The Piece That Ties It All Together

pcworld.com

The economic principle I’m exploring is “Because of scarcity, people choose. All choices have an opportunity cost.”

My research question to help me study the economic principle is “What are your choices when it comes to motherboards, memory and storage?”

The article published in Newegg  titled “How to Choose A Motherboard” demonstrates this economic principle by showing the 2 brands of motherboards you have to choose from, and options regarding memory and storage.

First, your motherboard will be the heart of your machine and carries all the information and connections needed to make all the parts work together perfectly. And of course, you need to choose between the two companies again, Intel and AMD! When it comes to motherboards, there’s a lot of things to know so I’m going to break it down. First things first is size. If you’re looking to build a computer fit for gaming or advanced software, a full sized tower would be better than if you were building a computer for the simple life of browsing. The larger the motherboard, the more components it can support. Generally speaking, Intel tends to perform higher in gaming and single-thread programs while AMD does better in multi-thread programs and software.

Second, compatibilities. Most motherboards are made differently to be compatible with certain conditions or brands. One thing to think about is expansion ports. According to Mark Coppock, “PCIe is the most important port and the one you’ll use to connect most components today. There are four sizes of PCIe slots, and the latest standard in common use is PCIe 3.0. These four sizes dictate both the throughput of the connection and its size – you’ll want to make sure that you have enough expansion slots and that they’re of the right sizes to support all of your present and future needs.” When you buy a motherboard, you are investing into the future. If you find you want to make changes to your computer, your motherboard you will find, dictates many decisions after.

Third, GPU and CPU supports. Your motherboard’s compatibility with those 2 parts are the most important. Some Intel Core CPUs come with integrated GPUs that hold the means to display output to a monitor, while AMD has its own version of the same thing called the accelerated processing unit (APU). This combines a CPU with a GPU on the same package. These are pretty low-powered GPUs that are good for the usual tasks like browsing and whatnot,, but only support less graphically demanding games. According to Mark Pollock, “Today, most GPUs connect via PCIe slots, and most use PCIe x16 slots. In addition, most contemporary GPUs require PCIe 3.0 or later.” He also stated, “In choosing your motherboard, therefore, you’ll want to make sure that it provides the right kind of PCIe slots. That means checking the GPU specifications carefully and comparing them to the motherboard’s specifications. If you want to connect two or more GPUs, called “Scalable Link Interface” or SLI by NVIDIA and Crossfire by AMD, then you’ll need two available PCIe slots and a compatible motherboard.”

In my next blog post I will research the question: What are your choices when it comes to memory and storage?