When building a new PC, it’s easy to get distracted by flashy RGB goodies. While you’re busy picking out the brightest fans and memory sticks, it’s just as easy to overlook one of the most critical parts of your build—the motherboard.
RGB Can’t Make Up for a Bad Motherboard
Unless you’re a hardware fanatic, you probably aren’t even aware of how important your motherboard is for your PC build. Understandably, a $100 budget motherboard like the MSI PRO A620M-E can get the same job done as the much more expensive MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk Wi-Fi.
After all, both motherboards support the latest AMD AM5 CPUs, DDR5 RAM, and offer a few M.2 and SATA ports for storage. Both technically serve the same basic purpose of connecting all your components together.
Cheap motherboards are appealing, as you can save over $200 by opting for the cheaper motherboard. It’s plenty of money to buy an RGB graphics card, RGB fans, and RGB RAM that’ll perfectly complement your fancy liquid cooler.
NZXT Kraken 240mm AIO CPU Liquid Cooler
The NZXT Kraken 240mm AIO is a premium AIO liquid cooler equipped with a quiet but powerful pump and fans. It also has a 1.54″ LCD that can display your CPU temperature, GIFs, or images.
However, when you look closer, these two boards couldn’t be more different. In addition to having a better chipset and additional features like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the more expensive X870 has newer and faster PCIe and M.2 standards, a significantly more expansive I/O, and a ton of other quality-of-life improvements that I’ll cover shortly.
The thing is, if you don’t get a good motherboard from the start, you’ll be stuck with it unless you’re willing to take everything out, spend another few hundred dollars on a new motherboard, and rebuild the PC. I made this mistake when I built a PC in 2018, which I used all the way until 2025.
It was a horrible Gigabyte B450M DS3H motherboard that supported overclocking only on paper, not in practice. It didn’t even support SAM (Resizable BAR) or EXPO (XMP), two important features for optimal performance.
I swore to never make the same mistake again, which is why I budgeted an extra $100 to get a decent mid-range mATX motherboard—the ASRock B650M PG Riptide.
ASRock B650M PG Riptide AMD Motherboard
The ASRock B650M PG Riptide is a mid-range AMD AM5 motherboard that supports the latest AMD Ryzen 9000, 8000, and 7000 Series processors.
It features a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, one PCIe Gen5x4 M.2 slot, one PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 slot, and four RAM slots. Its standout feature is the robust 12+2+1 VRM design, which allows you to overclock most AMD CPUs with ease.
It’s not some fancy high-end board (which usually start with the letter X), but it has all the features and I/O ports I could possibly need. I don’t see myself upgrading for at least five years, and at that point, I’ll probably want a new PC anyway.
You Get More Than Just Looks With a Good Motherboard
Ironically, if you’re chasing form over function, a cheap motherboard won’t help your build look good anyway. A serious PC builder will immediately look past the RGB and spot the budget board underneath. It won’t impress anyone who knows what to look for. And now that you’re reading this article, that includes you.
The more you spend on a motherboard, the longer its list of features will be. The latest bells and whistles include a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for the GPU, an M.2 Gen5 x4 slot for a high-end NVMe, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, 5 Gbps LAN, and additional headers for your RGB devices and fans.
Better motherboards also come with higher-quality VRMs, which are responsible for providing a stable power supply for your system. VRMs are especially important if you’re overclocking or using AMD PBO.
Additionally, the VRMs and chipset have significantly better heatsinks with custom designs and RGB, and the M.2 slots tend to come with heatsinks that fit the overall design as well. You’re also getting better support for fast RAM and SSDs, better built-in audio, and more frequent BIOS updates. The list of benefits is endless — you’ll get far more value for your money with a good motherboard than with RGB hardware.
Related
Do I Need a New Motherboard? 7 Things to Consider
On the market for new PC parts? Better make sure your current motherboard is up for the task!
You Can Always Add More RGB Later
This article might make it seem like I hate RGB in PCs, but the truth is, I really don’t. In fact, I love a bit of tasteful glow in my setup. The thing is, it’s much easier to add more RGB later than it is to replace an entire motherboard.
Building a PC in 2025 is expensive for several reasons; with a limited budget, it can be difficult to figure out which pieces of hardware matter the most. Since you probably want to start playing games as soon as possible, I strongly recommend making room for a nice motherboard now and adding RGB goodies later.
Some ways you can save money on your PC build to get a good AMD or Intel motherboard include using the stock CPU cooler until you have money for a nicer aftermarket one with RGB fans, opting for a case with included fans, skipping RGB RAM because you probably can’t see it anyway, and buying a used GPU. Who knows, you could even score a GPU with fancy RGB!
You can always add more RGB to your system in the form of three-pack and five-pack RGB fans like this Antec 120mm F12 RGB Case Fan 5-Pack, which you can also use on your CPU cooler. But my favorite way to add RGB to an existing system is in the form of ARGB strips that you can place anywhere in your system and then synchronize with the rest of the build to make it look amazing.
Antec F12 Series Case Fan 5-Pack
This Antec F12 case fan 5-pack is an affordable way to add RGB flair to your PC while keeping it cool. Featuring a combination of sleeve and fluid dynamic bearings, these fans are reasonably quiet, and their vibrant RGB lighting won’t disappoint.
Regardless of how much RGB you stuff into your desktop PC, it won’t look good without a proper motherboard. Premium motherboards not only look great, but they’re also packed with useful features that make your life easier and help your PC perform at its best.
