So about a month ago I picked up an MSI 970A-G46. I admit I rushed into buying this mobo without doing enough research. So it turns out it has a bit of trouble with the AMD 8 core processors. I have heard a lot of different opinions on this though. Some say the FX 8350 wont work, or will burn out the mobo, others say it boots up perfectly and they haven't had any problems. I'm not so much concerned about the 8350 as this is suppose to be a bit of a budget build any ways. But no matter how much research I do I can figure out if getting an 8320 would be okay, or if I should just go with an FX 6350. Is there any evidence that MSI has fixed these issues, or is this just a permanent problem?
To wrap this up, I'm wondering whether I should take the risk with an 8320, not OC, and upgrade my mobo in the future or just go with a 6350. Take into consideration this build is strictly for gaming and i'm looking to play some of the more cpu intensive games, such as Arma 3 and BF4. Am I going to see a noticeable loss in performance with a 6 core as apposed to an 8 core?
You CAN go with an 8320/50, but you will not be able to overclock, or use it to 100% usage (you never should be able to anyway, but still, if it goes that high the board will underclock it basically and throttle it quickly to stop it from CATCHING FIRE).
I'd recommend sticking with a 6300 with that mobo. You could put an 8320 into it later on, but if you want to overclock you'd want another board. Even with the 6300 you shouldn't do heavy overclocks. A little is ok, but the board, as well as it's g43 counterpart are known to run hot.
I can't speak to performance in Arma 3, but a 6300 should be fine for BF4. I don't think there will be a huge difference between it and an 8320.
Sounds like a plan. I've read a lot on the mobo and I wasn't even planning on OC the 6350 due to the heat problems. Really wishing I went with a 990 mobo, but meh, I'll work with what I've got. So if I picked up an after market heatsink with the 6350 would I be safe to OC it to around 4.2ghz?
Oh, and as far as over clocking goes, do the same limitations apply to the GPU with this mobo? Would I be pushing my luck by over clocking the gtx 760?
A member of the forums here when I asked about the G43 said his buddy overclocked his 6300 on it up to about 4.0 ghz, but that he wouldn't push it much past that. And yes you'll need an aftermarket cooler.
I dunno about GPU OC'ing though. I'm not really knowledgeable about that, and if it would be affected by the VRM's the same way the CPU overclock is.