am3 motherboard reccomendation

[86waterpumper]

I have some christmas cash, and decided to do a build. I am trying to find deals, I have bought the case (pck62), & psu (antec neo 620). I at first liked the looks of the biostar 890fxe, & was willing to give up usb 3.0, but I see that recent shipments do not have the media remote that the earlier ones did. The remote isn't huge but it does make it less of a value. Also I have read that many have had issues of voltage running away when overclocking? Does anyone know if this has been fixed with the last bios?

Basically I want a motherboard that is right around the 100 dollar range, I would go up to 125 or 130... I do not need onboard video, but I would like to have sata 6 and if I don't go with the biostar I would try to get usb 3. The gigabyte boards such as the 870A-UD3 look like a fairly good option? Are there features that the 890 boards have that the 870 does not that are very important? I am not going to run raid so I dont' have to have tons of satas I know usually the 890 boards do have heatsinks that would be great for oc etc. Asus has a few boards such as the evos that look ok too but i see alot of bad reviews on these lately and quality issues? If someone has some reccomendations for me let me know. I don't know alot about the asrock boards and other namebrands have mainly used biostar for my last couple builds, built my buddy a c2d system awhile back with the tforce and that seemed to be a great board.

 

[Vette73]

870 is for single cards or single card and physX card. 890 is if running more than 1 major video card. Sounds like the 870 chipset would work best for you.

Gigabyte
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128443

Asrock
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157198

Both of those are less than $100 and have Sata3 and USB3. I like gigabyte but Asrock is my 2nd look for boards.

IMO skip Asus. Their quality has dropped a lot. Even their laptops are getting bad and their support is even worse than before, how that can be I'm not sure as it was pretty bad before.

 

[Rifter]

If you are going to overclock make sure it had good enough cooling/heatsinks on the mosfets. Other than that if you stick to Asus, Gigabyte, MSI you should be ok for quality.

The ASUS M4A88T-V EVO/USB3 looks like a good board for the money.

 

[SirGCal]

There's plenty to fit your needs... Right now my favorite AM3 board is the ASUS Crossfire... They had a manufacturing bug a bit ago but it's since been fixed to the best of our determinable-ity. But it's a bit more expensive than what you were looking for.

I've used Biostar before with great success. That brand is running two servers for me right now. I also have a ton of Gigabyte machines and ASUS Machines.. Have had MSI machines. No real problems with any of them. I suggest you just look for the board that has the features you're most interested in. Every manufactuer will have some lemons from time to time so there is no sure thing. The good manufacturers will fix the problem if there is a problem, that's the important thing. I have experience with all of these manufacturer's directly. While some are arguably better than others, they all have come through.

 

[86waterpumper]

Thanks for the advice. I think for sure I want to stick with a known brand like biostar, asus, or gigabyte etc if for nothing else than the hope of future bios updates. I am not a huge gamer I will game some but not enough to warrant running dual vid cards. The most I would run is a single 6850 or so.
The M4A88T-V EVO/USB3 has two diff versions showing on newegg a T, and TD. I guess the td version has sata 6 and sideport memory for the video.

Tiger direct had the 890fxe biostar boards for 109 plus shipping which worked out to 117 shipped for me. When I emailed them with a question about it they said they didn't carry it anymore but seems that was bad information as they show it in stock again :\. At that price point it seems like a good board, but I don't know that I'd pay 140 shipped for it regular price like superbiiz and newegg want.

I do want to overclock some, so if I can get it at tiger it may be the best route to go. It seems every other board shown here with the except of the asus evos doesn't have any vrm cooling, so by the time you paid for that you could just buy a better board. Asus does scare me with their quality, some of their monitors lately are certainly lower end, it is sad to see the turn around.

One other question, I am planning to go with a ssd drive for this system as the boot drive. I would hope to get a sata 6.0gb drive maybe such as the c300s but I have heard some stories of ahci mode not working for some and others saying they had to use the slower sata ports. I read also that amd has yet to release a driver that support trim so the slower microsoft driver must be used? Of all the amd boards, is there one that has better ssd support? Obviously this would depend what controller onboard is used, so I am trying to take that into account also as well as which board would have the faster bootup (ie. less time spent on the bios and post screens)

 

[SirGCal]

I wouldn't worry too much about SATA 6G... To really notice any of that benefit over SATA 3G you'd have to be doing a ton of large transfers, and that's not what the SSD/BOOT setup is really for. It's going to be doing tons of tiny file random reads and such which you'll be just fine with SATA 3G.

