zoidberg rules wrote:Quick question, I know next to nothing about computers and how to build them but I was thinking about learning at some point soon and building myself a decent PC. What does the motherboard actually affect when building a PC? And what would class a motherboard as "good"? I was always under the impression that the performance of a PC was only affected by the more major components (CPU, GPU and RAM)
A good motherboard depends on what you're planning on putting in it, what you're putting the board in, and what you want to use it for. Vague I know. If you're building something for gaming a good motherboard will have at least a modern socket (1155, AM3, etc), a PCIe 2 or 3 x16 slot, and a modern chipset (like p67 or z68 in intels case). Modern socket = modern processor, PCIe 2 x16 = higher end graphics card, modern chipset supports better bus speeds, USB 3.0, and so on.
Think of it this way, the motherboard is the center for all of the components, it's a way for them to communicate. If it communicates slowly or doesn't do it properly, you're going to have decreased performance. Though to be fair, the thing that usually is bottlenecking computers is the hard drive, as they have moving parts. Very few people exclusively use solid state drives.
