Best budget motherboards for gaming 2013

Asus has always positioned its TUF products as reliable options, with decent pricing and a more basic feature set. Combined it means this is a good affordable option for someone after a no-fuss, solid, and reliable system. And given the pricing of many Z motherboards, that makes for a welcome change. You get a couple of little splashes of RGB around the right side too. There are three M. The two at the bottom are contained under a single heatsink. Also, note the vertical SATA ports that sticklers for cable management might find objectionable.

There are a further two regular horizontal ports adjacent to the heatsink. You get six fan headers and two addressable RGB headers too. And I can totally get on board with that. Bang for buck and the true essentials are the name of the game here. Overclocking focused motherboards have made a proper comeback. This time around all the major manufacturers have Z boards specifically designed for serious overclocking.

The dual memory slot design, all those buttons and switches, a monstrous VRM, and a unique layout are all aimed at making life easier for overclockers. The idea behind having only two memory slots instead of four is to minimize trace complexity and bring the slots closer to the CPU. This helps reduce latency and allows for a little more performance headroom compared to a four-slot design.

This is another choice to aid overclockers who use LN2 cool a GPU by allowing extra room for pots and insulation. Read the full Gigabyte Z Aorus Tachyon review. If you want the best, most fully-featured Intel Comet Lake motherboard, then I'm afraid you're going to have to pay for it. It is, as the name suggests, extreme, packing in a variety of luxurious and convenient extras a frickin' screwdriver with interchangeable heads for one , and it's also one of the highest performing Z boards we've tested.

But it only really makes sense if you're buying a K-series Core i9 and genuinely intend to overclock the nuts off it. The Maximus XII will allow you to get the highest clock speed out of your K and won't turn it into a pile of molten slag while you're at it.

It's an aspirational Z motherboard and arguably the best gaming motherboard for Comet Lake overclocking, but I'll concede it's not a particularly realistic purchase for most of us. The rarified air of the ultra-enthusiast ROG board up top might make one giddy, but the Z Gaming Carbon will bring us back down to earth without a bump.

Sure, you're never going to get the same level of luxury feature list as you'll find with either the Maximus XII or MSI's own Godlike boards, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of pure performance, it's right up there. Where it matters, in the gaming performance stakes, there's practically nothing between any of the Z boards we've tested, and it's only ever a little behind when it comes to the actual CPU performance in productivity apps.

The power componentry and cooling aren't enough to stop the thirsty CPU from throttling when it's pushed to its 5. Grabbing one of the best Z motherboards might be appealing to your inner elitist, but the sticker price shock is definitely a problem. If you can put up with the memory speed limitation and have no intention of overclocking well, with a K-series CPU anyway , then this is the kind of board that should be on your PC building wishlist.

Pairing it with a 65W non-K processor and having a crack at pseudo overclocking is definitely worth the minimal efforts too. You get a pair of heatsink-covered M. The increased power demands of 10th generation CPUs mean motherboards generally have to include improved VRM designs, and on that front, the B Steel Legend is well equipped.

Each stage can deliver up to 60A. Bear in mind that overclocking is not allowed on B motherboards, so the VRM will not see extreme loads as you might get with an all-core overclocked Intel Core i9 K. But the ASRock B Steel legend is still a highly competitive offering and comes highly recommended by us. It shows its steel, one might say.

If it had Wi-Fi, we might even have said it was legendary. It has triple M. You'd have to climb right to the top of the product stack to get the same from MSI and ASUS, both of whom offer a little more polish but also charge plenty for the privilege. Though there's a lot to be said for extreme motherboards , this is a great value Intel board.

The only real downside for us is that this mobo is perhaps a little too flashy and may not suit more restrained gaming builds.

But that's a small criticism of an otherwise top board. Boasting stable 5GHz overclocks using several memory speeds, including 3,MHz with tweaking, its single PCIe x16 slot pushed top-shelf graphics cards to speeds that matched or exceeded most Z ATX boards during testing. See at Newegg. Fancy trying out the latest Intel Core iK? Go for it; this motherboard will be more than happy to come along for the ride. This board is a serious piece of kit, reflected in the price. You've got water-cooling support for the VRMs, and these are high-quality, premium components.

All this allows one to overclock their processor and system to get even more performance from their PC without sacrificing system stability. It's a little pricey, though. Be sure to check the specifications and decide whether you really require such a platform for your PC. This motherboard has a whole host of useful features, including 10Gb LAN. You don't need the most massive motherboard you come across to build a great PC.

Smaller form factor cases are handy when you want to keep the PC's overall dimensions low, and a Mini-ITX motherboard will help with this.

By using a super-compact Mini-ITX case, it's possible to build a PC that takes up a little more space than your favorite video game console. That all sounds good enough already, but the price will also help as it's not too expensive. And I said Ryzen Series processors. That's right; you could install the Ryzen 9 X into this motherboard and have a small PC powered by 16 cores and 32 threads, because why not?

With built-in Intel Wi-Fi , you can place a PC with this motherboard pretty much anywhere in the home. What you may not like about this motherboard is the single PCIe x16 slot and the lack of any functional heatsinks for the VRM. It can get hot, and you won't want to push your processor much further than factory settings. It'll handle even the more powerful processors, including the AMD Ryzen 9. This excellent example from ASUS has a lot of potential without all the excess baggage.

RAM may be a little restrictive, but at 64GB, you shouldn't run into issues. This small board comes with support for 12th Gen processors from Intel. But don't let the small size fool you into assuming you're unable to build a capable PC with it as the foundation. The full-sized PCIe x16 3. Just expect to pay out a fair chunk for the liberty of using a smaller platform. ASUS made available 2. That's quite the array of expansion, especially the rapid 2.

Intel processor owners can also create some excellent compact PC builds, and a motherboard like this fine example from ASUS would allow exactly that.

There are literally hundreds of motherboards out there that could be considered for your next PC build. Motherboards are available from different vendors, regardless of whether you go with Intel or AMD. For each of our picks, you could choose an alternative from another vendor and enjoy a similar experience. Usually speaking, motherboards tend to be more similar, though various factors like power delivery, component type, and features are switched up to differentiate them.

Choosing the best motherboard for your PC build largely depends on which processor you wish to use. From there, you can look at price and chipset features, though so long as you spend a fair amount, you'll be buying an excellent motherboard. On top of that, its high-end sound processor and software give you an improved auditory experience, and the steel-reinforced PCI-E slot keeps your heavy graphics card from causing warping or connection issues over time.

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