How to Choose the Right Motherboard to Build Your Computer

Motherboards are often neglected by most computer builder. In fact it plays a very important role to build your computer. It was the first thing you need to be learned because it dictates the overall capabilities of your system. This article will teach you how to choose wisely the right motherboard to build your computer.

Here are some things to be considered in choosing the right motherboard

1. The maximum processor speed. Decide what is the best speed that suits your needs and also for your future plan of upgrading it. The socket it can handle. Intel processors offers different socket for their newly released processor. It means that you have limitations on upgrading your system into a newer version of their processor. Unlike AMD processors they remain the same to their socket. A wise decision for this is to choose a motherboard that supports AMD processor.

2. The speed of memory and what kind of memory it can support. DDR, DDR2 and DDR3 are completely different and DDR3 is the fastest of them all. Another thing is the size of memory it can handle. Newer version of motherboards can support up to 16GB of memory and that was quite big enough. You better choose a board that supports DDR3 and the fastest speed the motherboard can handle.

3. The expansion slots. What other cards you can connect into it? Mostly available motherboards in the market are now having a PCI-E 16x and PCI-E 1x which is the most widely used expansion slot nowadays. The best thing to do is to choose motherboard with an extra number of slots that you will be needed for your future expansion.

4. What other peripherals you can connect into it? The number of SATA and ATA/IDE header. The number of USB port. Does it meet the number ports you're going to use including for your future needs?

5. What are the built-in features? Built-in features are peripheral cards that are integrated into your motherboard. Some of these are sound, video, LAN and modem. If your applications are purely office work you can save money if you choose a motherboard having a built-in video card on it. But, if your applications are more on graphics I suggest you buy a separate video cards.

6. The chipset being used. Chipsets are fixed into the motherboard and it greatly affects your system performance. Cheap motherboard mostly uses low end chipset but it doesn't mean that overpriced boards used the best chipset out there. The best thing to do is to find reviews for your chosen motherboard to know its performance.

7. The Price. Even though if you're in a tight budget the motherboard is not the last thing you have to sacrifice. A great motherboard is better than a good looking casing.