CPU and Motherboard - Build an Awesome PC - page 17

A MOBO to House the CPU
A motherboard, MOBO for short, is the base where all power and components
meet. The MOBO houses the CPU, RAM, GPU, and other peripheral cards.
MOBOs have ports for data connections such as SATA, USB, and Ethernet.
Sophisticated MOBOs also have onboard chips for audio, video, and wireless
support. Good MOBOs are often more expensive than the CPUs they house,
and the MOBO I recommend for our computer is no different.
When looking for the ideal motherboard, I knew from experience that I
wanted excellent onboard audio and video, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth so
as not to be burdened with adding these essentials later. I also wanted a
board capable of handling fast RAM, support for USB 3.0 and 6 GB/s SATA,
and easy access to BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) settings and updates.
And I wanted a MOBO that would be easy to convert to a water-cooled system
should I decide to be more extreme with overclocking the CPU and GPU.
Based on these requirements, I recommend the ASUS Maximus VI Formula
motherboard. 3 The Maximus VI Formula is an LGA 1150 socketed board
designed to seat the i7-4770K CPU. It also houses an onboard Intel Z87
Express chipset to simultaneously handle up to six USB 3.0 and six SATA 6
GB/s ports. It can handle DDR3 RAM speeds up to 3,000 MHz, and it supports
NVIDIA's SLI and AMD's three-way CFX video card linking technologies that
potentially double the overall GPU performance.
ASUS also bundles software utilities that help with overclocking, controlling
cooling fans with more granularity and helping optimize disk-drive
performance.
Packed inside the Maximus VI Formula box are all the cables, fittings, and
modules we will need to build out our PC, as Figure 8, The contents of the
Maximus VI Formula box , on page 18 shows. No need to worry about not
having enough SATA cables to connect our storage devices or the wrong type
of fittings to attach hosing should we ever decide to water-cool the board (refer
to Water Cooling , on page 90 , for more details).
Remove all the items except for the motherboard from the box to easily verify
that the full inventory of parts is included with the motherboard. With all
parts accounted for, we are ready for our most serious step in the PC build
process: fitting and clamping the CPU to the motherboard.