best thing to do. Then it is easier to do upgrades as you get the extra money down the road.

And again as I said I was never arguing on the defense of this particular board. The 80 dollar ASRock does not have an M.2 slot, and 16GB of DDR4 is relatively cheap so two slots would be perfectly fine for most.

In the case of this board and cost, after time B85 and H81 boards became almost the same price. I have a feeling this will be the same for the 6th gen platform, but if this board does come at a 60+ dollar price tag the Z170 ASRock would be the better buy, or a cheap H110M board. I was merely commenting on the argument of super cheap boards and the semantics over the Pro moniker. I thought it was silly. Literally nobody will give 2 shits about this board if the cost is too high.

 

[newtekie1]

And again as I said I was never arguing on the defense of this particular board. The 80 dollar ASRock does not have an M.2 slot, and 16GB of DDR4 is relatively cheap so two slots would be perfectly fine for most.

In the case of this board and cost, after time B85 and H81 boards became almost the same price. I have a feeling this will be the same for the 6th gen platform, but if this board does come at a 60+ dollar price tag the Z170 ASRock would be the better buy, or a cheap H110M board. I was merely commenting on the argument of super cheap boards and the semantics over the Pro moniker. I thought it was silly. Literally nobody will give 2 shits about this board if the cost is too high.

The Z170 Pro4S most certainly does have an M.2 slot.

Cheap boards are fine, if they have the right specs. To me, $70 is cheap. Beyond that they start to get real crappy real quick. The cheapest 1151 board right now is $45. So the question becomes, is $35 worth limiting the upgrade potential in the future? To me, it isn't. That is fine if it is for you, I'm not knocking that.

But to slap the Pro moniker on an extreme budget board, and they try to overcharge for it because it is "Pro" and "Gaming", is stupid. And that is what MSI is doing.

 

[xfia]

its just that we cant perpetuate myth.. if its possible to use it with any gpu you cant leave people questioning if its even safe. not everyone reading the articles is a engineer or even out of high school.

 

[newtekie1]

its just that we cant perpetuate myth.. if its possible to use it with any gpu you cant leave people questioning if its even safe. not everyone reading the articles is a engineer or even out of high school.

What myth? I never said you couldn't do it, I said you shouldn't and there are plenty of reasons not to. The main one being I wouldn't want to damage my $600 graphics card because one of the memory clips hits it and rips a component off the PCB. I've seen this happen first hand. You're spending $600+, or heck even $200+, on a graphics card. Put a fraction of that extra into a decent motherboard. Buy the board for $80 instead of the one for $50.

 

[PP Mguire]

The Z170 Pro4S most certainly does have an M.2 slot.

Cheap boards are fine, if they have the right specs. To me, $70 is cheap. Beyond that they start to get real crappy real quick. The cheapest 1151 board right now is $45. So the question becomes, is $35 worth limiting the upgrade potential in the future? To me, it isn't. That is fine if it is for you, I'm not knocking that.

But to slap the Pro moniker on an extreme budget board, and they try to overcharge for it because it is "Pro" and "Gaming", is stupid. And that is what MSI is doing.

Yea I didn't count that board because it's on sale. If somebody went to build with it in maybe a week or whatever it could be back over 100 so I went with the board that's regularly 70 bucks which doesn't have an M.2 slot.

I'm not sure what you mean by "upgrading" though. You can easily get any form of SATA SSD that will still be good enough for anybody who would actually be building on a budget anyways. Not like they will realistically notice a difference between 500MB/s and 1500+. I know I didn't at all, and that was with a 40k increase in 4k IOPS.
If you're going to go with a K series i5 or i7 you'd want to upgrade your board anyways, but most looking at the cheaper boards don't need an OC anyways. Hell, I'm running Sandy and still don't need an OC with one card, Titan X or lower. Point being, you may not see the usefulness of a cheap board as a prosumer or enthusiast, but let me tell you everybody loved me when I saved them 30-100+ bucks on getting H81 boards instead and most of them are all rocking the same platform with a GPU upgrade. A better board than the one in the OP should have a secondary 16x slot that's electrically 4x and they can put an M.2 riser in there if they so desire which a couple of my clients did. Them, like myself saw no difference from a standard SATA SSD besides file transfers. I mean real world, not what we can see on a benchmark.

That aside, I do agree with you. The 70 dollar ASRock Z170 either the Pro4s on sale or the one I was referring to before would be miles ahead of this board and probably the better option for most. Just if penny pinching is needed, there's no issue going with a cheaper board to get by. That's been my point all along.

But to slap the Pro moniker on an extreme budget board, and they try to overcharge for it because it is "Pro" and "Gaming", is stupid. And that is what MSI is doing.

Like I said, marketing. In a world of 50 million different motherboards /s they will tack anything to the name to make a quick buck.

 

[newtekie1]

I'm not sure what you mean by "upgrading" though.

I'm not just talking about M.2 SSDs, I'm talking adding more RAM, going with a better CPU that you can overclock, adding a second GPU.

You stated my point exactly. If you want to go with a K i5 or i7 you'd want to upgrade your board. Not if I had the Z170 board from the beginning.

But like I said, I'm not disagreeing that budget boards are ok, and there is a place for them. But if you're spending $600+ on a GPU, spend a few extra bucks on the motherboard. Because in the grand scheme, at that price level, an extra $20-30 is not going to kill you.

Like I said, marketing. In a world of 50 million different motherboards /s they will tack anything to the name to make a quick buck.

Of course, that doesn't make it any less stupid.

