How To Choose A Motherboard

[Guest]

I’ve been reviewing motherboards for almost a year, but was still surprised when asked to update Thomas Soderstrom’s 2014 article on how to choose a motherboard. Building systems since an 80286 Netware file server, I’d like to believe I have some ideas!

How To Choose A Motherboard : Read more

 

[jkhoward]

I find it extremely irritating that every time AMD has a new review, the next day you release more reviews than you have in the past month to push the AMD review off of your front page.

It is things like this that make me not want to continue reading articles on your site.

 

[cats_Paw]

You forgot E-ATX Motherboards.

 

[bit_user]

I'm hoping mini-STX becomes a popular form-factor. It's what Intel uses for their NUCs and it's just the thing for micro servers.

BTW, I think the difference between chipset-connected PCIe lanes and CPU-direct PCIe lanes should be highlighted, better. The latter is not supported for SLI and generally not a good idea for graphics cards (or even fast, PCIe-based SSDs, on DMI 2.0 chipsets).

 

[Shankovich]

Here's how Intel chooses them: Step 1: add USB 3.0 lane Step 2: Add one pin to socket Step 3: profit.

 

[redgarl]

One question, I have an MSI board and was thinking of getting an MSI GPU for OC Genie. Good or bad idea?

 

[Onus]

You forgot E-ATX Motherboards.

I made only a brief comment on it, since it adds no more expansion slots than is on ATX. The case selection will determine if a double-slot card can go in the bottom slot.

 

[Onus]

One question, I have an MSI board and was thinking of getting an MSI GPU for OC Genie. Good or bad idea?

OC Genie is a motherboard feature that is independent of the graphics card, so the GPU vendor won't matter. I've only used MSI's OC Genie on one board and not one I reviewed for TH. Like the other such automated tools I've tried, it may not do a great job, possibly setting excessive voltage and creating more heat than needed. Manual settings may give you better results, but obviously will take more time and effort.

 

[FritzEiv]

I find it extremely irritating that every time AMD has a new review, the next day you release more reviews than you have in the past month to push the AMD review off of your front page.

It is things like this that make me not want to continue reading articles on your site.

I promise you it's not on purpose, it's just a coincidence. We try to publish our Best Picks updates monthly and we were running a little behind and . . . it's the end of the month. One of our editorial requests for our next site design is the ability to keep or place articles where we want, which would give us the ability to hold the AMD review in the #1 slot for a few days -- at the moment, it's just an artifact of the current design that the next feature bumps the previous one to the right.

 

[jkhoward]

"I promise you it's not on purpose, it's just a coincidence. We try to publish our Best Picks updates monthly and we were running a little behind and . . . it's the end of the month. One of our editorial requests for our next site design is the ability to keep or place articles where we want, which would give us the ability to hold the AMD review in the #1 slot for a few days -- at the moment, it's just an artifact of the current design that the next feature bumps the previous one to the right."

Not sure why I cannot quote from the forums anymore, but thank you for sharing. Lately, it just seems like almost all AMD reviews or topics get pushed off the page the day after they're released which seems fishy to me. Glad to hear that isn't the case.

 

[Crashman]

You forgot E-ATX Motherboards.

No, because it's not really a thing for the consumer market. Over 90% of the boards you see listed at EATX aren't anywhere close to 13" deep.

I guess we could have put it in the picture, but that would have just confused newbies even more: They would be looking for a case with 13" of clearance, based on the image, when the board they might be considering is only 10.7" wide.

These are "extreme" enthusiast boards anyway, so just not talking about them in the article brings those few newbies with "extreme enthusiast" aspirations to the response thread, where we can have this conversation.

 

[eruditionfish]

Just wondering: are you not doing System Builder Marathons anymore? I haven't seen one for Q2 yet, and tomorrow's July...

 

[Crashman]

Just wondering: are you not doing System Builder Marathons anymore? I haven't seen one for Q2 yet, and tomorrow's July...

Our agreement expired: It's in the air how we'll proceed from this point.

 

[ravewulf]

*Impatiently waits for AMD to launch socket AM4 based products*

 

[tsnor]

Enjoyed the article. How about the same for CPU selection ? It would complement the 'best CPU for $$' article nicely.

Very much liked this articles Pros and Cons section. Especially in the AMD section where I know the least. Understand why it boring to repeat for socket 1151, but would have been nicer if you repeated.

Not sure how to express Quality of MB vs 'buy the cheapest with the chipset you want". On my last two MB purchases (z97 and b85) I went with the cheapest I could find that had decent number of positive reviews. Not sure that was the right strategy, but no regrets so far.

 

[yocheco619]

Future Resistance isn't mentioned anywhere as a "Pro" when listing each type of mobo.

That's understandable, but I was hoping for some kind of comment on a few of these that would suggest they are going to hang around for the next 2-3 years..

None of these boards are future resistant for that duration?

 

[Onus]

While I probably could have included that on some of the latest boards, even the ones that aren't could still be suitable if used to build a PC that meets current and immediate future requirements.

 

[Crashman]

Future Resistance isn't mentioned anywhere as a "Pro" when listing each type of mobo.

That's understandable, but I was hoping for some kind of comment on a few of these that would suggest they are going to hang around for the next 2-3 years..

None of these boards are future resistant for that duration?

It's become a myth. If you want future resistance you buy AMD, then in a few years the platform is still "current" only because they haven't developed a new high-end processor.

 

[yocheco619]

While I probably could have included that on some of the latest boards, even the ones that aren't could still be suitable if used to build a PC that meets current and immediate future requirements.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[yocheco619]

Future Resistance isn't mentioned anywhere as a "Pro" when listing each type of mobo.

That's understandable, but I was hoping for some kind of comment on a few of these that would suggest they are going to hang around for the next 2-3 years..

None of these boards are future resistant for that duration?

It's become a myth. If you want future resistance you buy AMD, then in a few years the platform is still "current" only because they haven't developed a new high-end processor.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[jeffkiku]

Despite some of the other comments, I think this was an excellent article to introduce beginners to motherboards and all the variations associated with them. It would be great if you could provide this article in PDF form so it could be referenced later when this article is no longer available on the web!

 

[bit_user]

Future Resistance isn't mentioned anywhere as a "Pro" when listing each type of mobo.

That's understandable, but I was hoping for some kind of comment on a few of these that would suggest they are going to hang around for the next 2-3 years..

None of these boards are future resistant for that duration?

What's your goal? If you want an upgrade path, it only makes sense to keep your motherboard if budget constraints prevent you from buying a system at the level you want to have 1-2 years from now.

For the past 4 generations, Intel has only changed the socket every 2 generations. Skylake is the first gen to use the LGA 1151 socket. So, a good upgrade path would be to get a lower-end Skylake CPU, then upgrade to a higher-end Kabylake CPU. However, if you can afford to start with a Skylake i7, then don't expect the Kabylake i7 to be much faster, as the difference between one generation and the next is usually very small and not worthy of an upgrade. Of course I'm only talking about desktop CPUs, but the same advice could apply to i7 Extreme (Xeon E5 series) processors.

It should be noted that anyone who bought into Haswell with this plan might've gotten burned by Broadwell desktop CPUs being virtually a no-show. However, we did get a Haswell refresh.

 

[Mkrrish]

Thank you so much for the elaborated guide. It was really very helpfull. I was searching for a such a guide for so long & wow i came across this tech site. Keep posting awesome contents like this.