Best MATX Motherboards

I found the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 to be good for the price. Give's you everything you need, plus over clocks CPU fine and easily runs 2400 memory.

A lot will depend on the CPU you want to use, for the i5 if thinking a 4670K then the Gryphon is a great mobo or the Z87M-Plus, if not planning to OC there are a number that fit's that niche also like the H87M-Pro - basically you give up features like PCI - PCI-E slots, maybe DRAM slots, ports (USB, SATA)

M5A78L-M LX PLUS is a good AM3+ mobo - hard to 'guess' at what you are after since no CPUs are actually mentioned, could spend a lot of time on other AMD sockets and Intel sockets

My bad, sorry!

Here are steps to follow to choose your motherboard for any build.

1. Decide and Finalize the processor that you can buy in your budget. Do your research, comparison etc. but get an answer to this first. Fix the processor

2. Fix a budget for motherboard. Absolutely fix the budget you have, to buy your motherboard. You can go a little bit low or high later when you actually start looking at models.

3. Make a list of compatible motherboards with your processor from diffrent vendors. Asus / Gigabyte / MSI etc. Which fit your budget fixed in step 2. These are your only options so you have to choose one from these.

4. Pick the one which gives you the features that you need for what you want to do with your computer (Gaming/HTPC/Video Editing) in best quality components like VRAMS, Solid Capacitors, Good TDP , Surge protection. Don't get attracted to a lot of features on Motherboard , that you are never even going to use. Better buy something which gives only the necessary features you require but is rock solid and have a great warranty and support.

Follow the above steps and you will find the part that you are looking for.

As an example take my build. My Absolute priority was to keep the build as cheap as possible. I only wanted to do Gaming and nothing else. I did not wanted huge overclocking potential as i would never do it. I would never do SLI or Crossfire. My GPU was not fast enough to require PCI 3.0. PCI 2.0 was more than enough. I did not needed any more features than the following

1. Good VRAMs
2. A good TDP for slight overclock. and support for unlocked AMD processors. (I already fixed my processor to be FX 6300 , great for gaming in budget)
3. Single PCI ex2.0 slot at X16.
4. mATX form factor as i wanted a small size pc.
5. All of above in least price possible.

This narrowed my search to two models 1 from Gigabyte and 1 from Asus. Both well tested and used by PC community. both had all of the above features.

I finally chose Asus as it supported a higher TDP of 125 W which i needed. Instead of Gigabyte which had Front Panel USB 3.0 which my case supports but i did not need it. Asus Mobo did not had Front panel USB 3.0 but i don't care as it has better TDP which i would need. So even when now my case has 2 front USB 3.0 ports which can not use, i do not care. I know my Mobo is good for the real deal, which is gaming. I can live with a single USB 2.0 in front and Asus has USB 3.0 in back if i ever needed them in emergency.

Hope this will help to make choice.