Motherboard Help

After reading MaximumPC for a number of years now, I feel I am ready to build my next PC myself. The biggest area of concern for me is the motherboard. Getting everything plugged in and working correctly is still a bit over my head.

Going forward, I would be looking for guidance and videos online regarding setting the motherboard up and connecting everything. There are plenty of howto type articles out there, but a lot of the time, they instruct you to read the manual first, and just follow what that says to do. RTFM, as they say.

My question is: Who do you think makes the best set of instructions or manuals for motherboards? Right now, I am thinking I may go with Asus or MSI. My current motherboard is a Gigabyte one; it’s a good board, don’t get me wrong, I just found it lacking in the way of having an easily understandable UEFI/ BIOS and manual.

– David Schowalter

EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: The good news is that there isn’t an awful lot to plug into a motherboard these days— possibly the trickiest thing is sorting out the connectors from your case, and even that isn’t too difficult once you’ve found the right block of pins. The motherboard manual is indeed your handy guide for such things, and while a lot of them can be found online, a good number of motherboards still come with physical items (just in case, you know, you can’t get online with your machine). The good news is that you can check out the motherboard manual before you buy it to make sure you can follow what’s going to

be happening before you buy the motherboard itself.

Having recently been sorting problems out on a Gigabyte motherboard, you have our sympathies when it comes to some UEFI setup interfaces. Of the two you mention, we tend to favor Asus, but MSI has been improving recently, so there really isn’t much in it. In fact, even Gigabyte’s more recent motherboards have improved things significantly, so the situation isn’t as bad as it once was.