looking at 790FX or 890FX boards, considering one of two, your thoughts?

[faxon]

okay so heres a little backround. im putting together a 3rd box that i can use as a combination file server/BOINC compute box. i plan to use as many spare graphics cards as possible for compute purposes, and i dont mind spending extra for a 5th slot on the more expensive board, but im trying to pinch this system cash wise and $140 for a well laid out 4 slot board that i can reuse my spare 2gb of DDR2 on seems like a really fucking nice deal. any thoughts on stability or reliability concerns i should be having with it?

option one would be this board from foxconn

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186149

option two would be the best 890FX has to offer for overclockablity, number of slots, stability, ect ect.... its a DCer's dream and it doesnt cost a hell of a lot all in all for it, great for GPU density in a single box. the only catch, im considering possibly getting the open box for $50 less, again to save cash, and i would have to buy DDR3 memory, which would put total cost up $100 cause it only makes sense if i buy 4GB of ram, any less would be a waste for a server i have a good chance of running at least 2 or 3 VMs on.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813130274R


now, as for cards, i have a friend willing to sell me his used XFX black 5850 for $200 used since he just got a 5970 an he doesnt want to run them in crossfire for some reason even though he has an 850w PSU and a P6T running a dell 30", an 8800GT, and a 4670. i also have another friend im gonna try and buy a 9800GTX off of, and i have a 900w Topower Powerbird to use for it all, so power isnt an issue. i ordered a lancool PC-K58 off newegg today as well for $65 shipped, and it comes with 8 expansion slots, so running the 890FX 5 slots filled is going to be no problem, and the case has space for 3 140mm fans so airflow is set and good to go. gonna put 4x1TB drives in RAID5 and then virtualize a linux FTP server of some type, gonna use a 5.25" bay adapter for the boot drive. my only concern if i cheap out and go the foxconn board route is reliability, but the board gets reasonably good reviews all in all, only downside i really see is that it only has 4 slots when i can use all 5, and probably no option to upgrade to bulldozer when it comes out. also i havent heard anything about foxconn's support, where as i just heard some wonderful things about MSI's RMA service from a folder today who is running 64 boxes and has had to send back 5 boards due to bad caps, said they are fast and responsive and he had new boards within 8 business days.

total box would go like this
x3 720 BE (gonna unlock and OC)
topower 900W powerbird (have already, check hardOCP for review)
lancool PC-K58 (on the way)
megahalems (have already, need AMD bracket)
radeon 5850
radeon 4670 (have already)
geforce 8800GT 512mb (65nm, have already)
geforce 9800GTX 512mb (65nm)
4x1tb drives (have already
500gb boot + VMs drive
choice of board and ram, if DDR3 board add $100 to the price tag


so, MSI or foxconn, thoughts? reasoning? anything i may have missed? and if the open box turns out to have problems, newegg is usually pretty good about that kind of thing, but might it be more worth it to just RMA the board so long as it came with all the accessories in box? i dont mind exchanging it for a new box if there is a problem, but if you guys dont think its worth it to save a whole 50 bucks then i would rather get it from frys since it's the same price and i can put a 5 year instant exchange warranty on it instead, so when it finally breaks (and it will, never had a board last 3 years, horrible luck), i can just exchange it for a new current model LOL.

also, i DO have a spare 775 cpu (e5200, will do 3.2ghz), but i cant find a 775 board that has more than 2 PCI-e anymore

 

[faxon]

Bump, anyone? Really all I wanna hear before I decide is good/bad stuff about foxconn, or anything I'm missing which may make either board undesirable. Posted the total expected hardware list in case anyone can spot possible incompatiblities I may have missed.

 

[bryanW1995]

wow, nice setup. I don't have any foxconn experience, but I would probably go msi all things being equal. I have bought two open box mobos from newegg over the years, one of which is my current main rig's p6t. no problems ever with either mobo.

I would not worry about BD upgradability, that is 15 mos out anyway and who knows if any of boards you're looking at will be compatible anyway? can you get 5 pci-e slots on a ddr2 board?

 

[faxon]

nah the predecessor to the 890FXA-GD70 is the 790FX-GD70 from MSI, and the K9A2 platinum before it (SB600 instead of 750, and 850 is the change on the 890fx, since the 890fx chipset is the same as 790fx LOL). http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=1332
the k9a2 platinum isnt available anymore, but it also only has SB600 so its out of the question since i would want to unlock my 720 if possible. the last one i saw in the wild was when i sold our last 4 we had to a local guy who actually came in yesterday to get our last GD70 open boxes as well for $100, has 64 F@H boxes LOL

 

[Glendor]

I'm having good luck with the MSI 890FXA-GD70. With the xDev SLI mod, you aren't limited to ATI CrossfireX for multiGPUs.

My ONLY beef with the mobo is the temp sensers don't report correctly in some programs. The onboard temp lcd says one thing, and SiSoft, CoreTemp, etc... all have different readings.

Antec Ninehundred case
MSI 890FXA-GD70 w/ latest bios
AMD 1055T 6x @ 3.5ghz OC
Corsair H50 cooler 28c Idle / 38c Load
2x4gb G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3
2x BFG GTX 275 OC in SLI w/ nVidia 257.15 drivers
2x Seagate Momentus XT in RAID0
Muskin Enhanced 550w PSU
Win7 64bit w/ xDev SLI mod

 

[nenforcer]

The only chipset from AMD I would consider is the 890FX since not only does the SB850 southbridge support SATA 3 (6Gbps) natively buts is also the first southbridge from AMD to not have any USB speed issues. Even the SB750 still carried this problem over from the SB600 and earlier chips.