What is the best motherboard for i3 8100? This is one of the most popular CPUs on the market right now, which means that many manufacturers are building various motherboards at different price points.
There are many, many that have stood the test of time and people are very passionate. However, when you start to look at reviews and test things for yourself, there are a few motherboards that stick out.
Contents
Comparison Table
Product | Key Specifications |
MSI Performance Gaming Intel Coffee Lake B360 LGA 1151 DDR4 |
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GIGABYTE H310M A 2.0 |
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ASRock Motherboard (Z390 PRO4) |
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Asus ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming Motherboard LGA1151 |
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What Are The Best Motherboards For i3-8100?
For most people, they want to pair a motherboard with i3-8100 that will help with their gaming capabilities. If you don’t have the budget for certain things, you need to have the best motherboard that you can get to bridge together more of the budget parts.
Here are some of the best we saw:
1. MSI Performance Gaming Intel Coffee Lake B360 LGA 1151 DDR4
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Best overall
If you want the best motherboard for i3 8100, then the MSI B360 is going to be the top one that you can buy. It has the best heatsinks on the list and it is made of really good quality materials. It doesn’t overheat and you can use different cases as you like.
This motherboard has fan headers that can help with airflow as well, which will come in handy if you tend to game for hours at a time. There are seven fan headers, including pump and CPU fans. It also has two PCI-EX16, one of which has an armor steel cover. Really, the entire motherboard is made of quality parts that won’t degrade.
The MSI B360 can be overclocked to 2666Mhz. It is accompanied by 4 DIMM slots, and they can support RAM of up to 16GB.
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Truthfully
If you are looking for the best option, this is going to be it. It won’t go on sale all that often, but you should leap when you get the chance to buy one as they sometimes go out of stock.
2. GIGABYTE H310M A 2.0
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Our top value option
If you are looking for a value-priced motherboard for i3 8100, this is going to be one of your best options. That isn’t to say that it is a great motherboard that is going to give you everything that you want – it isn’t. However, it does have really good performance for what you pay.
The power phases don’t have a heat sink, which will be a problem for some people depending on the case that you have. Make sure there is adequate ventilation and you should be fine.
This is a micro-ATX motherboard and it is simplistic. It has 2 DIMM slots which can be overlocked to 2666Mhz and has a RAM of 32BG. For the graphics card, there is only one PCI-EX16 slot that runs at a speed of X16, but that will give you a few different budget-friendly options as well.
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Overall
If you are going to look for a budget motherboard for i3 8100, this is probably going to be one of your better options. You are missing out on some functionality, but you will get good performance.
3. ASRock Motherboard (Z390 PRO4)
This motherboard is a good looking piece of tech. It has a black PCB with a gray pattern that is quite striking and looks great if you want to display your motherboard.
It doesn’t have as many heatsinks as some of the other options on the list. It also doesn’t have a rear panel cover. This leaves you open to some vulnerability.
The ASRock has 4-pin fan headers and ten phase power delivery. There are two PCIe 3.0 slots run at x16, which means that it is going to deliver optimal performance. You can also get supported 2-way CrossFire. If this is a path that you choose to take, you can also get four RAM slots with a max capacity of 64 GB. This will be more than enough for the common gamer.
Additionally, on the rear panel of this motherboard compatible with i3 8100, you’ll find two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports alongside two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports.
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Overall
This is a good motherboard that is a bit cheaply made. If you don’t have to worry about durability (meaning you will keep your computer in the same place), this will be a good option.
4. Asus ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming Motherboard LGA1151
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Great for overclocking
Finally, the Asus ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming Motherboard is another motherboard for i3 8100 that was designed with gaming in mind.
If you like to use Asus’s software, you are going to have to get it on top of this motherboard, which is going to be a sticking point for so many people. If you like to overclocker, this is probably going to be your best overall option on the list.
This isn’t an expensive motherboard and it is probably one of the most frequently purchased motherboards, which means we’ve been able to track how it performs. No one has mentioned anything about underperformance or degradation.
There aren’t any real problems with this motherboard, but that could be because it doesn’t have as many features as some of the other options.
You aren’t going to get all of the extra ports and slots that you get with the other motherboards. If you aren’t going to use those, say because you are going to game competitively, then you won’t need it.
The on-board lighting is probably the flashiest, so if you need a display piece, consider this one. You can do some pretty cool things with it.
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Overall
This is a cost-efficient board for people who don’t need to go all out with slots and ports to make it more powerful. By itself, it is a good piece of tech.
If you are going to pick the best motherboard for i3 8100, especially if you are going to game, you can’t really go wrong with any of the options listed above. Consider that if you don’t get a good enough motherboard, you could end up overspending on other pieces of your setup.
The choice you make in motherboards is important, so try to pick the best one that fits into your budget.
Don’t overspend if you don’t have to as there are other places you could splurge to get the best performance.
Overall, we’d choose the MSI B360 as the best motherboard for i3 8100. It is a good looking motherboard with all of the performance that you need.
If you are on a low budget, you could wait for a sale as they do happen occasionally.
No matter which motherboard you pick, you can’t really go wrong.