How do you choose a motherboard?

JohnJSal

JohnJSal

Active Member
My guess is the first step would be to choose the CPU you want, then narrow down the mobo selection to the ones that support it. But where do you go from here? How do you continue to narrow it down?

I think one reason I get a little confused is because I don't know if it's the chipset itself that you should be choosing, or if it's the actual physical structure of the mobo (and what it supports) that matters more.

Just trying to get a general idea of how to go about it. Maybe narrowing it by brand is another good way (e.g. Asus). These are my two scenarios, if it helps to be more specific:

1. For myself, I want to build a nice, fairly high-performance PC for gaming, but nothing intense. It would include Core 2 Duo E6850, nVidia GeForce 8800GT, 2GB RAM, probably a 500GB HD, etc.

2. For my parents, something very mainstream. Whatever the cheapst Core 2 Duo CPU is, probably integrated graphics (although I'd like to choose a mobo that has a graphics slot, just in case), integrated sound, 2GB RAM, etc.

Thanks.
 
im wondering the same thing. i want to use the same hard drive, exact same processor just am unsure of ramand what to look for in a board. i would like to use mine for gaming on newer games. so mien will need to be a bit more intense. just not overkill
 
Pick your processor then look at what Socket the processor is. This will tell you if the processor will be able to work with your motherboard or not.

For example the central processing unit I am using is an AMD Athlon 4000+ Socket 939. Only motherboards that have Socket 939 would be able to use my current processor.
 
Reading further I see you are looking at Intel's Core 2 Duo processor. Only motherboards that are Socket 775 LGA will be able to use the central processing unit you have selected.
 
2048Megabytes said:
Pick your processor then look at what Socket the processor is. This will tell you if the processor will be able to work with your motherboard or not.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Probably if I was a little more patient, I would have discovered this on my own. I was just reading that the Core 2 Duo uses Socket LGA775, so that definitely helps narrow it down.
 
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