What do you look for in a motherboard?

[TheRandomWookie]

I plan on building my own gaming PC, and I don't know a thing about motherboards and chipsets. What do you look for when buying a motherboard. Which brands are better than others?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Industry Standard 3 Year (or 5 year) Warranty
Good Tech Support
Performance
Attractive Newegg combo pricing

 

[beenthere]

A company history of quality design and construction with fair pricing. While a number of brand name Mobos get good performance reviews, many of them have BIOS and operational issues that never get resolved by the manufacturer because they have lousy or no customer support.

Many enthusiasts buy based on hardware review site performance data and then wonder why their Mobo doesn't perform as well or has chronic operational issues. Well some companies hand build/pick/test Mobos that they send to reviewers and even use a special BIOS that consumers do not always get. Thus if you pay attention to reviews you will see which Mobos are always near the top in performance and reliability. Those are the boards to buy IMO - not just the Mobos with the highest benches that experience many reliability, operational or compatibility issues

 

[dhicks19]

honesty and commitment

 

[chillin15]

I plan on building my own gaming PC, and I don't know a thing about motherboards and chipsets. What do you look for when buying a motherboard. Which brands are better than others?

1) Reliability - Hardware reviews, customer reviews, tom's forums
2) Your purpose - Do you want to OC the cpu? Run a SLi/cf setup? Look nice? Future Proof? # of PCI slots? Other features?
3) Warranty - although most bad mobos breakdown within a year and most manufacturers have at least a 1 yr warranty.

Here is a thread which compares the intel p67/z68 mobos:
http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherboards/916189-complete-official-intel-p67-z68-motherboard.html

I would personally choose the asrock extreme4 gen3. It is the perfect mix of features, value, and future proofing. More PCIe lanes will allow you to use all your devices without having to choose between a pci device or your esata, etc. Future pcie3.0 capability is a nice add-on.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157265