Even on boards that do overclock, you'll get a lot more reach and a wider stability envelope from a quality board. Here's how to pick the right one for you. It's all being made possible by Razer , which stepped up to support this months-long project. Thanks, Razer! Custom rigs, especially hand-built ones made for gaming, aren't just about the numbers. Sure, performance is important, but if you're spending the money on a system you'll be using for years, you should be proud of it.
Early in the build process, spend a little time thinking about the look and character of your upcoming PC. Do you want a flashy, LED-soaked screamer or a sleek and silent sleeper? Feel like building a show-it-all full-sized plexiglass tower, or an impossibly tiny silver desktop ingot? Once you have a blueprint in mind, you can start making hardware choices. Mini-ITX: The smallest, designed for very compact builds and cases.
Typically has only a single PCIe slot, meaning you can only fit one graphics card. For any mid-tower or full tower case, this is the typical choice. They're more expensive and usually come packed with high-end features. Often requires a large full tower case to fit.
Our guide to the best PC cases has choices big and small, and tells you what size motherboards will fit inside. If you're not sure which processor to pick, head on over to our best CPU for gaming guide where we break down the choices for every budget and interest so it's easy to select the silicon that's right for you. While your pick here will influence the types of motherboard you can use, don't worry about your choice locking you out of the latest features as it may have in years past.
While fans of AMD or Intel may argue over processor supremacy, the motherboard situation is largely equal these days. By now you should have also selected the best graphics card for your needs. For gaming rigs, this is the single most important performance component, and the rest of the system should be built around running this GPU at the native resolution of your monitor, with the highest gaming detail levels and framerates your budget can support.
Here are the best gaming monitors right now. This may also dictate certain minimum requirements for components like the power supply, and size of the case, so keep those size and budgetary calculations in mind as you continue.
Chipsets provide the control logic required to make the components of a system work together, from CPUs to storage, and are responsible for the type and number of connectors available on a PC both inside and out. Motherboards are identified by the chipsets they are based on, and these names change when major new CPU revisions are released, which happens frequently. That means that at any given time, a few generations of motherboards share the marketplace, adding to the confusion.
To help make sense of this, here are the current as of late chipsets and the sockets they support. Intel's current consumer chipset is home to the 8th generation and 9th generation Core processors also called Coffee Lake. The Z and Z chipsets, which support overclocking and Nvidia SLI, are the most popular with enthusiasts with the mainstream H and B chipsets rounding out the gamer's corner of Intel's lineup. The pricey X series has a number of improvements over earlier and lesser Intel chipsets, including plenty of lanes for M.
While the extreme X platform has some relevance beyond bragging rights for Intel, it's mostly for non-gaming purposes. But with the mainstream platform now supporting up to 8-core CPUs, X is primarily for professionals. Core iK through Core iK have higher clockspeeds and lower memory latency, which benefits gamers. Intel in particular like to make things complicated, always launching new chipset series alongside new CPU generations.
The most recent of these is the series, which for now is repped solely by the Z chipset, though lower-end alternatives are likely to come later. They're also compatible with some older series chipsets after a BIOS update, but this will vary between motherboards and manufacturers, so be sure to check it definitely has Ryzen support before you buy. Here's how the Ryzen chips work with the Ryzen chipsets:. Each one targets a different level of functionality and pricing, so you can tailor you motherboard choice to fit your budget and need for specific features.
That said, affordable chipsets like B and B have enough of these lanes to adequately equip most PC gaming builds, so they can also work well. The newer 12th Gen hardware also supports PCIe 5. In the meantime, you can find some quality 4. More ambitious PC builds would therefore do well to stick with a higher class of X series AMD chipset, and conversely, those with very simple storage setups can get by with the mid-range B series or entry-level A series chipsets.
It probably goes without saying that you should also pick a motherboard that actually fits inside your intended case. As to whether PCIe 4. Not true. Frequent patch and update releases indicate that the manufacturer takes support seriously. We recommend to friends and clients that they give great weight to and perhaps even base their buying decisions on the quality of the web site that supports the motherboard.
