What's the coolest, most personal part of your rig? It's not the CPU. Those all look the same. It's not the graphics card either. They have more variety than CPUs, but not much. The coolest component of your system—the part with the most personality and style by far, unless you have a fancy custom water cooling loop—is the motherboard.
There's one for every use, niche and sensibility, and these days they come in custom colors and patterns. It's hard to believe how many of them are out there. The array of choices can be bewildering, especially because the most important differences are in function, not aesthetics. Tiny, seemingly insignificant model number differences hide huge disparities in performance potential and hardware compatibility. We're here to guide you through the chaos and help you pick the right chipset and socket for your choice of CPU and system style.
Whether the rig of your dreams is all about gaming, tweaking overclocked hardware, or even speeding through workstation tasks, there's a type of motherboard made especially for you. Once you're done here, check out our best gaming motherboards feature to find the one for you. Motherboards don't provide performance themselves, but they enable it by allowing quality components to reach their full potential.
That shiny new unlocked processor is wasted on a motherboard that doesn't support overclocking. 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. After picking a CPU, a complementary motherboard will typically be the next component you select for your build. If you go to the Newegg motherboard page , you can select up to five motherboards and receive a detailed look at how they compare in terms of many of the topics discussed in this how-to.
A motherboard is a printed circuit board PCB that creates a kind of backbone allowing a variety of components to communicate, and that provides different connectors for components such as the central processing unit CPU , graphics processing unit GPU , memory, and storage. Both companies are constantly upgrading their products, and so this information can become stale very quickly. Basically, a processor socket is the mechanism through which a CPU is firmly attached to a motherboard.
A chipset is the motherboard software and hardware that combines to allow all the various components to communicate. As you do your research and compare motherboards, you will want to make sure that everything you want to accomplish is supported. Motherboards come in different sizes, meaning that you have some flexibility in building your PC to fit into your environment.
These are general guidelines for some of the most common motherboard form factors. There are more, and they vary in their capabilities. The most important thing is to decide what size PC you want to build or buy, how many components you will want to configure now and into the future, and then pick the motherboard form factor that best fits your needs. Motherboards can connect a variety of components in addition to the CPU, including graphics cards, sound cards, networking cards, storage devices and connections, and a host of others.
There have been many kinds of expansion ports over the years, but fortunately things have gotten much simpler. The four slots sizes are x1, x4, x8, and x16, with x4 and x16 being the most common.
Motherboards vary widely on how many slots they include, and also on their placement. All PCs need a way to output information in a visual format that we humans can utilize. In its simplest terms, that means displaying images on a monitor. These are relatively low-powered GPUs that are great for the usual productivity tasks, but only support less graphically demanding games like e-sports titles. Note that some GPUs can use just the 75 watts of power provided by the PCIe slot, but that most GPUs require more power via six-pin or eight-pin connectors from a large enough power supply.
How much RAM you need for your own PC depends on how you plan to use it, and 8GB is typically a safe recommendation for most lighter users with 16 or more GB being a good bet for heavier users. Today, that means choosing between a hard disk drive HDD with spinning platters that store data and solid-state drives SSD that store data in much faster flash memory.
HDDs are typically less expensive for more storage space, while SSDs are more expensive but offer extra speed, and are great for holding the operating system and applications. Some of these connections are internal, and some are external.
There are variations of SATA 3. X that provide faster speeds and slightly different connections, including SATA revision 3. This is a newer protocol that offers increased bandwidth, lower power, lower latency, and other advantages. Like with many of the components in this how-to, there are many factors involved in choosing the right storage.
One common tactic is to buy a relatively small SSD for the operating system and applications, which makes for significantly better performance, and then larger HDDs for storing massive amounts of data like photos and video. These connections include a variety of on-board headers that are used to support things like fans, external USB ports, RGB lighting systems, and a variety of manufacturer-specific proprietary products. This is something that you will want to check carefully as you are selecting components for your new PC.
And, some water-cooling systems require specific headers for connecting to software that controls lighting and thermal sensors. You will need to make sure that a motherboard includes all of the necessary headers to support all of these kinds add-on components and case features. Basically, think of it this way. The more complex your new PC, the more you will need to dig into your motherboard choice. Nowhere is this more true than regarding the kinds of connections that are present on a motherboard as compared to the various components that you will need to add.
Support for these technologies is contingent upon a compatible sixth-gen Core processor. This socket also supports the handful of fifth-gen Core desktop chips that came to market. The first trio H81, B85, and Q85 can be considered the entry-level line. LGA is a cross-generation socket. Though built for Sandy Bridge Intel Core second-gen , it also accepts Ivy Bridge Intel Core third-gen processors, which means that owners of an old LGA motherboard absolutely have some upgrade options available.
Upgrading from an old Sandy Bridge dual-core to an Ivy Bridge quad like the Core i, for example can provide a major boost in performance. Twelve motherboard chipsets have this socket. All of these chipsets have the same socket, but some features are disabled on the low-end chipsets.
Check it before you make a purchase. There are actually six chipsets for this socket, too, but only one is relevant to consumers: X The other chipsets are intended for Xeon processors, which are almost always a waste of money for home users. Here are a few other Intel sockets that some readers may still have, but that are probably too old to upgrade. LGA : This socket is ancient.
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