If you are going to want to show off your build, you may want to decide on a specific color scheme based around your motherboard. No good deed goes unpunished. Below, you can find some examples from Gigabyte, MSI, and AsRock.Chipset: Chipsets are specific groups of integrated circuits which allow for the communication between the major components of the motherboard, most importantly the CPU, memory, and peripheral devices.When talking about motherboards and chipsets, it is easy to confuse the two terms, so let me explain what I mean when I use the terms.High end motherboards will often advertise the use of high quality components such as capacitors and transistors which are made from premium materials that withstand heat better than a typical component found on a lower grade motherboard. Select Corsair iCUE in the “Select Category” drop-down pane. If this is a concern, you should check the specifications of the motherboard very closely. 3. If you intend to add more cards than just a single GPU, then you will need to plan out where you will install your cards and make sure you have enough room. Missing however was a sync/link with motherboards RGB control. In a typical system many people will only use a single one of these slots for a discrete (or standalone) graphics card. If you have any devices connected to the RGB Header, these will also be configurable as one zone. Go to iCUE SETTINGS page and enable full software control. iCUE MOTHERBOARD LIGHTING COMPATIBILITY CORSAIR iCUE supports a growing collection of ASUS Aura Ready motherboards. Sigh! In more recent times, we have seen many functions of the motherboard migrate to the CPU, such as cache memory, and many functions of the north bridge area of the chipset, including the memory controller, and even GPU (graphics processing unit) with some CPUs. This may not mean a whole lot to someone who is building their grandma a machine for internet access and email, but for anyone who is interested in overclocking, and tweaking your PC, you will be able to push your hardware a lot harder if it’s built with higher quality materials, not to mention it will potentially last a lot longer as well.The quality of materials and cooling features can both be good indicators of the potential performance of a motherboard, but nothing beats good ol’ real world testing!
For example, if you doubt you will be using any Thunderbolt devices, you probably do not need to get that super high end board that comes with a Thunderbolt port, unless of course it has something else you need.Motherboards come in a few different standardized shapes and sizes, called “form factors.” The most common form factors are ATX, micro ATX (mATX), EATX and mini-ITX, however there are also some more exotic form factors out there. This is why you can find some motherboards available for $99 and others beyond $300, even though they may support the same CPU socket, and chipset.A popular trend that motherboard manufactures picked up on is that hardware enthusiasts like to color coordinate their builds. Most motherboard manufacturers will use these reference versions of a chipset as a foundation for designing their own motherboards. Haven’t connected monitor, waiting on cable to hook up all at once and then do initial setup. Live in Rural Nevada where it is hard to get copy paper. Learned allot more about computers was the good that came out of this. The whole industry is moving to this, Corsair was ahead of the pack for this one. In our next article we will be discussing how to pick out the right memory to go with your CPU and motherboard.