Motherboards - reviews and price comparison

What is a motherboard?

(Show answer) All the important components of the computer hardware are connected to the motherboard; the processor, internal memory (RAM), hard drive and graphics card.

The motherboard controls all activity between the connected components, so the motherboard decides how upgrade friendly the computer is. Therefore it can be worth to put the extra money on a high quality motherboard if you are planning to upgrade your computer in the future.
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Form factor

Motherboards are manufactured in a couple of different standardized forms to make sure that they can fit in different computer chassis. The most common form factor is called ATX. There is also a smaller variation of this, for compact computers, which is called Micro ATX. For smaller computers there is also a form factor called Mini ITX.

As the power of processors and graphics cards increase the need for cooling increases too. That is why a new form factor, BTX, has been developed, where the components are located in a way that helps the cooling. BTX exist in smaller variations, for example Micro BTX and the even smaller picoBTX, but the actual BTX is very rare on the market.

If you want to place the motherboard in a computer chassis which you already have you need to look up which form factor that fits in the chassis. Note that it is not just the size that separates the forms; the placing of the ports and connections to the power aggregate are also decided by the form factor.

Processor

The processor is the brain of the computer. It is connected to the motherboard through a particular socket. The two largest PC-processor manufacturers Intel and AMD use different type of sockets to their processors.

When you buy a processor and motherboard it is important to make sure that they are compatible. The processors require different sockets depending on manufacturer and generation.

If you have already found a processor manufactured by AMD you can check here which socket it uses. The Intel processors can be found here (the pages will be opened in a new window)

If you have yet to choose processor there is a good comparison page at Tom's Hardware (opens in new window). In brief Intel's Core 2 Extreme is the fastest processor family, followed by Intel Core 2 Quad, AMD Phenom, Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2, Intel Pentium EE, Intel Pentium D, Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Sempron in order of descending performance. Note that in every processor family there are faster and slower processors, so the performances of the processor families are overlapping. See link above for a more detailed comparison.

Internal memory (RAM)

The most common type of RAM-memory today is DDR-RAM (Double Data Rate Random Access Memory). DDR is however being replaced by DDR2 which allows faster memories.

(show more about DDR and DDR2) There are different names on the DDR-memories; PC3200/2700/2100, and DDR400/333/266, where PC3200 corresponds to DDR400, PC2700 to DDR333 and so on.

Most motherboards support dual memory channels which, in theory, double the speed of the RAM-memory. This requires that you use 2 or 4 memories of the same size to work properly.

The next generation of DDR-memories are called DDR2. These are faster and exist on newer motherboards. Note that DDR- and DDR2-memories not are compatible with each other, even though they use resembling DIMM-sockets. That is also why they are constructed so that a DDR-memory doesn’t fit in a DDR2-socket and the other way around.
Some motherboards support both DDR and DDR2, which can be practical if you don’t want buy motherboard and memory card at the same time.


DDR-memory on top of DDR2-memory – the same size but the notch is placed on different places to avoid mix-up
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Hard drives and CD/DVD

The two most common connection types for hard drives are the older IDE-connection (Parallel-ATA) and the newer S-ATA (Serial-ATA).

(Show more about IDE and S-ATA) IDE was for long the standard connection for hard drives and CD/DVD-units. S-ATA is the new standard since a few years, the introduction of this standard brought higher data-transfer speed among other advantages.
For example the cables are thinner than the old IDE-cables, which facilitates the cooling of the computer’s components since the air flow inside the computer chassis is improved. Most new motherboards today are equipped with connections for both IDE and S-ATA.

Several S-ATA-ports is useful if you want to store large amounts of data and need more than one hard drive, if you want to use RAID for better hard drive performance/security or if you want the possibility to install new drives with more space as they become larger and cost less.

If you want to move hard drives and CD/DVD from your old system you probably need IDE-connection(s) on the new motherboard.
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What about RAID? (Show text about raid) In a RAID-system the system writes hard drive data to several drives. You can either write the same data to several discs for increased security. If one hard drives crashes the data is still stored on the other(s). This is called RAID 1.
The other alternative is to divide the data to be written on two or more hard drives, which makes the time to write/read the data shorter since the process the drives work simultaneously. The system’s performance is enhanced. This system is called RAID 0. RAID 0 has a lower data security than a regular hard drive since the crashing of only one of the drives in the system can cause a loss of data.
There are also combinations of the two systems for higher performance and security. These combinations require at least three hard drives.

Some motherboards have built-in RAID-controllers. There are also separate RAID-controllers to buy as expansion cards for PCI, PCI-E (PCI Express) and PCI-X (PCI-Extended).
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Graphics card

PCI-E x16 (PCI Express with 16 channels) has replaced AGP as the most common connection between graphics card and motherboard. If you want to be able to upgrade the graphics card later on it is important that the motherboard has a PCI-E x16-port.

Built-in functions

Most motherboards today have so many built-in functions that you rarely need to connect any extra cards except maybe a graphics card. The built-in sound-, network- and firewire-cards are today good enough for most users, unless you have special requirements, for example sound editing and music recording.

Expansion ports

The most common expansion ports

The expansion ports of the motherboard are usually used to connect different types of plug-in cards such as graphics card, sound card, TV-card, network card and RAID-controller card.

Apart from graphics card most expansion cards use the PCI port. This is however being replaced by the PCI-Express (PCI-E) standard which offers considerably higher transfer speeds.

There are different types of PCI-Express ports depending on which type of plug-in cards they are designed for. The most common is PCI-Ex1 (one channel PCI Express)

Until today PCI is the most used on expansion cards but PCI-E will be replacing it.

Rating/awards

On testwinner.co.uk all the different ratings given by expert testers have been translated into a percentage from 0 to 100 with 100 being the maximum rating.
The average rating for a product can indicate different things. A low average rating is a warning that the product maybe won't live up the expectations created by the ads for the product. A high rating often means that the product has great features and works well. The more tests of the product the better accuracy in the average rating.

The amount of test wins/awards shows how many times the product has been named winner or been selected "Editor's Choice", "Best Buy" or received similar positive awards in tests. An award means that the product stands out from the competition in one way or another. It can be by giving value for money or by being innovative, or simply by just filling its purpose in a really good way.