Help Guide for Buying Gaming Motherboards

Selecting gaming motherboards is not just about the motherboard. A gaming computer is a custom-built machine, with specifically chosen parts that perform better for a specific genre of games. All these parts come together on the motherboard, so the first and most important thing a motherboard needs is compatibility.

Nothing matters more for gaming than excess capacity, which is what gamers need for speed and detail. Monitors provide the high resolution and detail, but without a cutting-edge graphics adaptor, it won't work. The motherboard needs to have the chipsets, bus system and a form factor (standard size) sufficient to be able to keep up with such a high-performance card.

The motherboard has to pass the same test for each of the other parts, including the HDD, memory, LAN card, cooling fans and power supply. Unless the board can match the speed and power of each of these parts, the system as a whole and the individual parts will not be able to provide the full power of their capability. Hence, gaming motherboards not only need to be compatible, they need to be compatible in the extreme.

Also to be noted that motherboards today have almost everything built-in, including display adaptors and sound and LAN cards. These built-in parts might be enough for basic applications. But gaming needs go well beyond what these onboard cards can provide. For this, the board needs to be able to accommodate as much extra memory and as many add-on cards as possible.

Motherboards that satisfy all these points would still need to pass benchmarking tests. Buy only those boards which are rated positively by hardware and gaming review sites. Manufacturers make their products available to reviewers before it launches in the market, so every new board already has reviews that indicate clearly if it is good enough for gaming.

Another couple of very important requirements that need to be fulfilled are over clocking and upgrade possibilities. Over clocking is used to make parts run at faster clock rates than the specified ratings. Changing clock rates on a motherboard's bios setup is a critical procedure, because too much change will fry the board and take out some of the major parts along with the board.

A logical question would be why fool around with something so critical. The answer lies in the competitive nature of the gaming world. When everybody has roughly the same parts and talent, the one who wins is the one who manages to extract the most out of the machine by overclocking it. Right or wrong, the point here is that gaming motherboards should have quite a bit of hidden capacity which kicks in when over clocked.

There's also the question of upgrades. Every part in gaming has a window of between 6-12 months, after which it becomes obsolete. This is because new games released every year can be played only on the latest parts. They just don't work on old configurations. So the motherboard needs to have the capability to survive these biannual part upgrades.

To sum it up, what is required of gaming motherboards is a capacity to match all kinds of high performance parts. It has to be able to get the most out of today's parts, and have the excess capacity required to keep up with tomorrow's parts. The best judge of this capacity is the board manufacturer, so make sure the motherboard maker has labeled it as a board fit for gaming.

There are more review articles and details regarding desktop PC cases and gaming motherboards at my website. I will even let you in on a little secret: Where to get them cheaper than everywhere else on the internet ;) Thank you for browsing, and enjoy!