Manufacturers differ greatly in the quality of the motherboards they produce. Other manufacturers produce motherboards of varying quality; some good and some not so good. Still other manufacturers produce only junk. The preceding issues are always important in choosing a motherboard.
But there are many other motherboard characteristics to keep in mind. Some of them may be critical for some users and of little concern to others. These characteristics include:.
Any motherboard provides expansion slots, but motherboards differ in how many slots they provide, and of what types:. PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect slots have been the standard type of expansion slot for more than a decade. PCI slots accept expansion cards such as LAN adapters, sound cards, and so on that add various features to a system.
PCI slots are available in bit and bit versions, although bit PCI slots are commonly found only on server motherboards. A motherboard may have zero, one, or two dedicated video card slots. The type of video slot determines the type of video card you can install. AGP video adapters are still popular and widely available, but PCI Express is fast becoming the dominant video adapter slot standard.
Otherwise, buy a motherboard, with or without embedded video, that provides a PCI Express x16 video slot. Do not buy any motherboard that provides embedded video but no separate video slot. Many motherboards with a PCI Express x16 video slot also provide one or more PCI Express x1 general-purpose expansion slots, usually in place of one or two of the PCI expansion slots, but sometimes in addition to them.
For the immediate future, PCI Express x1 slots are relatively useless, because there are few expansion cards that fit them. Years ago, many PCs had all or nearly all of their slots occupied. Nowadays, with so many functions integrated on motherboards, it's common to see PCs with at most one or two slots occupied, so the number of slots available is much less important than it used to be.
It's still important to get the types of slots you want, though. The same motherboard is often available as an OEM product and a retail-boxed product. In fact, both forms of packaging are sold in retail channels. The motherboard is identical or closely similar in either case, but there are differences. For example, the OEM version might have only a one-year warranty, while the retail-boxed version of the same motherboard has a three-year warranty. Also, the retail-boxed version often includes cables, adapters, a case label, a setup CD, and similar small parts that are not included with the OEM product.
Otherwise, buy the OEM version. There may be variations in the actual product between OEM and retail-boxed motherboards. For example, Intel often manufactures three to six variants of a motherboard, which may differ in minor ways such as board color and in more significant ways, such as the speed of the embedded network adapter, whether FireWire support is included, and so on.
Some of these variants are available in both OEM and retail-boxed forms, and others in only one form or the other. Some variants aren't available to individual buyers. They're sold only in what Intel calls "bulk packaging," which means that the minimum order is a pallet load.
Only large system makers buy bulk Intel motherboards. It may seem strange to minimize the importance of warranty, but the truth is that warranty should not usually be a major consideration. Motherboards generally work or they don't. If a motherboard is going to fail, it will likely do so right out of the box or within a few days of use. In practical terms, the vendor's return policy is likely to be more important than the manufacturer's warranty policy.
Look for a vendor who replaces DOA motherboards quickly, preferably by cross-shipping the replacement. At a minimum, the motherboard should provide four or more USB 2. Ideally the motherboard should also provide at least two Serial ATA connectors, and four is better.
In the past, such motherboards were often designed for low-end systems, and used inexpensive and relatively incapable audio and video components. But nowadays many motherboards include very capable audio, video, and LAN adapters, and cost little or no more than similar motherboards without the embedded peripherals. If you buy such a motherboard, make sure that the embedded devices can be disabled if you later want to replace the embedded adapters with better components.
Embedded adapters often use the main CPU, which can reduce performance by a few percent. The speed of current processors means this is seldom an issue. However, if processor performance is critical, you might wish to use a motherboard that has few or no embedded functions. Embedded Gigabit Ethernet is a particular concern. That's a problem because Gigabit Ethernet is fast enough to saturate the PCI bus and noticeably degrade system performance. This is a really excellent read for me.
You have listed good points to consider while choosing mother board. Choose the right manufacturer is really important for long term usage.
A motherboard is the main printed circuit board PCB in a computer.
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