We've posted several articles that discuss what determines a "good motherboard for gaming," but until today, haven't had the chance to properly define what some of the more important board components do. Oscillating clock crystals, MOSFETs, chokes, the VRM, and other low-level motherboard components are defined in this post.

Judging from our forums, motherboards are one of the more nebulous components for hardware -- they all feel similar to each other, and from a specs sheet, it looks like there's not much separating one board from another. Part of this is because Intel and AMD have moved several controllers to the CPU, part is because the deeper differentiators between quality are often not listed on a product spec sheet.

After numerous questions from a large reddit thread, we've decided to start a new video/article series exploring the components on the components -- or what comprises each individual piece of hardware. Starting with the motherboard made sense.

This weekend sees the arrival of several Columbus-day-discounted items from most online retailers. Given the current deals on computer hardware, we were able to find a PSU, motherboard, 650 Ti Boost video card, 128GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD, and Corsair Carbide case on sale.

We previously published an article that gave a top-level overview of motherboard selection for new PC builds. In this year's revised edition, we'll approach the topic with a bit more depth than previously and will account for Intel's Haswell CPUs and AMD's FX line of CPUs.

Selecting the best motherboard for your gaming PC build is important to ensure upgradability going forward, access to Haswell/AMD overclocking features, and overall system stability. Chipset selection is tied-at-the-hip with motherboard selection, but if you need help finding the right chipset, check out these previous two articles (Intel - Haswell; AMD - FX).

Update: Please refer to our 2013 Motherboard Buyer's Guide for updated information.

Scoping out parts for a new system is an exciting time: Everything's shiny, fast, and thoroughly disgraces the previous build's specs for the same (or less) investment. The CPU should be an easy choice - grab something that makes sense for the budget and the utilization of the PC, then move on. It's often a toss-up between two different CPUs, but once that's decided, it's smooth sailing. Sort of.