How To Choose The Right Motherboard For Gaming

Finding the right or the best quality gaming motherboard is very difficult or tricky to find on market at a reasonable price at the current time. So, if you are looking for the right motherboard guide with full information, then you are landing on the right page.

Because in this guide, we have rounded a guide about how to choose the right motherboard for gaming. In addition, this guide will help you to choose the right motherboard.

What’s a motherboard?

As always, we will start at ground zero, so no newbie left behind. If you think of your CPU as the brain of your PC or computer that is responsible for all the real-time calculations which needed to be run in applications and games as well.

The motherboard is the heart and central nervous system of your computer or PC. Your motherboard is where all the other parts of your computer or PC connects to and communicates with one another.

• CPU socket
• PCIe slot
• 2 slot
• Fan headers
• SATA ports
• RAM slots
• Power connectors

In addition, if you are building your first gaming PC or computer and perhaps a little overwhelmed by the references above the various stages of the installation process.

So, do not worry as when you follow a complete step-by-step tutorial on building a PC or computer, then you will be gradually taken through each step one at a time in the correct order. Anyway, let’s get back to choosing the right or the best motherboard for your computer or PC for gaming.

Is the motherboard important for a gaming computer?

Do the motherboard affects its performance? No, motherboards do not have a direct impact on the performance of your computer or PC. However, the importance of a computer component does not depend solely on how it affects system or gaming performance as well.

Although, motherboard plays a crucial role in any PC or computer and the type you buy will determine the overall functionality and reliability of your new computer or PC among other things.

Additionally, every component in your system connects to your motherboard in some way, so it isn’t hard to imagine that it plays a key role.

Your choice of motherboard will dictate the features that you’ve access to which parts you can connect and what types of future upgrades you can make and other particulars as well.

Skimping on your motherboard purchase by selecting the cheapest motherboard that you can find may come back to bite you later as it could’ve missing features that you needed for your PC or computer build.

However, While the motherboard is important that does not mean you need to spend too much of your overall budget on the motherboard.

How much should you spend on the gaming motherboard?

As mentioned, the motherboard would not directly change what frame rate you get, while gaming. But, it does determine the features of your PC or computer which other parts you can use, and the overall reliability of your computer.

There’s such a thing as overkill when buying a motherboard though, so do not think you need an expensive motherboard to do a very good job.

However, a common newbie mistake, when building a PC or computer is actually is overspending on the motherboard and consequently cutting yourself a little short on other parts.

Choosing how much to spend on gaming is a balancing act depending on your other parts and what you will be doing with your PC or computer. A general role of thumb to go by is that the more expensive your computer build and overall the more important your motherboard choice becomes.

Especially, your choice of gaming CPU or processor, and the last thing you want to do is to pair a powerful high-end processor with a cheap motherboard that mayn’t be able to handle it. Even, if the two are compatible on paper, does not necessarily mean that it is a good pairing in the real world.

And, if you plan to overclock your central processing unit (CPU), then the importance of your motherboard selection increase even further as the hotter a CPU or processor runs more it relies on not just the CPU or processor cooler, but the quality of the motherboard is incredible as well.

But, for most people building a mid-range type system, then you do not require too much from a motherboard unless you must need certain advanced features for whatever reason.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you are building with a  superpower intel i9 9900K or 10900K processor for instance pairing either with a motherboard around the same price tag.

Yes, even if you are not overclocking as a motherboard VRMs are important even for simply running a CPU at stock speeds. When paired with a most powerful processor, a motherboard with a weak VRM can actually lower of the performance of the central processing unit (CPU), when under load.

Motherboard sizes:

• EATX motherboard
• ATX motherboard
• Micro ATX motherboard
• Mini ATX motherboard

ATX:

We will start with an ATX motherboard as it is the most common motherboard size which is used in a modern gaming PC or computer build. Additionally, ATX motherboards fit in any mid-tower and full-tower case and it can offer a full range of features due to their full size.

Micro–ATX:

Micro ATX, commonly referred to simply as mATX, is a little shorter as compared to the standard ATX motherboards. They’re good choices, if you are building in a smaller case and if you are on a tight budget. So, the tradeoff is you get a few fewer features which most notably fewer expansion slots, but sometimes fewer RAM slots too.

Mini-ITX:  

Short for mini-ITX, these’re the smallest motherboards but will only fit certain cases that are also of the mITX form factor. Mini-ITX motherboards can be a little trickier to build, so buying an mITX motherboard isn’t generally recommended for first-time builders.

EATX:

Extended ATX motherboards are the largest consumer desktop motherboard that you can buy and used in extreme my CPU costs more than your PC or computer setups for otherwordly things like the dual processors and quad GPUs as well.

They are the same height as the ATX motherboards, but they are a little wider. Naturally, extended ATX motherboards will only fit in large cases, especially that explicit list that supports extended ATX.