When we shop for motherboards, the TR staff tends to be a pretty conservative bunch. Give us a fully-featured midrange board for $150 to $200 or so, and we're happy campers. Motherboards in that price range tend to have everything the average user needs and nothing they don't, so it only makes sense that those are the boards we buy for ourselves.

I say this every time we write a motherboard review because the argument for $200-and-up motherboards has rarely been convincing. Motherboard makers often add in features on their range-topping boards that the vast majority of us have no use for in this day and age. Expensive PLX PCIe switches for quad-SLI or Crossfire configs are perhaps the most ready example of this kind of expensive, power-hungry excess, but liquid-cooling blocks for VRMs, vast E-ATX PCBs, and more power phases than could fit in a box of donuts are typical of the breed, as well.