Motherboard Reviews: How to Choose a Motherboard

Hopefully these motherboard reviews will point you in the right direction as you carefully select each component of your next gaming computer. For me choosing my motherboard is my least favorite part. There are so many variables that if you lose focus and try to determine which motherboard is the absolute best you are no doubt going to suffer paralysis from analysis. By the time you decide on your motherboard Intel and AMD will release their new line of processors and you’ll be starting the process all over again.

Does it really make a difference which motherboard I use?

Now just like you can tune a Chevy Cobalt to get some extra performance out of it you can do the same with computer components (overclocking). Take a Cobalt that you’ve pushed to its absolute maximum performance capabilities. It might be fun to drive but you aren’t going to expect it to be ultra reliable for long term use at that performance level. The same holds true with computer components. You might be able to take that economy motherboard and overclock your components to squeeze some extra juice out of it but operating at an extreme performance level your reliability will be reduced. Now if you spend a couple of extra dollars to get a Camaro it’s already going to perform at those higher levels without sacrificing it’s reliability because it was intended to operate there. Does that make sense?

Another similarity between car classes and motherboard classes are the features. The economy car will have what you need to function but the higher classes of cars will have features that make it a little more comfortable. If you want leather interior, racing suspension, and bright, shiny wheels you’ll need to step up to an enthusiast or extreme level product. Extreme is never necessary but it sure is pretty and fun. Everyone fantasizes about owning a Ferrari, but unless you are a professional race car driver a Camaro is still going to give you goose bumps.

I apologize. I rambled on a bit about cars in a motherboard review but hopefully you see what I’m getting at here. I recommend that you stick with the enthusiast level motherboards. For Intel processors these are the P55 motherboards. For AMD they are the FX motherboards. If you want to have a Ferrari you’ll be getting a very expensive Intel CPU and going with the X58 chipset.

But there are so many choices in each chipset!

Back to cars, the Camaro will go from 0-60mph in 4.7 seconds. The Mustang will do it in 4.9 seconds. The Dodge Challenger, 5.1 seconds. The Camaro won but if you were driving it would you really be able to tell which did it faster? Not a chance. The difference between 4.7 seconds and 5.1 seconds is less than 1%. That is exactly the case with motherboards. Unless you are comparing a Cobalt against a Camaro you probably aren’t going to notice the difference when driving. To prove my point you can find a series of motherboard reviews that Tom’s Hardware did on P55 Motherboards. They were:

“P55 On Boost: Five LGA 1156 Boards Between $200 And $250”

“Enthusiast P55: Eight LGA 1156 Boards Between $150 And $200”

“P55 On A Budget: Five Core i5/i7 Motherboards For $100-$150”

The great thing about these motherboard reviews was that Tom’s Hardware used the same setup for each article. They ran the same CPU, RAM, Video Card, and Power Supply and also performed the same tests. So, with a little effort you can compare the test results for each motherboard in the articles. I did just that and guess what I found, for frames per second in game the difference was just like the 0-60 times for the cars, much less than 1%. It was the same for nearly all of the categories. Once your computer is built, you will never notice the difference between the motherboards during actual use.

With that being said, if you read the motherboard reviews on the $100-$150 group, they did have some trouble overclocking with a few of the cheaper motherboards. You’ll also see some differences in heat and power consumption. There’s a reason that these boards are cheaper. They were built with lower quality components. Keep that in mind when you choose your motherboard. Look for quality manufacturers. For the most part you aren’t going to go wrong with Gigabyte, Asus, and Intel.

It’s all about the features

The last piece of advice I’ll leave you with in this motherboard review before I give you my suggestions for motherboards is don’t choose a motherboard based on the number of PCIe slots if you aren’t going to be running multiple GPUs from the start. If you are starting with one video card don’t spend the extra money just for SLI or Crossfire. By the time you save money to buy a second video card you will either be building a whole new computer or there will be a new line of video cards out and you will see a greater increase in performance by upgrading our single video card rather than buying a second of your existing video card.

Core i5 Motherboards

High End:
Asus P755D Deluxe
Gigabyte P55A-UD6
Intel DP 55KG

Midrange:
Asus P7P55D EVO
EVGA P55 SLI
Gigabyte P55-UD4P
MSI P55-GD65

Budget:
Gigabyte P55M-UD4
Asus P7P55D

AMD Phenom II Based Build

Asus Crosshair III Formula Motherboard - AMD 790FX

Core i7 Motherboards