What To Look For When Choosing A Motherboard

Baldbloke · 5 Jun 2021 at 15:10

Out of interest,

What features would you be interested in when choosing a motherboard?

What's the difference between a £50 board and a £350 board?

If they are the same chipset, what makes one more desirable than the other?

andy_mk3 · 5 Jun 2021 at 15:18

Power delivery to cpu (VRMs), overclocking features, board features such as number and speed of USB ports, speed of the ethernet port(s) (1/2.5/5/10G), m.2 drive slots. There's various things also some of it is purely asthetics or brand preference.

Although the same chipset will offer the same amount of pcie lanes, they can always be used differently across different boards.

Joxeon · 5 Jun 2021 at 15:45

Choose based on what features you need and how long you plan to keep the board, no point in spending twice as much on a board with a tonne of features you won't use.

Baldbloke · 5 Jun 2021 at 15:53

no idea what said:
Power delivery to cpu (VRMs), overclocking features, board features such as number and speed of USB ports, speed of the ethernet port(s) (1/2.5/5/10G), m.2 drive slots. There's various things also some of it is purely asthetics or brand preference.

Although the same chipset will offer the same amount of pcie lanes, they can always be used differently across different boards.

Interesting. I'm just trying to learn what makes a decent motherboard.
Could I define what pcie lanes do or are used for different components/daughter boards? Why would I do that?

andy_mk3 · 5 Jun 2021 at 17:33

Baldbloke said:
Interesting. I'm just trying to learn what makes a decent motherboard.
Could I define what pcie lanes do or are used for different components/daughter boards? Why would I do that?

Generally no you Manufacture will decide where PCIe lanes are used, for usb, networking, name and the PCIe slots themselves.

Psycho Sonny · 6 Jun 2021 at 16:11

Baldbloke said:
Interesting. I'm just trying to learn what makes a decent motherboard.
Could I define what pcie lanes do or are used for different components/daughter boards? Why would I do that?

Power phases and vrm are extremely important for boosting and overclocking.

Tightening ram is better on some motherboard than others as well.

You have to factor in value for money too. No point spending £500 to get 10% more out of a CPU and ram worth £200.

Baldbloke · 6 Jun 2021 at 16:48

So,
It's beginning to look like any reputably reliable, fairly recent issue motherboard with enough usb ports, sata ports etc good power phases and vrm will likely do.

Is it really that simple?

Seems like that's most of them out there. Not too difficult to choose one then.

Personally, I'm not bothered atm about overclocking. I've a Ryzen 5 3600.

Admetos · 7 Jun 2021 at 01:09

Things that I look for.

1) The quality of the VRM's, also important is how hot the VRM's get when a CPU is overclocked. Your looking for reviews where the VRM's stay relatively cool even with the CPU overclocked. Even if not overclocking good VRM design can still help stability (more over-engineered).

2) Following on from above, make sure chipset temperature stays relatively cool, some boards have better chipset cooling

3) Make sure there is plenty of SATA and M.2 connections for what you require. Also plenty USB 2/3 if you need them.

4) Don't spend money on things you don't want, such as WiFi if you don't use it.

5) Make sure the motherboard has support for your CPU from it's earliest BIOS version. This way you know the motherboard was tested against that exact CPU before being released. The problem with flashing a motherboard to support a later CPU release is if the motherboard BIOS resets to an original BIOS version the computer may not longer boot, so avoid these issues and just buy a motherboard that supports your chosen CPU from day 1.

6) Look at all the reviews you can including customer reviews, your making sure there is not an excess of returns or issues on the motherboard.

7) Don't get caught up spending extra money on better on-board sound, my experience your far better putting money towards a soundcard or external DAC.

8) Number of fan headers if you have a case with many fans you want to control. Good motherboards come with at least 3 or 4 fan headers now.

9) If your using just 1 graphics card, then don't spent money buying a board / platform with extra PCI lane support. Put the money saved towards better CPU or GPU.