Your motherboard relays all the information to and from your computer’s central processing unit (CPU), allowing it to communicate with expansion devices like hard- and solid-state drives, graphics cards, RAID controller cards and capture devices installed into PCIe slots. Each expansion card has a certain number of data lanes that connect to the CPU through point-to-point interconnects on the chipset. A motherboard’s chipset is unique to each processor generation, and it has a major impact on what you can do with your desktop.
Intel’s 12th-generation “Alder Lake” desktop processors require a specific chipset to enable overclocking, among other features. Choosing the right mobo can be tricky, particularly for budget-minded users who still want to make their system as feature-packed as possible. The B760M Mortar-based ASRock Steel Legend motherboard, for example, is a great sub-$200 option with three M.2 slots, front-panel 20 Gbps USB ports and power delivery that easily handled our flagship-class i9-13900K at stock and overclocking.
Motherboards are available in a variety of form factors, ranging from full-size ATX to size-constrained Micro ATX and Mini-ITX. As the form factor shrinks, you’ll typically see fewer PCIe expansion slots and a lower overall level of features. Full-size boards generally have four slots, while those for the smaller micro and mini form factors use two. More advanced motherboards like those for Intel’s HEDT Core(tm) X-series processor family can have up to eight. Most recent Intel boards use dual-channel memory architecture, which allows the motherboard’s memory controller to run at twice the speed of a single channel, provided sticks of RAM are installed in pairs with matching frequencies. Intel motherboards