Until SATA 6G becomes a bit more prevalent (expect the next version of most drives) you're limited to the other hardware and chipset capabilities like the controller on the SSD itself (which is a huge factor). I have a C300 and also my G.Skill drive which is a SATA 3G only, there is no perceivable difference as a boot/programs drive. On a pure benchmark, sure you'll see faster potential on the sata-III but in real world computing performance and even some benchmarks (IOPS for example puts lots of sata drives over the C300) there is just little to no real world benefit with current hardware options. Perhaps that'll change with the next gen of controllers.

 

[86waterpumper]

Thanks. Well I was under the impression that the 3rd gen sata drives will be coming out any day now, is this not the case? I may hold out for them to begin

That is one reason I was going to get the other components first, and hope to snag a new updated drive, I realize that the c300 doesn't provide alot of speed diff especially unless you go with the 256gig version, basically I just want to make sure that whatever board and controller I get will be the best it can be and be ready for the new drive technology. It would suck to have to buy some add in sata controller card...

 

[SirGCal]

The tech is out, but not all together. SATA-III (6G) is out, SSDs are out obviously, but the next generation of controllers for those SSDs are what is going to make it all worth while (we think; maybe not much better than now though... we'll see...). Right now the C300 is a very capable unit. Nothing wrong with it. My G.Skill is actually faster with what I use it for, but it's picking hairs... ANY SSD is going to be considerably faster than a mechanical drive... I think the next generation will be out this summer/fall timeframe. But I'm only guessing (Q2-Q3). I think they're still trying to focus on higher capacity at cheaper costs instead of insane performance at this stage... Besides if performance is the most important thing, go for SLC instead of MLC... Different beast all together...

 

[86waterpumper]

Yeah sandforce II, c300(in the larger sizes)and even the samsung ssd are all on my short list. Which one I get will depend on what deals I can find. I did not realize the 3rd gen drives were still that far out. If I was planning to wait that long I would just wait on bulldozer...there is always something better around the corner though. Seems like then that maybe I should not rule out older chipsets such as the 790 then...

 

[SirGCal]

Ohhh yes, there's ALWAYS something right around the corner. I was going to wait for Bulldozer too but said 'screwit' and went with my 1090T and then got a gift for the holidays of an 1100T chip so... And I'm sure it'll kick much tail for quite a while. Now to just upgrade my video (6970, soon...). Then my system will be finished for at least the summer. But I upgrade too often anyhow as it is...

It's always just about buying when you're ready to buy. If something really close, I'll wait for it but if it's more than a month out, I won't. By then something else will be out. We're never (in the consumer world) top of the pile anyhow. By the time a product is released, it's already outdated by the next one in prototype... bla bla bla...

 

[perdomot]

I was still using my old Gigabyte 785G mobo until last month when I upgraded to an intel 760 and got a combo deal on an Asus mobo. Unfortunately, it died 3 days later and I ended up getting an Gigabyte mobo which is rock solid. I believe that its true that Asus has let itself lose quality control but Gigabyte still seems solid.

 

[86waterpumper]

Well I will say that the asus dvd burners are fast, and their 6850 vid cards get very good reviews and seem to be good also...but that is the only positives from them I have seen lately.

 

[Vette73]

Well I will say that the asus dvd burners are fast, and their 6850 vid cards get very good reviews and seem to be good also...but that is the only positives from them I have seen lately.

Thats because they don;t make video cards or burners. Those are just rebadged or OEM designs. Very few video cards seem to do anything other than the oem design.

Asus does make motherboards and the laptop boards as well, and those are what are having issues with now. That and their bad customer service is even worse now.

 

[86waterpumper]

Alright thanks for the help! I ended up going with the biostar mainly because it was in stock again at tiger direct and I got it for 114 shipped. That is a great price if anybody is needing one. I think it may be lacking a couple features but will be a great board for overclocking. I also picked up a couple sticks of super talent elpida hyper ram, so hopefully 4ghz won't be a stretch. I have been on a socket 939 single core athlon so I think anything at this point will be night and day speed wise.

 

[NickR]

Love my ASUS M4A88TD-V Evo/USB3.0