New to hardware, looking for advice on Motherboards

[Kawwmoi]

Hello, I'm just starting to build my first desktop. Going by some advice I got from a friend, I picked the processor I want and am now looking at motherboards. As it turns out, I don't have a shadow of a clue as to what it is I'm actually looking at. The two motherboards I was recommended by friends were the Asus Maximus VI Hero and the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H. So I went to compare the two and from what I can tell they have the same chipset and everything else makes no sense.

I realize this probably comes off as a "how do I shop for motherboards" question so I'll attempt to be more specific with regards to my biggest questions. The first thing that I really don't understand but seems to be important is SATA 6GB/s and SATA RAID. I don't really understand what these are used for or how much of each I should look for. The other thing that I don't understand is the PCI ports. From what I can find elsewhere, you connect things to the PCI ports. What those things happen to be still eludes me and, like SATA I don't know how much of it I should look for.

 

[Novuake]

First off, tell us what CPU you are considering.

Will you be overclocking?
PCI-e ports are used to connect graphics cards mostly. Usually for most people on PCI-e x 16 port is enough.

As for SATA, don't worry too much about that, any modern board will have enough SATA for most peoples needs.

 

[skyscraper7]

The complete motherboard guide:

Socket: This is the socket type that the CPU goes in. Certain sockets fit certain CPUs so make sure that it's compatible

Chipset: This is kinda like the socket sub category. This is the type of motherboard for that socket. They have different features that can be implemented. For example with socket 1150, the chipsets are z87, h87 and h81. z87 is the high end chipset, h87 for those who won't overclock and h81 for those on a tight budget.

Form factor: Main ones are ATX, mATX and ITX. Make sure you get a form factor that fits your case.

Memory: look out for how many DIMM slots there are (not that important - 1x8gb is fine if only 1 RAM slot). Also make sure your motherboard is compatible with the speed of your memory.

Graphical outputs: For motherboards that are designed for CPUs with integrated graphics. Not needed if using discrete graphics.

Multi GPU support: If you want to use more than one graphics card. Most mobos support at least Cross fire (for AMD cards), if not SLI (for nvidia)

RAID options: Don't even worry about this, just a way to backup storage or get faster storage times.

USB ports: pretty self-explanatory. USB 3.0 is faster btw

BIOS: get a motherboard with UEFI bios, if you can.

Audio: Read reviews to see how good the onboard audio solution is. Otherwise get a sound card

Ethernet: Killer E2200 ethernet is best imo. But any will do.

Overclock features: Such as one click overclock, extra timings e.t.c. If you are overclocking your CPU you may want to look out for things such as these.

Fan header: Places to plug in external fans. You could always use a molex to 3/4 pin adapter though.


And finally your two big questions:

SATA: These connect to all of your components that have storage capacity e.g Hard Drive, Optical Deive, Solid State Drive etc. Count up your number of these components and that's how many SATA ports you need. Some SSDs may have a m/SATA connector. Then you will need a board with a m/SATA slot.

PCI and PCI-e. These are where you connect your expansion cards to. The big long ones (PCI-e x16) are where you put your graphics card(s). The small ones (PCI-e x1) are used for sound cards, NICs etc. Some have PCI-e x4 or even old PCI legacy ports (for older cards to put in newer mobos).

I hope this helps, any other questions please ask

 

[aqe040466]

Most of the latest motherboards right now have SATA III(6gb/s) data transfer rate. Also most of the latest motherboards have PCIe x 16(3.0) bandwidth. Socket 1150 motherboards has Z87 chipset by Intel which is compatible with Intel Haswell(4th Generation) core i3, i5 and i7 CPU.