A very good reason to avoid bottom end boards, is to ensure you don't get something that will die in less then a year on you.I have always went one step up from bottom(say $70-80 vs $50-60) and stuck to medium overclocks and never had an issue. If you plan to upgrade before it dies resale on bottom end boards is often near zero where might recover the price difference on mid range board
I used to be more concerned about getting an expensive motherboard but I've been very happy with my Asrock for $80. I completely agree with an above user that additional money spent on cooling/overclocking could probably spent better elsewhere (better GPU/display/etc).
Having a board with 2 M2 slots would be nice for adding another SSD down the road.
Having a board with 2 M2 slots would be nice for adding another SSD down the road.
Actually, it's the other way round. SSDs are nice (even necessary) for their impact on general purpose use. Games don't really care if they're loaded from a spinner or SSD.
If -all- you do on a system is gaming, then yes, you can skip the SSD. But I really wouldn't touch a HDD system at all for anything else. Dropped HDDs for anything but bulk storage 10 years ago, and haven't regretted it once since. This is from a guy who raid0'ed 10.000RPM WD Raptors back in the day.
Particularly Windows Update on a 5400RPM mobile drive is enough to drive anyone to do crazy things.
Sure. But so long as there PCIe x4 or larger slots on board, you can just use a PCIe-to-M.2 adaptor.
Sure, it it works. However with a native M2 your MB can steal PCIe lanes from your sata controller. Mine does. If you're running many NVME drives lanes can get pretty precious. If you're using a 4x slot you're most likely taking lanes from your GPU.
If you're overclocking your CPU, LLC is a major improvement in the higher boards. It's the difference between a crash and a stable clock.
If you're not overclocking... you can get by with a budget board.
Not to mention better VRMs for overclocking. Most real overclocking boards are a tad overbuilt, so if you run them at stock speeds, they should have extremely good longevity.
Most all except for possibly some extreme budget boards, use solid caps these days. But back in the day, that was a "deluxe" feature that people paid extra for too.
But when Biostar (to use one example) can put all-solid-caps on a $50 S775 mATX board, you know that there's no reason that every other "tier 1" mfg can't as well, and generally, they all do. Gigabyte started the trend, mostly, with their "Durable", and later, "Ultra Durable" lines.
What is LLC?
With regards to "stealing" lanes from the CPU, this is a complete non-issue as there is zero performance penalty between PCIe x16 and x8. I'd (and do) trade 8 GPU lanes for more storage slots in a heartbeat.
Its certainly non-zero anyways.
Depends on your GPU and game. If you have low to mid range GPU you're probably not going to notice. If you have a 2080ti it can be substantial to nothing depending on the title.
You. Quite literally. Its even quoted in the post you're replying to.Who said otherwise?
Performance penalty is in the order of 2-3% with a 2080ti. Which is almost within the standard benchmark error range of 2%. So it's non-zero but completely negligible....
Again almost within error margin. A regular mainstream 1060(ti) or RX570/80 user is not going to notice anything.
You. Quite literally. Its even quoted in the post you're replying to.