if you're getting ready to build your own pc selecting a motherboard might
seem pretty straightforward you just pick something with a compatible socket
that has the right aesthetic and you're ready to go right no
not so fast even motherboards with the same CPU socket can be equipped with
different chipsets that affect what features will be available to you
the good news is that typically motherboard manufacturers will indicate
the chipset right in the model name so that you'll know exactly what you're
getting but the bad news is that unless you already know what they stand for the
confusing mix of letters and numbers conveys about as much meaning as a piece
of abstract modern art so let's demystify the men starting on the Intel
side team blue assigns a letter to their
chipsets h b q z or x along with a
three-digit number the letter will tell you which general tier the chipset is in
starting at the bottom h chipsets are lower end to mid-tier consumer grade
chipsets while b chipsets are technically geared more towards
businesses with that said the distinction between h and b has eroded
significantly in recent years b chipsets
used to provide more support for legacy features like conventional pci for
businesses that needed to use older parts but these days there's no
significant difference between them and either would be suitable for a budget to
mid-range build q-chipsets have actually kind of turned into the step up for
entry-level pcs and they support extra enterprise features such as remote
management if you want something on the higher end you'll probably be more
interested in the z and x chipsets which
both feature full support for overclocking so if you bought an
unlocked processor you'll want to choose either a z or x series motherboard with
the latter found on Intel's upper tier high end desktop or hedt platform that
supports cpus with more memory channels more pci express lanes and extra
processing cores so that takes care of the letters now let's talk about the
numbers the first digit tells us which generation of chipset we're dealing with
and whether it will be compatible at all with your processor
then beyond that higher numbers typically mean better features such as
improved pci express connectivity more usb ports more memory slots or
compatibility with optane memory which you can learn more about right up here
but what if you're more of a team red person and you've got an AMD CPU well
like Intel they combine both a letter and a number with newer chipsets for
ryzen cpus using the letters a to indicate an entry level chipset b to
mean mid-grade or mainstream and x for
extreme i mean enthusiast
so here's what this means in practical terms you'll need either a b or x series
chipset to overclock an x chip set to use sli and either an x or a b 450 for
crossfire you'll also find more SATA ports more usb headers and again more
flexibility in the pci express implementation the further up the
product stack you go now currently the number will either start with a three or
a four with four indicating a second generation part that supports AMD store
mi which caches your frequently used data from your hard drive to an SSD also
of note is that currently all ryzen cpus
will work with all zen chipsets though a
second gen ryzen chip might need a BIOS update to work with a 300 series
motherboard and as always make sure you've at least got the sockets lined up
because a threadripper chip is technically ryzen threadripper but it
won't work in a b450 board so hopefully this episode has cleared
things up for you but if it hasn't and you're still super confused
i get it this stuff is hard there's no shame in just buying a laptop and being
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