
There are a number of different video card manufacturers selling products today. These sorts of graphics cards often take up a lot of motherboard real estate, and they can increase your system’s power consumption by a considerable amount. High-end GPUs, or desktop graphics cards, are used in systems designed for gaming, streaming, or media editing and are often as expensive as the rest of the computer put together. Your graphics card also contains the ports into which you connect your monitor or monitors. Like a CPU, it contains one or more processing cores and has an onboard memory cache to allow for rapid operations. A graphics card, especially a higher-end one, is in essence a specialized CPU. If you intend to delve into your system and tinker with its performance, a board with some of these additional features might be right up your alley.Ī GPU usually comes as a standalone card, although some motherboards do include integrated GPUs. Some motherboards have extra bells and whistles, such as the ability to overclock your CPU or add additional lighting features.

If you use a tool like the Newegg PC Builder, or buy a combo package on, then Newegg double checks to ensure that the motherboard and CPU you purchased are compatible, but it’s a good idea to check online and reference your user manuals to confirm that the components work together before you get started. Manufacturers have developed safeguards against mixing incorrect parts, though-if a CPU isn’t right for the motherboard you chose, it literally will not fit- the chip has a pin configuration that is different from the one in the board's CPU socket. Check product information pages for compatibility see the motherboard buying guide for more guidance. Certain CPUs fit specific motherboard socket types and chipsets as well. AMD CPUs must fit into AMD motherboards, and Intel CPUs in Intel motherboards.

If a processor doesn’t seat properly in the motherboard and isn’t designed for it, nothing will function. Your CPU and motherboard have one of the closest relationships of all.
