Gadgetory

it used to be that picking a motherboard was a major decision that could have a real impact on your computer's performance with bus speeds and built-in graphics varying significantly between models but these days with more and more things being standardized or integrated into CPUs your choice of motherboard will have virtually zero impact on raw performance so what's the point of this video then isn't the solution just to pick the cheapest compatible motherboard and put more money into the rest of the build well not necessarily even though the days of fretting over a motherboards beed are all but gone motherboards still vary wildly in their feature sets and build quality so what kinds of things should you look out for and are they worth the premium well since one of the main functions of a motherboard is to connect everything in your system together we'll start by talking about connectivity these days it's absurdly easy to find things like ddr4 and USB 3 support on even budget boards but moving up to a higher tier can get you MDOT to support for much faster SSDs than what you could get with SATA USB 3.1 10 Gigabit USB type-c and even Thunderbolt for connecting monitors ultra-fast external storage or even an external video card it's also becoming more common to see Wi-Fi on mid to high end boards to give you additional flexibility if there's no Ethernet port nearby none of these bells and whistles are necessities but they can be very useful especially if you're working with large files that could benefit from the higher speeds but what is necessary is the right chipset assuming you're overclocking on the Intel side only Z and X series chipset support overclocking natively so you'll want to pick up a board with one of these at the minimum higher-end boards also tend to have better power delivery that can deliver more power to your CPU without becoming unstable which can be important for overclocking but has become less of a priority due to Howie modern CPUs can be and if you want to have an A+ tower delivery a quick and dirty way to check is to count the number of power phases on the motherboard with more premium boards having eight or even more and some models will go the extra mile to make the experience as enthusiast friendly as possible when it comes to thermal management with extra water pump headers and even support for custom water loops thanks to hybrid heat sinks that also function as water blocks for hot components like the chipset and voltage regulator modules pretty cool but not crucial unless you're really trying to push your system as far as it can go another nice thing is the vastly improved sound on better motherboards not too long ago integrated audio was terrible pretty much across the board but these days you won't see too many enthusiasts recommending separate sound cards anymore many nicer motherboards and even most mid-range ones have superior onboard audio or even electrical separation of sound chips and traces from the rest of the board to cut down on interference and then toward the top end you'll start seeing things like headphone amps for high impedance headphones and although many folks who are serious about audio just get an external DAC and amp this can still be an interesting solution if you really want to keep everything in one box of course this is yet another nice to have not a need to have and at the end of the day you need your motherboard to be reliable and last longer than your Pokemon goal obsession did so beyond the usual advice of picking a reputable manufacturer and looking for a nice long warranty keep an eye out for features like solid capacitors which tend to last much longer than cheaper electrolytic ones which can leak reinforced PCI Express slots might be a decent idea if you're using a heavy graphics card and there are even boards with special back plates that reduce the amount of torque on them when you're installing them or mounting a cooler and checked the traces from incidental scratches finally I'd be remiss in 2017 if I didn't say anything about aesthetics gone are the days of plain green PC DS and now Arctic camouflage dragon heat sinks and RGB lighting are the norm some boards notably asus models even have an RGB sync header so that any LED strips you put in your case will sync up with your motherboards lighting effects you just blew my mind man but coming back to the main point of the video obviously if you're not overclocking or water cooling or using bleeding edge storage or you're color blind or whatever you can pretty much ignore everything that I just said by a $40.00 motherboard that just has the basics and you won't really see a dip in performance speaking of not seeing a different performance why shouldn't you be able to browse the Internet quickly and securely at the same time tunnel Bayer VPN lets you tunnel to 20 different countries allowing you to browse the Internet and use online services as though you are in a different country 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