How to Pick the Right Motherboard for Your Custom-Built PC

Motherboards are the most complex component in your computer. Fitted with hundreds of components and dozens of options it can be difficult to choose. Let’s look at the most important factors to help you decide before building your next computer.

Motherboards are the central nervous system of your computer. They are responsible for connecting and communicating between all of the important components inside. Knowing what to look for is key when comparing boards.

Motherboard Sizes
Motherboards come in different shapes and sizes, but luckily there are some standards set in place so that a lot of motherboards and cases can work together.

For the most part these sizes apply to all desktop computers but some computers you buy from manufacturers don’t follow all the rules. This is usually fine when you buy the whole computer as a unit, but it becomes tricky if you want to swap a new motherboard into the case or build one from scratch.

The most common motherboard size is Intel’s Advanced Technology Extended (ATX) and its derivatives. The chart below has some of the most common ATX sizes, but there are plenty more options than just the few shown here.

Motherboard sizes not only indicate the size of the board and placement of mounting screws, but it also dictates the general layout of the major components on the board. Have you ever noticed that almost all motherboards have the CPU, RAM, and I/O ports in the same place? That is because they are determined by the board standard. The components have to be in the same place otherwise case and power supply manufacturers wouldn’t easily be able to sell you something that works with with your motherboard no matter who makes it.

For ATX motherboards the general layout of the board is shown in the picture below.

Intel’s second attempt at standardizing motherboards was with Balanced Technology Extended (BTX). The main focus of BTX was to solve airflow and component placement limitations of ATX. Although BTX was supposed to be the successor to the ATX form factor, it didn’t gain enough traction to take off in the consumer market. Some large computer manufacturers such as HP, Dell, and Apple still use BTX, or proprietary variations of it. The main layout differences can be seen in the picture below.

Because BTX has been abandoned by Intel since 2007, you will just need to focus on which ATX size best suits your needs. Typically the main difference between small ATX boards and larger boards are expansion slots and CPU support.

Processor Sockets

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