Does the Motherboard affect FPS (Frames per second)?
The Motherboard is considered the main key component for all the components of your PC. However, the market has evolved a lot making so many confusions when it comes to buy a custom built PC. Motherboard is one of the center point of consideration to pick when you already have or planning to buy other stuff like M.2 SSD, RAM, CPU and Multiple GPU.
When it comes to gaming the motherboard sure does affect the FPS but it’s because you put overpowered components on it. Don’t know where you could go wrong? Well look at the characteristics the motherboard have to work with other components:
PCI-e Generation:
Graphics card plays main role in FPS. In the aspect of gaming the PCI-E slot type is only considered to run a graphics card. When buying a motherboard, you must look at the PCI-e version you graphics card is compatible with. I also recommend you to check https://techmotherboard.com/best-motherboard-for-i9-9900k/.
When you put PCI-e 3.0 on a PCI-e 2.0 supported motherboard, the game would bottleneck for sure. Refer the PCI-e version with their speeds:
| Version | Introduced | Transfer rate | |
| 1.0 | 2003 | 4.0 GB/s | |
| 2.0 | 2007 | 8.0 GB/s | |
| 3.0 | 2010 | 15.754 GB/s | |
| 4.0 | 2017 | 31.508 GB/s | |
| 5.0 | 2019 | 63.015 GB/s |
Memory Speed
RAM plays key role in FPS at runtime and also it affects the loading time of your games. There is a speed of every RAM kit which must cooperate with the max supported memory speed of motherboard and also the processor. If you’ll put 3600Mhz memory kit onto 2666Mhz supported motherboard, it may cause bottleneck and you will feel stuttering and FPS drops in games.
Overclock Support:
Overclock support is normally not available in every motherboard in their Bios. Let’s say you have Core i7 9700k and got B365M chipset motherboard. It surely wont overclock or may not perform on its designated boost clock. CPU clock speed exclusively affects the FPS count. Just make sure to buy Z370 or Z390 chipset motherboard to tackle such consequences.
SATA Speed
SATA Speed refers to loading assets from your secondary storage devices like HDD or SSD. It may interfere and can cause bottleneck in case you got SATA 3| 6.0 GBPS and connected it to SATA 2 | 3GBPS port on your motherboard. Look up for SATA 3 label on the motherboard before buying it.
Ethernet
Ethernet type doesn’t interfere much in remote areas with internet connection speeds up to 50 Mb/S. But in high profile areas like California where the internet speed is above 100Mb/s, your Ethernet may involve in causing bottleneck and it may increase your response time which will make you multiplayers games lag or sometimes crash. Motherboard with great Ethernet cards built in can only perform rapidly and cooperate with bigger bandwidth ranges.
Does aesthetics affect performance?
Aesthetics/Exhibition like RGB are totally irrelevant to the actual performance of a motherboard anyway this is a searched after element which adds an attractive and satisfying sight to your entire rig. In the selection of aesthetics as compared to performance we recommend performance. Never purchase an expensive equipment just because it only looks satisfying, you will be frustrated when it doesn’t perform just as you expect that it would. If you are on budget then ignore the appearance only focus on the balanced equipment and get rid of bottleneck.
