'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
Building a new gaming PC? One of the most important decisions that you'll have to make is what the best gaming motherboard is to buy and act as the foundation for your PC.
Yes, the motherboard is the backbone of a PC. Sure, what CPU and GPU you buy will greatly determine the performance, but remember that everything connects to the motherboard, and if you fit a great CPU and GPU to a poor motherboard, you'll end up with a poor PC that offers a poor experience.
A good motherboard makes all the difference.
Product | Price | Feature | Feature |
MSI MAG B660 Tomahawk WIFI DDR4 | $256.99 | For Intel processors | 128GB DDR5 RAM |
Asus Prime H610M-A D4 | $109.00 | For Intel processors | 128GB DDR4 RAM |
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra | $689.00 | For AMD processors | 128GB DDR4 RAM |
Gigabyte X570S Aorus Master | $399.99 | For AMD processors | 128GB DDR4 RAM |
Choose this… | If you want or are… |
Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Pro | The best motherboard for Intel processors |
MSI MAG B660 Tomahawk WIFI DDR4 | A solid motherboard without all the complexities of overclocking |
Asus Prime H610M-A D4 | An excellent, low-cost motherboard for Intel processors |
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra | A motherboard that's easy to overclock |
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero | The best motherboard for AMD processors |
Gigabyte X570S Aorus Master | A fanless motherboard for a quiet PC |
This is a combination of products that I use from companies that I trust. All these companies have a reputation for building solid products with good support.
I've covered both Intel and AMD chips, in a range of prices.
This is where I highly recommend that you go to the manufacturers website and check the compatibility list. Most manufacturers produce a list of compatible CPUs and RAM modules, and this can be offer a wealth of information.
Unless you're upgrading a CPU and/or RAM to go with it, I would say no. The only time I would say yes to this is if your existing motherboard is unstable with the parts you have.
You can get a lot of of overclocking a system, but it's not for the faint of heart. Overclocking can be fun, but it can also be frustrating, and can damage components.
It's one of those "at your own risk" things.
You could, but remember that server motherboards are designed to handle different workloads to gaming motherboards. So while you could use a server motherboard in a gaming PC, performance would suffer a lot.
They should last you long enough for the PC to start feeling slow and old, and you're beginning to think about upgrading.
That said, gaming PCs are typically run faster and hotter than standard PCs, and as such components failure is more common, but in my experience you should get a number of years of happy gaming from a motherboard before you have problems.