Cheapest Motherboard?

[Yehomilk]

Should I buy the cheapest possible motherboard that is compatible with all my parts? Is there any real performance boosts from quality motherboards, or is it just new features and egb that get added?

 

[samcool55]

Well that depends what you are getting.

In theory any motherboard will perform the same, however what can make a difference is the VRM.

If it overheats because it can't handle the cpu you will get a performance hit. But apart from that, it's mainly just features.

 

There is also RAM-support but that's not exactly performance related.

[NelizMastr]

Be sensible when you buy your components. So if you skimp out on the motherboard, don't go pairing it with an i7 because that will fry cheapo boards to a crisp or slow down to a crawl. Cheapo boards belong with cheapo to midrange CPUs, that's basically the rule of thumb.

[Jurrunio]

If you dont overclock, then buying a cheap board only means losing optional features such as USB ports, RGB headers, fan headers etc. No big deal.

 

If you do overclock, then the lacking VRMs on cheap boards wont handle the overclock. Either it throttles your CPU because the thermal diodes tell the motherboard VRMs are overheating, or it just runs normally till it blows up because there is no thermal diodes.