RAM: "I need 2x16GB of DDR4, I'll purchase 2x16GB of DDR4 from literally any brand"
Mobo: "I need something to hold my CPU, let me check the socket, number of PCI ports, number of USB ports, how many of them are USB-C, how many of them are for power only, also my CPU has an iGPU but the Asus FU42069 doesn't have support. Only the MSI 8008135 RGB (military grade gamer edition) has it, but only has a single PCI 16x slot. The ASRock BLNK182 has iGPU support and 2 PCI slots but only USB 3.1 Type A Class S AMG Turbo Diesel"
If you find out that your current ram is obsolete, you probably have lots of other ancient stuff in your computer too. By the time your ram is too slow or there isn’t enough of it, your CPU is going to be abysmally slow by modern standards. Even if your mobo is still fine at that point, it won’t support any of the upgrades you have in mind, so you’ll end up changing everything anyway.
There are only 2 reasons I would buy a motherboard:
What feature would make you upgrade just the motherboard? Especially given how expensive they are nowadays (sometimes even more expensive than the CPU).
I was thinking about the fact that my B450 board does not support PCIe 4.0 which, depending on m next GPU, might not be a good thing. Other than that, I'd maybe consider a mobo swap if I had new requirements like more and/or faster SSD slots or something.
