Asrock's B550 Taichi is a great-looking motherboard with superb build quality, but it's lacking in some important areas such as in-BIOS overclocking support and RAM-tweaking stability.

Owners of MSI's 400 series boards will get to upgrade to Zen 3 no matter what model they own.

No doubt about it: Among Intel Z490 motherboards, Asus' ROG Maximus XII Extreme is an absolute carnival of features. This Extended ATX dreamboat is stable and easy to work with; just make sure you really need most of the extras before paying the premium price.

The Asus Prime Z490-A is a stable and worthwhile ATX board to build an Intel 10th Generation Core system on, but you can find better buys in its price range.

At a midrange price, the Asus ROG Strix Z490-E Gaming looks, feels, and operates like a top-end Intel motherboard with just a few of the premium bells and whistles knocked off. It's an ideal-balance ATX board for 10th Generation Intel chips, and it performed flawlessly in our tests.

The Asus TUF Gaming B550M-Plus (Wi-Fi) delivers a strong feature set for AMD Ryzen upgraders and builders that shows the dollar-saving strengths of the B550 chipset versus the X570.

Asrock's Phantom Gaming Velocita is a well-rounded, mid-price ATX motherboard for anyone looking to build (and, maybe, overclock) a solid 10th Generation Intel PC, while spurning the expensive excesses of a flagship board.

A slick-looking premium board for 10th Gen Intel, the MEG Z490 Ace has an attractive feature set and wise PCB arrangement, but issues with the firmware suggest waiting for some patching-up, especially considering the price.

Only 999 of these motherboards will be made available.

Asrock's TRX40 Taichi Threadripper motherboard offers unique style, ritzy thermals, and extensive M.2 SSD support, but mind the placement of some of its ports and headers.

Asrock’s X299 Taichi CLX motherboard delivers extra PCIe lanes, offers a clean BIOS and board layout, and proves a fine choice for a powerhouse Intel Core X desktop PC build.

If you're willing to pay the (necessarily) big bucks to create a new TRX40-based Threadripper desktop, few motherboards on any platform can match the Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme for sheer robustness and feature set.

If your MSI product qualifies and its warranty expires in March, you're being offered a complimentary 2 month extension.

MSI's MEG X570 Godlike AM4 motherboard runs fine, looks stupendous, and has some cool features and accessories, but this EATX board's soaring price makes it an extravagance unless you truly need everything in the box.

MSI's X470 Gaming Pro Carbon is a likable, if not particularly stylish, AMD AM4 ATX-size motherboard that will satisfy gamers who can live without extensive overclocking options or built-in Wi-Fi.

We'd avoid using both of its M.2 slots, but the ATX-size Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming is otherwise a solid AMD AM4 motherboard for a midrange Ryzen PC build.

It's encouraging to see NZXT's continued efforts to break into the motherboard business, but the company's N7 Z390 board is uncompetitive in today's market.

MSI's MEG X570 Ace is a premium ATX motherboard designed for latest-gen Ryzen CPUs, brimming with creature comforts (such as an overclocking knob) and the core stuff that sets the X570 chipset apart. It's a solid effort, but it could use a little more flash and legacy storage support.

Packing Wi-Fi 6 support and a heap of tweaker creature comforts, the Asus ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi) is an excellent cutting-edge AM4 motherboard for gaming and overclocking on AMD's latest-gen Ryzen CPUs.