by Joe Mans, Senior Network Engineer at Aston Technologies

I apologize for the long absence of this series, but we are back now! This article is going to focus on the first of many decisions that you will need to make when building your own PC, choosing the Motherboard and CPU. Before we get too deep into the weeds, I want to explain some of the terminology.

Motherboard — The motherboard is the backbone of any build, daughter boards (also known as cards or expansions) connect to the mother board (generally) in PCIe slots (more on those later) to extend it physically and enhance the machine’s overall capabilities.

CPU — Central Processing Unit, the heart of any PC, the CPU is responsible for accepting, making decisions, and processing all the information that your PC is utilizing. It is also the part that will be responsible for any physics or calculation heavy workload such as simulations in a video game.

Socket — this determines what CPUs you can utilize, usually contained within a same generation of chip, though some sockets extend to multiple generations, these are also different for each chip manufacturer, an Intel chip will not fit in an AMD socket and vice versa.

I/O — Input/Output, I/O is all the ports the motherboard supports that you can plug accessories and other devices into in the back of your PC. Such as HDMI, DVI, VGA, Display Port, Ethernet, USB, and the myriad of audio port types.

While there are many motherboard manufacturers, there are effectively only two CPU manufacturers to choose from when building your own PC. Apple does also make CPUs and other chips, but their hardware is for their own proprietary equipment and not sold as a consumer part. The two main players are Intel (team Blue) and AMD (team Red).

Each manufacturer has a different naming and numbering system. Boards that support Intel chips have named lakes to differentiate the generations (alder lake, rocket lake, etc.). While AMD’s most common sockets are a variation on AM (insert generation number here), with a few exceptions for higher performance chips such as the Threadripper platform.

The socket that you select determines several factors, most importantly the CPUs that you can select from, as well as the number of PCIe lanes that are supported and at what speed. PCIe lanes connect your CPU to all the other components on the Motherboard such as your ram, storage, and any expansion slots you have. For a more in-depth explanation of the several types of PCIe lanes I have added a link to an article published by Electronics Hub. PCIe’s capabilities roughly double with each generation. Most modern motherboards have a mixture of PCIe generation 4 and 3 lanes, higher end boards will have some PCIe generation 5 lanes, and the newest generation #6 was defined in January 2023 and is currently being developed by manufacturers.

https://www.electronicshub.org/types-of-pcie-slots/

Formfactor — ATX, Mini iTX, Micro ATX, EATX are the most common forms, but others exist, usually in specialized one-off builds or in server hardware. The formfactor determines the size and some of the capabilities of your motherboard, larger boards have more room to place additional hardware, but also require a larger case to install them in. ATX is the most common form factor for motherboards, and my personal favorite.

Bells and whistles — Some motherboards have additional features and functionality built in, such as wireless cards, be on the lookout for these features if they interest you.

Special edition boards — For the enthusiast PC builder with good funding there are also special edition hardware that occasionally gets released. These are inevitably more expensive but have an interesting visual style. Recent examples include the Eva-02, and RX-78 Gundam/Char’s Zaku 2 themed components. From the popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion and Mobile Suit Gundam.

Chip generations are slightly different from sockets, as some sockets support multiple chip generations. In the same way that a 2012 Ford F-150 is similar to a 2014 F-150 with a few minor changes. Intel’s chip generations are pretty easy to follow as they tend to increment, but lets break it down anyway to avoid confusion using the Intel i9–12900k as an example. Intel is the name of the manufacturer, the i7 is a general classification of the chips capabilities, this ranges from i3-i9 for most of Intel’s consumer chips that you would be looking at for a custom PC build. The 12900k is broken into 3 sections. The thousands indicate the generation this chip is, in this case the 12th generation of Intel’s current design. The hundreds denotes the performance capabilities of the chip with 900 generally being the most powerful. The last part is optional, the letter that follows the numbers is an identifier for optional features in the case of the 12900k, the k indicates that this chip is unlocked and can be overclocked from the factory if the user chooses to do so. We will talk more about overclocking in a future article. The current AMD chips follow a similar formula, with slight differences. The Ryzen Number is similar to the i3,5,7,9 but more meaningful, as each Ryzen number repeats its numbering. Meaning a Ryzen 3 4000 series chip is not as powerful as a Higher Ryzen number with a lower product number such as a Ryzen 7 1800. This system can be a bit confusing until you get used to it. My advice is to do a lot of reading on the technical specifications and ask around on forums such as Reddit or Linus Tech Tips or PC Part Picker before making your decision.

There are many motherboard manufacturers, most of them are fine and will suit your needs. But some manufacturers have better reputations for build quality and customer service than others. If you have the spare budget you may want to consider a more trustworthy and expensive manufacturer. As an example, Gigabyte is a fine manufacturer who makes and sells boards in almost every configuration you can think of, but they are generally of a cheaper build quality than other brands such as a company like ASUS. Both make fine products and I have used both manufacturers; it is simply a matter of personal preference.

The last point I wish to consider is the idea of upgradability. The motherboard is the heart of your system and the most complicated component to replace as everything else needs to be compatible with the motherboard. If you are on a more restrained budget my advice is to spend a larger percentage of your budget on a good quality motherboard and get cheaper supplemental components such as CPU, RAM, or storage. Building a solid foundation with a good motherboard gives you a solid upgrade path, you can upgrade the cheaper components as you have more funds available and the next generation of bleeding edge parts comes out, lowering the sale price of older (but still compatible) high-end parts.

The selection of a good motherboard and CPU combination is the most critical part of any PC build, it lays the foundation for the rest of the system and will influence every decision that you will make throughout the rest of the process. Take your time, do the research, talk to other enthusiasts, and when you find a good deal on the components you want, strike while the iron is hot.

Until next time when we will be discussing storage, both RAM and ROM. Happy gaming!