Machine upgrade project

[kris455]

"My EXISTING motherboard is Gigabyte F2A88X-UP4 FM2+." - that's circa 2013 and an amd cpu socket. Were you planning on a new AMD or a New Intel - major decision! No rush!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was looking at AMD, in part because that is what I have now and because price/performance seems better, and there have seemed to be more CPU flaws reported for Intel recently, but then the Sinclose flaw on AMDs came to light earlier this month, so I am a little less sure now what way to go.

I started making a spreadsheet of the motherboard features for different models, but the local shop has tons available, and I don't want to have to become an expert in what motherboard works with what CPU along with the other combinations, so I will probably try to get some recommendations from them and start there. I will definitely request the "UEFI, Secure Boot capability, and TPM 2.0" that @OldNavyGuy mentioned.

Difficult question - lots of words but not much info follows... !!!
1. My biases - I think I got an AMD mobo a long time ago but have elsewise done Intel. For vid cards, again once AMD but the rest Nvidia. I do love Gigabyte mobos, but my current ASUS was part of a bundle that saved me ~ 200. Also the 3060 vid card was open box and saved me ~100. I don't have a lot of bux for computer toys so try to be careful. This one was ~850, plus ~200 for the vid card, plus ~100 for the fast 980 Pro NVMe stick. You may not need a vid card and you can get by with less on the boot nvme, though shop wisely!!!
2. I do mixed win/linux on one ssd and need my mobo and vid card to cooperate. I think AMD can sometimes be problematic for linux and some video cards definitely are. I first went UEFI years back and it was horribly painful, possibly because I listened to the wrong person on Ubuntu forum and possibly because I didn't have TeraByte Image. You actually have an ideal situation to create UEFI on your new stick on your new mobo and install win10 anew and go from there. It's really actually very little different from MBR - just a real pain if you try to keep what you have and convert that.
3. If you have only windows it is much easier - get used to lurking over at Askwoody.com or whatever it is - a small number of folks over there (~150?) but about 4 folks who have very scary indepth knowledge of win internals and can help you through ANY win prob and are not prejudiced as to what hardware you have and are very willing to help if you are nice to them. They also have linux folk over there too.
4. <-(I have no idea what these numbers mean!) Any mobo nowadays, especially if you tell them win 11 and have an easy NO-QUESTIONS-ASKED return policy, will have secure boot, TPM2 (which may be not long for this world), and UEFI capable chipset. But know what you don't know, set up a package, then go away and google and ask here and other places and check it out. There are tons of excellent mobo's out there, I think, which would work fine. I advise you to try to get one with AT LEAST 2(two) M.2 2080(full length) X4 (gen4x4) slots. I got 3. These days most boards have them. Avoid the x3 and the gen3. And when you get a M.2 NVMe stick (256 or 500GB for your boot system) be sure it is 4x4 capable. With judicious shopping you can do this on a small budget.
5. You may not get another mobo for another 10 years. Be smart on this one as to boot (NVME M.2 instead of 2.5 ssd) (x4 instead of x3 nvme interface)
6. and of course if you do choose Intel avoid the 13 and 14th gen cpus. amd the Cooler master 212 HSF is cheap and the best HSF I have found... more bias to wade through! sorry.
7. I go with Intel because i FEEL it has better overall throughput and far fewer "exceptions" (but of course I don't really know as I have not done thorough testing.). On the other hand if you have had good luck with your AMD for 10 years I see no reason to try to persuade you otherwise! The companies rate their chips differently so while it seems that you can get more with AMD, I really have no idea. Google is your friend here. There are 3 or 4 sites that compare INtel against AMD and you should really spend a day (no more, and no spreadsheets!!!) looking at them to get a rough idea.
8. You can easily tell if your sales person is working in your best interests just with that M.2 and 4x4 nvme interface knowledge ("PCIe Gen 4 x 4")(2 pairs of pipelines instead of 3x or gen3 which is 1pair)( so twice the speed for no or very little extra $. Oh, if you go Intel, try to get a cpu that ends in "K". nothing else. better tolerance. I never overclock.

I make lots of typos and am trying to catch them...

[intranetmouse]

Wow, thanks a lot for outlining your experiences, @kris455! There's a lot of great information there! Especially the advice on avoiding x3, as well as gen 13+14 for Intel.

I'm not too worried about Linux. I generally don't boot to Linux, I just create a VM and mostly use command-line, so graphics performance is not high on the list.

I do want to keep what I have and convert it, which I realize will be harder in some respects. I wonder if there would be any benefit in converting to UEFI+MBR on the existing machine using mbr2gpt.exe and changing the BIOS settings to enable UEFI.

Thanks again!

[kris455]

" I wonder if there would be any benefit in converting to UEFI+MBR on the existing machine using mbr2gpt.exe and changing the BIOS settings to enable UEFI."
stolen from somebody "UEFI offers several advantages over the older BIOS, including support for larger storage devices, faster boot times, improved security features, and a more user-friendly interface." in other words I wouldn't waste my time on it. You will probably be creating USB boot sticks in UEFI for various things so as long as the BIOS says legacy and allows UEFI, you should have no problem.

[kris455]

Probably best to ignore all that and leave your present computer alone. Do experiments on new computer while you can still use this one to talk on the forums.