Greetings everyone, I will be building an computer soon, and I have posted here before but I just have a question. Am I to understand that a 990fx chipset is mostly used for SLI/Crossfire set ups, and that a 970 board performs just as well for single GPU set ups?
Reason I am asking is that I plan on getting a fx 8350 and overclock it to 4.5Ghz (No higher, think i'll be happy there) under water using a corsair H80. Will a 970 board overclock as well as a 990fx board (or at least to my target 4.5Ghz OC)? If so, what is a good 970 board I should take a look at? Basically I don't plan on running multiple GPUs, so dont want to spend extra on a board that has feature(s) I'll never use.
A 970 board will work perfectly fine, depending on the vendor. I.E. Asus > Foxcomm, biostar, etc. What makes 990 boards better than 970 really is the 990 chipset supports crossfire and sli, as where 970 does not nativly. 990fx board tend to hove better power delivery, more fan connectors, and more features, but they are just "blot-were" most of the time. Nifty, but really just barely better that a 970. If you are using one graphics card, go with the 970.
While the 970 will work well for a single with a single GPU, not all 970 boards will work well for overclocking the 8 core chips due to the VRMs. For OCing on a 970 the only board I would go with is the Gigabyte 970A-UD3 due to the 8+2phase power.
You can get away with overclocking on a lower power phase...
I picked up an asrock 970 extreme and an 8350 this week. I plan on OCing this chip as far as i can push it, once i also invest in water cooling. When it's all said and done, I'm going to post my experiences with the setup.
The Asrock 970s can do it I believe, and I think all boards with auto overclocking features, like OC genie, etc., should be able to do it. Just do your research on the power delievery. Digi - power and more power phases are perferred.