What should I upgrade my motherboard to?

Anonymous

I was under the impression, that to prevent Bottle Necks the Motherboard is built to the specs of a specific Chip Set. Using anything less is a waste of money, Using anything better will not give the maximum performance of the Chips.

m8xpayne

Are you sure you need to upgrade the CPU? Right now there really aren't any games that can take advantage of more than 8 threads, maybe a couple. If this R5 is rocking a Core i7-7700 or Core i7-6700 then you're not going to see much in the way of increased Framerates. Maybe you'll see a small bump in Framrates provided that your framerates are already over 100fps amount but that's it. The fact it the Core i7-7700k is still hanging in there with the Core i7-8700k and Core i7-9700k in gaming benchmarks. The only reason you would need more cores is for video editing or streaming your gameplay. There is no IPC gains between the 6th Generation and the 8th/9th Generation. Intel has been stringing along the same architecture with the addition of higher clock speeds and more cores. Later this year Intel hopes to release their 10nm processors which should finally have an IPC increase with a possible increase in core counts. These newer processors will not likely be compatible with the 300-series parts. The motherboard that's used in the R5 is a mATX sized motherboard. However, the stock case isn't worth a whole lot and the design flaw of placing the power supply next to the CPU could lead to higher CPU temperatures. If overheating is causing a lack of performance, then you would need to switch to a better case with a bottom mount power supply, better intake fan options, and a chimney style fan options (chimney means fans of fan mounts at the top of the case). Yes, the h310 (which I don't recommend h310), b360, b365, 370, and z390 chipsets are all compatible with the 8th and 9th Generation processors. Due to the age of h310, b360, and z370 chipset motherboards, you would need to update the BIOS in order to get these boards to work with a 9th Generation CPU like the Core i7-9700k. You would need to find a mATX board for your system, unless you upgrade the case. You should investigate to see what's causing the lack of gaming performance you desire before you upgrade the CPU. You will also need a new Windows 10 product key for the new motherboard. Around the middle of the year AMD will release their Ryzen 3000/Zen 2 processors. Since Intel has strung along it's 'Lake' architecture for so long, it wouldn't be a shock to see AMD beat Intel.