 

[PP Mguire]

I'm not just talking about M.2 SSDs, I'm talking adding more RAM, going with a better CPU that you can overclock, adding a second GPU.

You stated my point exactly. If you want to go with a K i5 or i7 you'd want to upgrade your board. Not if I had the Z170 board from the beginning.

But like I said, I'm not disagreeing that budget boards are ok, and there is a place for them. But if you're spending $600+ on a GPU, spend a few extra bucks on the motherboard. Because in the grand scheme, at that price level, an extra $20-30 is not going to kill you.



Of course, that doesn't make it any less stupid.

Majority of people only need 16GB and the cheapest 1151 board on Newegg can support up to 32GB. I personally downgraded from 32 to 16 just because I didn't really need it. The same majority will only look at one graphics card too, and kudos to them. Same can be said for a K series CPU. You can get one and put it in one of these boards easy, but why? Overclocking literally isn't needed unless you're doing a specific application that needs a ton of single threaded performance. Granted then you will probably have a budget enough to cater to this need. As is the spending an extra 20-30 on a higher end board that probably isn't necessary. In a penny pincher situation 20-30 might not be there so if you can save on the board it could mean the difference between a good card or better card. In gaming where FPS matters, put your money on the FPS maker. I was personally looking at getting the cheapest board on Newegg and tossing 16GB of RAM in it and an i5 6400 just for LANs and a twin setup for my gf. That's more than enough paired with a good GPU and with GPU upgrades will keep ticking unless the cheap ass board dies then I'll say screw it because I'm not about to deal with Gigabyte on their RMA. I doubt it will be of any issue though unless it's DOA. The people this stuff is aimed at have the same mentality, besides the OPs board because if it's too much that's just stupid.

So I don't want to beat a dead horse here, I just don't see it all as sound arguments. Besides the RAM DIMM placement, that was fucking stupid. Those at least should have been push in with the snap on top.

 

[newtekie1]

Majority of people only need 16GB and the cheapest 1151 board on Newegg can support up to 32GB. I personally downgraded from 32 to 16 just because I didn't really need it. The same majority will only look at one graphics card too, and kudos to them. Same can be said for a K series CPU. You can get one and put it in one of these boards easy, but why? Overclocking literally isn't needed unless you're doing a specific application that needs a ton of single threaded performance. Granted then you will probably have a budget enough to cater to this need. As is the spending an extra 20-30 on a higher end board that probably isn't necessary. In a penny pincher situation 20-30 might not be there so if you can save on the board it could mean the difference between a good card or better card. In gaming where FPS matters, put your money on the FPS maker. I was personally looking at getting the cheapest board on Newegg and tossing 16GB of RAM in it and an i5 6400 just for LANs and a twin setup for my gf. That's more than enough paired with a good GPU and with GPU upgrades will keep ticking unless the cheap ass board dies then I'll say screw it because I'm not about to deal with Gigabyte on their RMA. I doubt it will be of any issue though unless it's DOA. The people this stuff is aimed at have the same mentality, besides the OPs board because if it's too much that's just stupid.

So I don't want to beat a dead horse here, I just don't see it all as sound arguments. Besides the RAM DIMM placement, that was fucking stupid. Those at least should have been push in with the snap on top.

Most people also don't buy $600 graphics cards. But the ones that do buy $600 graphics card also are likely to want 32+GB of RAM, an M.2 SSD. They have a tendency towards overkill. That is my point, if you are spending $600 on a GPU, you aren't in a penny pinching situation.

 

[xfia]

o all the cute puppies in the world..

 

[PP Mguire]

Most people also don't buy $600 graphics cards. But the ones that do buy $600 graphics card also are likely to want 32+GB of RAM, an M.2 SSD. They have a tendency towards overkill. That is my point, if you are spending $600 on a GPU, you aren't in a penny pinching situation.

You're forgetting the second handers. One of the guys I built a rig for bought a 780ti off a friend for 250 and is running a 41 dollar H81 and an i3 4170 running perfectly fine. If they've got big budget, they won't look at low end hardware either. Hence my point toward, 20-30 bucks can be used towards a better graphics card. It's the difference between a new 960 and most used 970s. What'll give more performance, a 970 vs a 960, or getting a new Z series board with an M.2 slot they probably won't use with 2 extra RAM slots that'll sit there for 5 years only for people to tell them it'll probably be better to jump on the newer platform at the time? You're trying to twist my wording to make it seem like I'm saying there's no point in higher end boards or that people want to grab 980ti's and buy 50 dollar boards. I'm not, only certain high end boards are a bit pointless, and they'd be kinda stupid to not budget in at least a better board. Budget oriented hardware like this is for budget oriented people. There are a ton of people who only have say 500-700 bucks to build a PC or less and look at second hand parts to complete their build or use their build. Most guys that come to me to do builds for them will acquire or have acquired some form of hardware from a friend or friends and have a budget to build the rest of the PC. I prefer to get them at least a 120GB SSD, a solid PSU, and the most GPU they can afford so they can play games for the best of their money. So yea, sometimes it's not as simple as "if they can afford this what's 20-30 bucks". Most of the time it's "What can I downgrade to get a better GPU off CL or fit that SSD in". These people don't care if their PC boots 5 seconds quicker with an M.2 PCI-E SSD, or if they have an extra 16GB of RAM they'll probably never use, but they sure appreciate getting an extra 5-10fps for that 20-30 bucks saved on getting a budget board. These are the same people that usually get midrange hardware and upgrade every 5 years or so.