Building A Computer – The Motherboard

I was planning on getting a power supply as my second computer part, but a sale and coupon changed my buying habits. This month, I ended up getting two parts instead of the one a month as I promised myself. Though I did save a bit of money in the long run by doing so.

Again, I’ve been looking for components that will perform, last a long time before I have to upgrade (without breaking the bank), and run cool and quiet. I’m not planning on doing any overclocking so I don’t need anything geared towards that market.

ASUS is famous for the quality of their motherboards, so I shopped their product line-up. After comparing the stats and price to value of their motherboards, I decided to go with the Asus Sabertooth Z87 LGA 1150 Motherboard. The board is designed to handle the latest generation of Intel chips, can be outfitted with up to 32 GB of DDR3 1866 Mhz RAM, is SLI/CrossFireX ready, and has USB 3.0 support.

Asus Sabertooth Z87

The Z87 is designed with an armor shell which Asus dubs as, TUF Fortifier and Thermal Armor. Basically, what it does is give the motherboard a protective cover that prevents any bending/warping due to heavy components. Some graphics cards are getting awfully large these days, so if you are a hardcore gamer and plan on having a dual or 3-way graphics card configuration, the feature might interest you. I was interested in the design because the board has built in fans that direct air through channels that help dissipate the heat. There is an air flow valve that you can open and shut. The open configuration is optimal for air cooling builds, and the closed configuration is for water cooling builds.

I’m going to try out water cooling for this build, so this motherboard is perfect for me. I probably could have gone with something a little cheaper, but I really liked the features of the Z87 and figured spending a little more money would future-proof me for a little while.

Building A Computer Series

1. The Case
2. The Motherboard
3. The Cooler
4. The Power Supply
5. The CPU
6. The Memory
7. The Storage
8. The Operating System
9. The Graphics Card
10. The Hard Drive
11. The Optical Drive
12. The UPS