A Complete Guide on How to Choose a Motherboard for a Gaming PC?

When you are going to build your first ever gaming pc, you will be confused about selecting all critical parts that CPU, motherboard, GPU, and Ram will be the best one to play games.

The motherboard is one of the most crucial things to decide as your motherboard will determine all of your future extensions in the build. For example, if you choose a motherboard that does not support PCIe 4.0, the latest communication port, and in the future, you want to connect your graphic card to PCIe4.0. Still, unluckily you cannot do that because you selected a motherboard which has not such port.

First of all, you should decide between the intel and AMD that which processor you are choosing for the Gaming PC build.

So here in this guide, we will explain all the essential things which you should consider to buy the best motherboard in your budget to get maximum performance.

Is the motherboard necessary for your gaming setup?

The main question arises in the mind that does motherboard affect the PC’s performance when we will play games and do overclock. The answer to that question is that it does not affect the performance directly, but each component of your PC depends on the motherboard.

For example, you want a gaming setup with 2 to 3 graphic cards, but if your motherboard does not support so much GPU, you cannot connect them with the pc.

Here are the things which you should consider before buying the motherboard.

CPU Socket

We will recommend selecting your processor first and thinking about the motherboard because all motherboards have not supported all types of CPUs. So you have to choose CPU then accordingly think and select about the motherboard.

Form Factor

After you decided on the CPU and CPU socket for a motherboard, the next step will be selecting the motherboard size called the Form Factor of Motherboard.

Usually, three form factors motherboards are coming in the market: ATX, Micro ATX, and Mini ITX.

Now, if you already have a PC case, then you are bound to select a motherboard according to your PC Case; it means if your PC Case is Micro ATX, then you never go for an ATX motherboard as it cannot be installed in the Micro ATX Case.

But if you have ATX Case, then luckily, you can fit a Micro Atx motherboard in the ATX Case and the same for the Mini ITX motherboard. If you have Micro ATX or Mini Itx case, then never go for the ATX motherboard; otherwise, you can go for any of the motherboards.

If you are not bound on pc case and have to select the case after purchasing the motherboard, then the only thing you have to consider is your technical requirements for the PC build. It means that you should know how many PCIe ports will be sufficient for you and which type of PCIe ports you want.

Other main things to consider are RAM, GPU, CPU Coolers, WIFI, and Bluetooth existence.

If you are still confused, then you can read here for more detailed information about all type of premium intel Motherboards for i9 9900k on Techmotherboard.

PCIe Slots

PCIe is the interface used for connection between the motherboard and almost all critical PC components like graphic card, memory, SSD, etc. So if you are using the best graphic card but did not select a motherboard that can provide a PCIe slot that will give exceptional performance with the GPU, you cannot get full performance.

PCIe 4.0 data transfer rate is two times higher than the PCIe 3.0, so if you are not limitations of budget, you should go for the PCIe 4.0 gen motherboards currently just launched by AMD these are X570 and B550.

X570 motherboards are the most premium boards of AMD, which has excellent features, including PCIe 4.0 slot, but if you want a budget choice with PCIe 4.0, then B550 is the best available motherboard in the market right now.

Graphics Card

Some Processors has built-in graphics card for basic tasks, and it works best for that, but when you are going to build a pc for gaming purpose, you must need a dedicated graphics card to maximize your gaming performance.

Now for regular gaming, just one good graphic card is well enough. Still, if you want overclocking and heavy gaming, then you must think that how much GPU you will connect to the motherboard so a sufficient PCIe slot will be available there for future extensions of the system.

RAM Slots

The minimum recommended ram size for the gaming build is 8 GB, so you must have to install 8 GB of ram when going to build a gaming PC.If you have the budget, then 16 GB of ram will perform much better.

Before ram installation, you must be clear that how much maximum DIMM slots you need to install the rams.Usually motherboards have 2 to 8 DIMM ports.

Keep in mind that the Mini ITX motherboard has just 2 DIMM slots while some of the micro ATX motherboards have two slots, but you can find some of the Micro ATX motherboards also with 4 DIMM slots.

Cooling Setup

When you play the games, the CPU,Graphics card, and other components will be heating up, and you should also require a cooling setup to cooldown the components for better efficiency.

If you are not using the proper Air and water coolers and your components heated up due to the life of these components will also decrease.

So now how many fans and radiators you can install totally depends upon your pc case. If you choose a compact mini ITX case and motherboard, then maybe you will be able to install a maximum of 1 to 2 CPU coolers, which may not be sufficient to cool down your all heating load of the pc.

Verdict

Now finally, we will recommend that if you have a budget and want a gaming setup that you can also overclock, then you must go for Ryzen 3000 series Processors with the X570 motherboard or B550 motherboard.

If you are an Intel lover and havea goodbudget, then go for Core i9 9900k processor paired with a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus pro motherboard. Thismust be the best combo for you.