Finally looking to build a new rig after about 7 years on my current machine. Will largely be used for gaming in Linux, although I may wind up throwing in a second drive for dual booting to Windows for games that don’t work well on Proton/Wine. Also using it as a home theater box for streaming content.
It’s been a minute since I’ve looked into the hardware scene, and while going Nvidia is tempting for the DLSS and ray tracing, at this point I feel like I’d rather give AMD my money simply on principle.
Why the Micro ATX motherboard?
I think your case will fit a full sized ATX motherboard.
In my experience, Micro is more expensive. You’re paying for compactness. Plus a full size could give you more RAM and PCI slots, for future expansion.
I don’t really see myself doing much upgrading, haven’t changed anything in my current setup since I got it. The four DIMMs should be enough, and I can’t think of any PCI devices that I would want to add in. That and looking at their other offerings yields a bunch of nausea inducing RGB and jumps way up in price. I’m not dead set on this mobo, I was looking at recommendations for manufacturers and it seemed the consensus was that ASRock was a decent pick. If there’s a different option that makes more sense then I’ll pivot. My current setup is a Gigabyte that has some pretty bad issues, I can’t even get into the BIOS anymore.
From your mention of preferring to give AMD your money over Nvidia, I’m going to guess you’ve got pro-consumer principles so I don’t recommend ASRock. Check this out for further details.
Very informative, thank you for sharing!