Motherboards are tough to recommend because it really depends what you need from your system. My approach was to choose a CPU first then I could start looking at boards supporting the socket. I wanted ATX, nothing smaller. Memory support, just DDR5 and room to expand (it turns out most boards will handle like 192GB these days lol). I wanted the ability to change CPU frequency, that eliminated boards with a B-series chipsets. Next SSD support (at least 3x m.2) and USB ports (minimum 6x USB 3.0). Finally price, I didn’t want to exceed $250.
When all that was dialed in, I was left with like 8 options, from there it was manageable to read reviews for the nuance between them.
The ssds I kept are newer, system was moved off spinning disks around 2018. SSD undeniably better performance for any machine still running HDD