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Summary
Ive been building PCs for almost 20 years.
Premium chipsets included more features compared to more affordable ones, as well as high-end memory controllers.
They only offer morePCIelanes and support for moreSATAand high-speed USB ports.
Goran Damnjanovic/How-To Geek | MSI
Thats pretty much it.
If you do your research, that budget B650 motherboard will deliver where it counts.
VRM stands for Voltage Regulating Module.
AMD
Dodgy VRMs also overheat when paired with powerful CPUs, negatively affecting your PC thermals.
Quality budget boards also come with two or three M.2 and four to eight SATA ports for storage expansion.
Additionally, they usually offer enough high-speed USB ports for the needs of most regular PC users.
mapo_japan / Shutterstock.com
The best budget offerings not only include a nice collection of essentials; they also pack some extra features.
Very handy when upgrading to a new CPU.
Unless you end up with a faulty unit, modern motherboards can last for a long time.
Budget Motherboards Lose Some High-End Features, But Do They Matter?
Of course, budget motherboards aren’t the be-all and end-all, and they lack some high-end features.
The question is, do these premium features matter to you?
Next up are overkill VRMs.
In other words, overkill VRMs are another feature with little to no value for average PC users.
High-end motherboards also pack four or more M.2 ports, but again, do you need that many?
I am happy with 2TB of storage and I still have room for another PCIe 3.0 M.2 drive.
Moving on, weve got high-end audio solutions.
Some premium boards come with built-in DACs and flagship audio solutions but, again, are they worth it?
The Realtek ALC1200 found on my motherboard works excellently.
Now weve arrived at RGB, with most high-end motherboards providing enough RGB to keep a small party going.
That said, some features found only on high-end boards can be useful.
A 10Gbps Ethernet port can be pretty useful if you own aNAS.
Another handy premium feature is the POST (Power-On Self-Test) code display.
This is unfortunate because a POST code display can be super handy when troubleshooting.
The catch here is that the budget motherboard market is dotted with duds.
This is why you should be extra careful when in the market for a budget motherboard.
Let me show you how to recognize and avoid duds.
TheHardware Unboxed YouTube channeloccasionally posts motherboard roundups in which they test motherboard VRMs.
A motherboard having glowing reviews doesnt mean it has no issues.
One subreddit that can be helpful for newbies and first-time PC builders isr/buildapc.
