Does the motherboard affect the CPU speed and video card performance?

I am planning to build a computer and am wondering whether or not the motherboard has any affect on the CPU or video card, because I want to get a good motherboard that I wont replace. The reason for this is I need a computer but don't have the money to make one as good as I want so my plan is to maybe get a better CPU or video card or more RAM but I don't want to replace the motherboard. For my second Question I am going to include the list of parts that I want to use to build my computer, my question is, will Flight Simulator X run smoothly without glitches on almost full graphics. Processor: AMD Athlon X2 250 3GHz Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78LM RAM: G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 Video card: BIOSTAR VA5552NHG1 Radeon HD 5550 1GB 128-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB, to find these products go to newegg.com and type in the description if you need more information, thanks.|||For what you have chosen, the CPU is usually what you build around, so here goes.



The Athlon II X2 250 is a good all round low end and cheap CPU. Excellent choice, BTW. The motherboard is an AM2+ which means it uses DDR2 RAM. This is a limiting factor that I would caution you about. I would recommend and AM3 board such as these:



http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis…



You will see that there is quite a variety of prices and capabilities. It all depends on how much you can spend. I would carefully look through these.



RAM prices are quite similar, with just a few $ between the two standards at the same capacities. Again the DDR3 is a bit more future proof. Here:



http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis…



Video is whatever you can afford. I like to go with mid range cards as they seem to offer the best balance between power consumption, performance and heat production. For this last reason I have stayed away from Nvidia cards since the 7000 series. Why choose that particular video card? For a bit more money you could get a 5570 which has better specs and uses only 3W more. For a 5670 you could get one for about $15 to $20 more and double the performance.



A hard drive is a hard drive. You aren't going SSD so the performance difference is quite negligible. A quick dig results in a $70 drive. A slightly deeper dig results in quite a few for $70. Here is one I have happily used for quite a while:



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



A 1TB drive with a reasonable history of decent performance and a good RMA system. I speak here from much experience. You could also save few and get this:



Hitachi 500GB



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



Seagate 500GB



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



Western Digital 500GB



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



All three of these have free shipping as of this writing.



One thing you didn't list was a power supply. I would recommend you to get a 500W unit from a decent maker. You don't need much more than 350W for what has been discussed above but the extra is for future upgrades.



Good luck.|||it will of course but your current video card will probably not tax your motherboard much.in a bottlenecking sense.|||In a way. but it all depends on what kind of CPU and graphics card you have also|||A motherboard is acting like a bridge connecting every parts of your computer so that it can communicate with each other. When your CPU or Graphic Card or RAM want to send their data, they must use this bridge(motherboard). Each time those units want to send data, they must send using an electricity, when the electricity run on the motherboard it creates heat. So if the motherboard is not good enough it can withstand only small amount of heat, those units can send little data at a time, but if a good motherboard it can withstand much heat, the data can just come with no traffic jam.



So a good motherboard do effect the overall speed, but usually not much.



For your second question, it's enough for you to play Flight Simulator X, but if you are going to use this computer for a long time. I would recommend you to change you specs and make the RAM to be DDR3. The reason is because many big companies are pushing everyone to change to be DDR3 which make DDR3 price came down and DDR2 price gone up. And in a very near future DDR3 would be a new standard, your DDR2 RAM if it broken at that time it would be hard to replace or it might be very expensive.