Do I really need a good motherboard?

[Fantastic1legolover]

Can someone please explain if I need a good motherboard? If I (hypothetically) had a 9900k and an rtx 2080 would I really see any meaningful drop in performance with a cheap motherboard vs an expensive one?

[5x5]

Yes. You could also see smoke from a cheap boards VRM. The 9900K is a space heater and power hog. It easily pushes 120-140W stock and upwards of 200W when overclocking. A good board is vital of you want a lasting and stable system. A cheap H310 or low end B360 board will result in issues.

[minibois]

Let's say you went for the lowest end motherboard possible for the 9900K (just for the sake of explanation), you would go for a H310. Those do not have the VRM design and CPU power design for a chip like the 9900K, which would make it suffer in performance because of a lack of power.

Say you're overclocking, you're just multiplying that at this point.

 

Depending on the sort of board you get, it might not support proper RAM speeds, which also drops perfomance.

 

So yea, a motherboard does matter. A tier A or S 1151 board (Z390 likely) would be the best fit for you there:

 

[Caennanu]

2 minutes ago, Fantastic1legolover said:

Can someone please explain if I need a good motherboard? If I (hypothetically) had a 9900k and an rtx 2080 would I really see any meaningful drop in performance with a cheap motherboard vs an expensive one?

No, you do not need a good motherboard for a computer to function. However buying a better one will give you less hassle.

You can compared it to Lego vs some knockoff version. You know Lego is made by quality standards. the knockoffs look the same but somehow don't always fit right? Same thing with mainboards. Getting a better mobo generally (not always) means it will last longer and give you less issues in the long run. Support is also included in most prices.