Don’t Waste Your Money on RGB, Buy a Better Motherboard

When gathering a caller PC, it's casual to get distracted by flashy RGB goodies. While you’re engaged picking retired the brightest fans and representation sticks, it’s conscionable arsenic casual to place 1 of the astir captious parts of your build—the motherboard.

RGB Can’t Make Up for a Bad Motherboard

Unless you're a hardware fanatic, you astir apt aren't adjacent alert of however important your motherboard is for your PC build. Understandably, a $100 budget motherboard similar the MSI PRO A620M-E tin get the aforesaid occupation done arsenic the overmuch much costly MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk Wi-Fi.

After all, some motherboards enactment the latest AMD AM5 CPUs, DDR5 RAM, and connection a fewer M.2 and SATA ports for storage. Both technically service the aforesaid basal intent of connecting each your components together.

Cheap motherboards are appealing, arsenic you tin prevention implicit $200 by opting for the cheaper motherboard. It's plentifulness of wealth to bargain an RGB graphics card, RGB fans, and RGB RAM that'll perfectly complement your fancy liquid cooler.

However, erstwhile you look closer, these 2 boards couldn’t beryllium much different. In summation to having a amended chipset and further features similar Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the much costly X870 has newer and faster PCIe and M.2 standards, a importantly much expansive I/O, and a ton of different quality-of-life improvements that I'll screen shortly.

The happening is, if you don't get a bully motherboard from the start, you'll beryllium stuck with it unless you're consenting to instrumentality everything out, walk different fewer 100 dollars connected a caller motherboard, and rebuild the PC. I made this mistake erstwhile I built a PC successful 2018, which I utilized each the mode until 2025.

It was a horrible Gigabyte B450M DS3H motherboard that supported overclocking lone connected paper, not successful practice. It didn't adjacent enactment SAM (Resizable BAR) oregon EXPO (XMP), 2 important features for optimal performance.

I swore to ne'er marque the aforesaid mistake again, which is wherefore I budgeted an other $100 to get a decent mid-range mATX motherboard—the ASRock B650M PG Riptide.

It's not immoderate fancy high-end committee (which usually commencement with the missive X), but it has each the features and I/O ports I could perchance need. I don't spot myself upgrading for at slightest 5 years, and astatine that point, I'll astir apt privation a caller PC anyway.

You Get More Than Just Looks With a Good Motherboard

Ironically, if you’re chasing signifier implicit function, a inexpensive motherboard won’t assistance your physique look bully anyway. A superior PC builder volition instantly look past the RGB and spot the fund committee underneath. It won’t impressment anyone who knows what to look for. And present that you’re speechmaking this article, that includes you.

The much you walk connected a motherboard, the longer its database of features volition be. The latest bells and whistles see a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for the GPU, an M.2 Gen5 x4 slot for a high-end NVMe, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, 5 Gbps LAN, and further headers for your RGB devices and fans.

Better motherboards besides travel with higher-quality VRMs, which are liable for providing a unchangeable powerfulness proviso for your system. VRMs are particularly important if you're overclocking oregon utilizing AMD PBO.

Additionally, the VRMs and chipset person importantly amended heatsinks with customized designs and RGB, and the M.2 slots thin to travel with heatsinks that acceptable the wide plan arsenic well. You're besides getting amended enactment for accelerated RAM and SSDs, amended built-in audio, and much predominant BIOS updates. The database of benefits is endless — you’ll get acold much worth for your wealth with a bully motherboard than with RGB hardware.

You Can Always Add More RGB Later

This nonfiction mightiness marque it look similar I hatred RGB successful PCs, but the information is, I truly don't. In fact, I emotion a spot of tasteful glow successful my setup. The happening is, it's overmuch easier to adhd much RGB aboriginal than it is to regenerate an full motherboard.

Building a PC successful 2025 is expensive for respective reasons; with a constricted budget, it tin beryllium hard to fig retired which pieces of hardware substance the most. Since you astir apt privation to commencement playing games arsenic soon arsenic possible, I powerfully urge making country for a bully motherboard present and adding RGB goodies later.

Some ways you tin prevention wealth connected your PC physique to get a bully AMD oregon Intel motherboard see utilizing the banal CPU cooler until you person wealth for a nicer aftermarket 1 with RGB fans, opting for a lawsuit with included fans, skipping RGB RAM due to the fact that you astir apt can't spot it anyway, and buying a utilized GPU. Who knows, you could adjacent people a GPU with fancy RGB!

You tin ever adhd much RGB to your strategy successful the signifier of three-pack and five-pack RGB fans similar this Antec 120mm F12 RGB Case Fan 5-Pack, which you tin besides usage connected your CPU cooler. But my favourite mode to adhd RGB to an existing strategy is successful the signifier of ARGB strips that you tin spot anyplace successful your strategy and past synchronize with the remainder of the physique to marque it look amazing.

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Regardless of however overmuch RGB you worldly into your desktop PC, it won't look bully without a due motherboard. Premium motherboards not lone look great, but they're besides packed with utile features that marque your beingness easier and assistance your PC execute astatine its best.