The Importance of Choosing a Motherboard

by Dave
(Canada)

Very many people don't put enough weight into this, so I'll do what I can to tell you about why you should put so much time and effort into choosing a motherboard.

First off, let's start with stability. A motherboard controls all data flow from all the components you build your computer with. If you have a lower quality board, regardless of the other components you use to build a computer, this is going to cause you problems sooner or later. Never chinse here. Pair a high quality motherboard with a great CPU and you can almost get away with everything else.

Second, performance. Currently I don't know what they exact numbers are, but at one time, it was up to 33% more system performance that was gained simply by having a high quality motherboard in your computer. Clean data flow really does mean a lot, for every lost or corrupt byte of information, all the processes have to happen again in order for the information to pass where it needs to go.

Third, options. If you like to be power smart, there are lots of options these days that help with this. Windows already has some as well but, we can do additional things like turning down fan speed in the motherboard BIOS to help with power consumption, as well as noise.

Last but not least, if you plan on overclocking, get a good board. You will get better overclocks. A solid motherboard like Asus or Gigabyte paired with a good power supply like Ultra, will get you better overclocks with less voltage.