Gaming PC's

Motherboards .....

1. First decide on your processor - I would recommend an Intel 4th Generation Haswell - the sweet spot is hit with the i5 4670K which requires the Intel Z87 chipset.

So there's the first requirement - a mobo with Socket LGA1150 which will inevitably have the Z87 chipset.

2. Decide on the make of motherboard - in all the years I have been building my own PC's I have stuck with Asus and not been disappointed. Of course there are other makes - MSI & Gigabyte to name but 2 - do your research and read the reviews before coming to a conclusion.,

3. If you want to run dual graphics cards make sure that the mobo is capable of doing so. If possible get one that has a PCIe v3 slot for the graphics card although if you do not intend to game PCIe v2 will be more than adequate.

When you have homed in on a motherboard that you fancy or is within your budget check that it has sufficient SATA sockets for your requirements - hard drives & optical drives. It would make absolute sense to have USB3 capability and check how many USB ports are available and how many of those are capable of connection to the sockets on the front of the case. (When choosing a case check that the front sockets are USB3 - I wouldn't build a PC today without that facility, but it may not be important to you).

For a home build I would go for an ATX board - much more room to ferret around in

You are building not only for today, but also for the future so it makes sense to use the latest standards - Latest processor, SATA 3, USB3, etc.

 

Speed equates to performance - majority of drives are 7200 rpm, some faster still. 5400 rpm is slow. I would not mix speeds, but if you can settle for reduced performance on the second drive - fine.

NO - PATA (EIDE) is dead, all drives are SATA with compact cables replacing the wide ribbon cables of PATA and there are no jumpers - no master/slave & no cable select.

 

We have the technology