Buying Guide for Mainboards: Gaming Boards for Intel [Mai 2022]

Upgrading or buying a new system can cost a fortune – if you need a new graphics card. Recommended motherboards have also increased in price, but are much cheaper. In this article, we are concentrating fully on boards for Intel processors, the corresponding counterpart for socket AM4 systems can be found in our AMD motherboard buying guide. The confusing, old, mixed purchase advice, on the other hand, is no longer maintained, while we update the two current articles on the basis of our extensive comparison tests, which appear regularly in the PCGH magazine. To order the magazine in the PCGH shop.

At this point we also go into price developments, new rumors and future expectations of the respective platform. We maintain a cross-manufacturer and cross-generational overview of the latter in our platform overview.

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Update, May 2022: We have taken the duel between i9-12900KS and 5800X3D into account in our recommendations and included the current price and rumor situation.

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Intel processors and mainboards in general

In theory, Intel’s desktop products have been divided into mainstream and enthusiast divisions since the late ‘0s. These different sockets are neither mechanically nor electrically compatible and offer fundamentally different properties. The mainstream lineup of LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA1150 and two variations of the LGA1151 was abbreviated as “115X” or “11XX” for a long time until the 1200 socket broke tradition. What all these platforms have in common, however, is basic equipment with 16 PCI Express lanes for graphics cards and two main memory channels – the respective speed has been increased several times, but the quantitative interface equipment of the CPUs is virtually non-existent. The number of computing cores and thus the CPU raw power has always remained limited in the mainstream in order to be able to design the platform cheaply and separate it from its big brothers.

As the LGA1366, LGA2011, LGA2011-v3 and LGA2066, these served the enthusiast market, confusingly abbreviated to “HEDT” (High End Desktop), which is formally located above the high-end segment, which alternates with the largest mainstream CPUs or the smallest of the enthusiast platform. Basically, HEDT platforms are becoming more broad: More cores (factor 1.5 to 3 compared to the mainstream offer), more PCI-E lanes (at least 2× 16, eventually up to 3× 16) and triple or Quad-channel DDR promise more performance and expansion options. However, the advantage for home users is often limited, since games can only use a limited number of computing cores effectively, the individual cores were often slightly slower than in the mainstream and faster dual-channel memory is usually sufficient, while additional PCI Express slots can of course only be used with additional expansion cards.

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Socket 1700 is leet – not just claiming the serial number of the ILM loadplate installed on some Asus motherboards.

Source: PC Games Hardware






With the current LGA1700 platform, Intel has pushed the performance and equipment of the “mainstream” platform so far up with the Alder Lake CPUs and the Z690 PCH that large parts of the old enthusiast range are also covered. The HEDT platform LGA2066, which is formally still available, hasn’t seen any fundamental innovations for almost five years and is no longer even high-end, let alone an enthusiast, so that our Intel recommendations focus entirely on the supposedly “small”, but de facto only relevant ones Focus socket: the LGA1700.

It is currently questionable whether Intel will offer any new desktop products above this at all – from the upcoming big brother Alder Lakes, from Sapphire Rapids, only variants in server format are known so far. AMD, whose socket AM4 has long since been expanded to the lower enthusiast level, has stopped the overdue successors for TRX4 end user CPUs and is concentrating on workstation and server CPUs above the AM4 model range, which compete against Intel’s Xeons.