Does a motherboard affect perfomance?

[rimo]

title

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

It can in a way of how good RAM it can run, if it has the capability to overclock unlocked core CPUs or if it has good enough VRM shielding and power delivery to run high-powered CPUs better without melting the board.
So basically indirect ways of boosting the performance not direct ways like CPU, GPU or RAM performance.

[xSOSxHawkens]

short answer, not not normally

Long answer, yes it absolutely can.

[Autumn_]

Normally, at stock settings, highly unlikely, but possible (if you're looking at the cheapest, worst boards ever.)

If you're getting into experememting with overclocking, putting high power CPUs in, etc. Then yes, it can; power deleivery is important (how high you can overclock, how stable it will be, and how hot it will get), BIOS (keeping up-to-date with updates /microcode updates), features (if you plan to overclock, make sure you get one that allows it.)

[Conor McGregor]

Originally posted by xSOSxHawkens:

short answer, not not normally

Long answer, yes it absolutely can.

eaxct

[Lord Flashheart]

Apparently the new intel compatible ones have artificial memory speed limits on them.

As for AMD, they can vary in power delivery which can be an issue if using a CPU with a lot of cores.

It of course depends on what you are using the PC for.

[D'Ionni Unchained]

Used to matter more.

Now they just build a bunch of stuff into the CPU itself instead of using separate chips on the motherboard.

So yeah... we're getting closer and closer to having a motherboard that's just power delivery and connections.

[Bing Chilling]

i think the lan controllers are realyl bad on cheap mobo's
my H310 maxes out at 30mbps
yet with the same lan cable plugged into my slightly older b250M steam machine.
i get my proper speed of 52mbps

[_I_]

yes
cheap mobo is cheap for a reason

few vrm phases or weak vrm config or no vrm cooling can limit the cpu performance directly if the cpu cant get the power needed for higher performance

chipset:
older gen chipset or wrong chipset for the cpu will limit its abilities
ex. amd fx in 6x chipset designed for aii/pii will severely nerf its performance

peripherals:
addons sharing pci-e lanes can also lower performance, if the mobo does not have enough pci-e lanes for all devices, some devices may steal bandwidth from others


the intel x10 chipsets are the bare minimum, never buy a board with 2 dimm slots and 4 sata ports, unless it will only be used for office tasks and never need the cpus full performance

[Mad Scientist]

Put it this way,

Your system is only as strong as your weakest part. That being said, a motherboard is unlikely to impact performance compared to using a weak cpu, gpu, or otherwise.

[Arya]

For a typical gaming build, no. A better motherboard won't directly benefit you, it won't increase your FPS or make your games load faster.

And yet they're important in other ways. Better Motherboards have stronger VRMs, and for Intel systems they bring the ability to Overclock Intel's K-Series CPUs. And that can make a huge performance difference to K-Series. For Ryzen, it's not as straightforward as most Ryzens can't make the huge raw-power gains thru overclocking that Ks can.

TLDR: Find a motherboard you like, unless you're swinging for the fences with a demon overclock you don't >need< reinforced, water-cooled VRMs or shiney BIOS menus.

[AdahnGorion]

Short answer - Yes

Regular answer

The MB is one of the most essential parts of your rig and believe it or not, getting a sub tier MB could potentially hinder you, in ie ram speeds, functionality with the other hardware, CPU performance, etc etc.

What you want to do, is make a balanced build. Make sure all your parts connect well and are the same tier. "Don´t do stupid stuff, like buying a cheap low watt PSU ie, if you have a beefy GPU"

That being said, you can easily find "cheap" MB that have good enough specs to work in mid/high tier builds. We could go on about talking with clocking, the peripherals, etc.. but others already did that.



The biggest mistake I see, is people buying a much higher GPU, than their system allows, and then they complain about worse performance than people with lower tier GPU´s in balanced builds.

[r.linder]

In the majority of cases, motherboards do not really affect performance, and all you're getting by paying more is additional features on the motherboard, such as additional M.2 slots (and maybe heatsinks for them), more robust power delivery using higher quality components, higher quality on-board controllers for audio, ethernet, etc. etc. None of which you really need unless your other components need it.

At one point I had ran a 2700X on my X470 AORUS GAMING 7 (Gigabyte's top end X470) and put it on a B450M-DS3H (Gigabyte's low end B450) for another build and it ran virtually the same. Motherboard only makes a real difference for AMD if you're putting a 12+ core CPU like the 3900X on an A320 or really bad B450 motherboard that doesn't have a robust enough VRM to fully handle the power demand of a 12+ core CPU. For Intel, it's a bit similar with trying to pair a xxxxK CPU with a really cheap H or B series motherboard, but that has more to do with the fact that you can't overclock, and thus the potential is wasted, but with AMD, overclocking is possible for all B and X series AM4 motherboards (though few Ryzen chips can actually overclock without LN2 because the silicon is usually pushed to the limit or silicon lottery is often not good enough)

So for an 8-core CPU like a 3700X, you'll have no problems running on a cheap B450/550 motherboard with 3200 MHz RAM. It's recommended to avoid 300 series motherboards because they'll lack support for Zen3 CPUs coming out in a few months, as well as the fact that they have a hard time running RAM over 2933 MHz while Zen2 CPUs can go up to 3800 MHz before the fabric clock becomes out of sync with the DRAM frequency (which can worsen performance, also keep in mind that getting anything above 3200 MHz to run stable on a lot of B450 motherboards is not so easy)