Looking for a cheap (poor high school student here) motherboard that will allow me to overclock a fx 8320. I don't care at all about SLI (single gpu) or color scheme. All I want is good preformance for as cheap as possible. Do I need to buy the more expensive 990fx boards, or would a 970 work? As far as I can tell the 970 is just a 990 without SLI, right? Also, if there is an option to have good built in sound quality I'd like to get that so that I don't need a soundcard.
Thanks and I really am clueless as far as mobo shopping so sorry D:
Ok... How cheap are you thinking?
This is what I use.. Good value for the price.
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=62403&vpn=GA-990FXA-UD3&manufacture=Gigabyte&promoid=1360
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hcaD
This one should get up and running with head room to OC. It's rated to accept CPU's up to 140w and the 8320 is 125w so you can give it a nice little bump.
not not totaly true about the M5A97 LE
it does support upto 140W max tdp but, this is tricky cause there is only a 4+2 power phase on this type board, so that doesnt give you much room for overclocking.
same problem with those cheap Asrocks
The Asus M5A97 evo rev 2.0 has a 6+2 power phase, thats gives you a bit more overclocking room. but ofc a board like the gigabyte GA970A-UD3 with 8+2 powerphase gives you more space to overclock.
but why overclocking, just punt on the turbo core it will run on 4.2 ghz
Well if I can get a motherboard that will allow it to get up to say 4.6 or 5ghz I'd rather have that than 4.2 haha. Do you think any of these motherboards will have good built in audio? I was looking at some intel boards a little while ago and a couple of them had built in good quality audio so i wouldn't need a sound card.
If you want 5 Jigahurtz you gonna have to pony up for a good quality board. You can't cheap out on your hardware if you are gonna stress it out like that. What is your budget so we can narrow things a lot better for you. If it's around $200 then you are in the right camp because not too many AMD Mobo's cost over that mark.
I don't need to get it all the way up to 5ghz necessarily, If I can save $50 and only get it to 4.6 or something than I'd rather do that. My budget is probably $130-140 maybe $150 tops. However if a 970 like the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131873 m5a97 or 970 ud3 can get me a little bit of overclocking, for $50 less than I'd rather do that. I don't need absolute max overclocking.
Go with the gigabyte GA970A-UD3 with 8+2 like MysteryAngel recomended. You get a top quality board for single GPU setup and you are under $130. As for audio, it is what it is - on-board audio. The one on this board I believe is 8 ch. It's still not as good as dedicated card. If you are a die-hard audiophile you will need a dedicated card. The on-board audio works fine though in a lot of these later model boards.
Yes cause The Asus M5A97 r2.0 has a 4+2 phase power too unfortunatley
only the Evo version has 6+2, cause that evo board is practicaly the same as the M5A99FX pro r2.0 instead of the chipset.
but its better to go for the Gigabyte like i said, if you realy want to oc, thats the best 970 board to buy at the moment,for overclocking, and it cost around 100bucks.
Alright. Ordering the ud3 tonight. :D