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Beyond the obvious (memory capacity, type of USB, number of ports, etc) what should I be looking for? Will be paired with Ryzen 5600G, no intention of overclocking but it will be on 24/7.
Things you'll regret not having in future when there's no chance of ever changing the motherboard without starting over.
You've chosen a non-Intel CPU and so immediately: support for Thunderbolt over USB-C. It's very rare that AMD motherboards support Thunderbolt, but a lot of peripherals are Thunderbolt and you're only going to get the most out of them with Thunderbolt. You've no idea what you might want to plug in over the life of the motherboard, so I'd put this one quite high on the list.
Example of an AMD motherboard with Thunderbolt support https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-DESIGNARE-rev-10#kf and even then you need to use the bundled card to achieve it.
For the basics I look for:
- Enough fan power ports for however I choose to configure the thing.
- An M2 slot for the primary disk.
- At least 1 SSD / HDD connection (I have a NAS so I just want a data drive so the primary disk is the OS).
But what are you using this for? You mention 24/7 uptime, if you're building a NAS just keep things simple and look for low power and heat on the components you choose and don't worry about much else as you're unlikely to upgrade things, just swap drives, etc. If you're building a gaming PC go for connectivity as you're likely to upgrade and swap things over a 4-5 year ownership. If it's media, then more questions arise about how you want to use it (and why you didn't choose Intel when most media programs natively support hardware offloading fully with Intel chips based on the chip extensions).
- Enough fan power ports for however I choose to configure the thing.
Velocio-
most media programs natively support hardware offloading fully with Intel chips based on the chip extensions
Can you explain anymore about what this means in practical terms. I was looking at building a new rendering machine in the next year around a Ryzen CPU. Is it more relevant to things like Plex than, say, After Effects?
Polygon
Motherboards? I normally treat them like wine in a restaurant and buy the second cheapest but I feel that I should actually put some thought into it. There's a huge array of prices but I can't really see what the difference is.
Beyond the obvious (memory capacity, type of USB, number of ports, etc) what should I be looking for? Will be paired with Ryzen 5600G, no intention of overclocking but it will be on 24/7.