Best Gaming Motherboard 2026: 10 Ranked

This is the board to buy if you want the most power delivery per pound on AM5. It leads because 14 stages at £127.99 is £9.14 a stage, and the £184.99 MSI X870E Gaming Plus WiFi matches that count at £13.21 a stage, so nothing else on this page delivers as much for a Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9.

You get four DDR5 slots holding up to 128 GB, a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot for the fastest SSDs, USB4 support, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, 2.5 Gb Ethernet and a 256 Mbit UEFI BIOS. It also drives up to seven storage devices, which is more than most builders will ever fit.

The limit is wireless. Wi-Fi 6 is a generation behind, and there is no 5 Gbps LAN. The £124.70 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi6E costs £3.29 less with Wi-Fi 6E and a 256 GB memory ceiling, though it drops to 12 stages at £10.39 each and a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot.

Buy this if you want the newest socket for the least money. At £124.70 it undercuts the winner by £3.29 and still takes a Ryzen 9000 chip on AM5 with DDR5.

The 12 duet rail power stages cost £10.39 each, so you pay £1.25 more per stage than the ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi. In return you get a 256 GB memory ceiling, four SMT DIMM slots, one M.2 Gen5 x4 slot at 128 Gbps plus a Gen4 x4 slot at 64 Gbps, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and a 2.5 Gbps LAN port.

The graphics slot is where the saving shows. It runs PCIe 4.0 x16 at 64 GB/s, so a PCIe 5.0 card works at half its link speed. The £144.98 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi costs £20.28 more and answers that with PCIe 5.0 x16 at 128 GB/s, plus Wi-Fi 7 and 5 Gbps Ethernet.

This suits the builder who wants the newest wireless and the most storage options without paying £189. It is the middle of the MSI B850 pair, and it buys the features rather than the phases.

The 12 duet rail stages cost £12.08 each, the third highest on this page. What the extra money buys is a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot at 128 GB/s, three M.2 connectors (one Gen5 at 128 Gbps, one Gen4 at 64 Gbps, one Gen4 at 32 Gbps), Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, a 5 Gbps Ethernet port and 256 GB of DDR5 support.

You pay for those features twice. The £124.70 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi6E has the same 12 stages for £20.28 less, and the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi asks £2.94 less per stage for 14 of them, at £9.14 each.

This is the mid-range AM5 option, and it suits a build where the CPU is a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 rather than a 16-core part. The 8+2+2 layout is honest about that: eight phases do the heavy lifting for the processor.

Those 12 phases work out to £10.83 each. The board also brings a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot plus two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, DDR5 support to 8,000 MHz with AMD EXPO and Intel XMP profiles, a 192 GB ceiling, an M.2 thermal guard, support for 25110-size SSDs and Wi-Fi 6.

The compromise is the CPU phase count. It costs £2.00 more than the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi, which feeds the processor through 14 stages rather than eight, and it settles for Wi-Fi 6 where the MSI B850 boards carry 6E and 7.

Choose this if the CPU is a Ryzen 9 and you intend to keep it boosting for hours. It is the heaviest power delivery on this page at 14+2+1 stages, each rated for 80A.

Spread over £189, that is £11.12 a stage, and the supporting hardware is built for the same job: an 8-layer PCB, 8+8 pin ProCool power connectors, one PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot and two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots with heatsinks on all three, a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, Wi-Fi 7, 2.5Gb Ethernet, a rear USB 20 Gbps Type-C port and a Thunderbolt (USB4) header.

The bill is £61.01 above the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi, which already carries 14 stages for a Ryzen 7. Unless you are running the biggest chip, those three extra stages are money that would be better spent on memory or a faster SSD.

This is for a small AM5 build where the case will not take a full ATX board. It is the least you can pay to get onto the platform here.

The 10 duet rail stages cost £11.50 each. In a micro-ATX footprint you still get four DDR5 SMT slots and 256 GB of support, an M.2 Gen5 x4 slot at 128 Gbps plus a Gen4 x4 slot at 64 Gbps with M.2 Shield Frozr, a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot with Steel Armor, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, a 2.5 Gbps LAN port and 7.1 audio with Audio Boost.

Ten stages is the fewest of any AM5 board here, which is why it sits below the ATX options. The £124.70 MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi6E costs £9.70 more and adds two stages and a full-size board, and it stays the better buy if your case has the room.

Buy this if you already own a Ryzen 5000 and a set of DDR4 modules. It is the strongest of the AM4 trio here, and the ratings are the reason: 3,685 owners give it 4.6, the joint-highest score on this page.

On the AM4 socket you get Wi-Fi 6, 2.5 Gb Ethernet with LANGuard, dual M.2 slots with PCIe 4.0 readiness, and Windows 11 support. It also holds up to 128 GB of DDR4, which is more memory than a gaming build will use.

The catch is the platform, not the board. At £139.99 it costs £40.00 more than the £99.99 MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus on the same AM4 socket, and neither will take a Ryzen 9000 processor or DDR5 memory later.

This is the budget AM4 pick, and the one to buy if you are keeping an existing Ryzen chip and memory. Nothing else here has been bought and rated so often: 5,786 owners give it 4.5.

At £99.99 it brings dual M.2 connectors with PCIe 4.0 on both the graphics and storage side, USB 3.2 Gen2, 128 GB of DDR4 at up to 4,400 MHz, 7 W/mK thermal pads, a 2 oz thickened copper PCB, Mystic Light with 16.8 million colours and Audio Boost.

The ceiling is the socket. The £115 MSI B850M Gaming Plus WiFi6E is £15.01 more and brings AM5, DDR5 and a Gen5 M.2 slot, none of which this board can accept. Pick it for the price and the track record, not for the upgrade path.

This is for the build that needs USB4 and the newest wireless rather than the most power phases. It is the only board here with a 40 Gbps USB4 Type-C port that also carries display output.

The 14 duet rail stages are rated at 60A each, which is £13.21 a stage. Around them sit a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot at 128 GB/s, three M.2 connectors (one Gen5 at 128 Gbps, two Gen4 at 64 Gbps) with EZ M.2 Shield Frozr II, DDR5 to 8,200+ MT/s, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, a 5 Gbps Ethernet port and 7.1 audio with Audio Boost.

Fourteen stages is exactly what the £127.99 ASUS TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi offers, and that board asks £9.14 a stage. Here £57.00 of the price goes on USB4, Wi-Fi 7 and the third M.2 slot instead of on feeding the CPU.