Saturday, October 29, 2011

Chosing the Best Motherboard - Quality over Quantity

By Joseph Robertson


When you embark upon the job of building a gaming pc, generally one of the goals is to get the finest of each type of hardware. This is true whether you are searching for the true BEST motherboard (as an example) - where you can look at every motherboard available, compare the offerings it has and look at benchmarks - and is also correct when you're looking to get the best motherboard for a certain price range (or any other piece of hardware).

So what does it mean to find the best component for a system? Chatting motherboards, in addition to the motherboard which has the best elements built in and scores the best on charts, I think it's also significant to look at the company that makes the motherboard. Does that company have a history of quality products, or do they have a history of issues? How does the specific motherboard you are looking at get reviewed vis stableness and quality?

When valuing hardware for building PCs it is simple to simply look at charts. Charts provide us quantifiable interpretations of the 'power ' of each element. You might easily look at a chart for each part - motherboard, processor, video card, ram, hard drive, case, heatsink - pick the component at the top of each of these charts and build what you suspect is "the best" PC.

What occurs if one of those parts is built by an organization that does not necessarily have the best previous record? You spend a specific amount of money but then run into issues and have to spend extra money before long. The longevity of that specific system - vis power - is not in question. Clearly by the charts it is at the top. The longevity is in query because the parts may not work best together or you will finish up with a washout element that causes issues and destroys your entire system.

So choosing a motherboard made by a good company is part of the process of finding the best motherboard. At this time there are 3 usually referenced and respected motherboard makers - yes there are others, but these three are 'the best ' apropos quality. Asus, ASRock, and Gigabyte. I actually like Asus, as they have had a foundation of high quality and excellent purchaser service for a long time - I've used them pretty much exclusively for the last 10 years. So if you're hunting for the best motherboard, don't always glance at the top of the charts - look for the one that's manufactured by the company with the best track record and customer service, then look at the charts.




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