I recently got an FX-8320 and thought that I could save some money on the motherboard because I don't need stuff like usb 3.0, surround sound, gigabit ethernet,... I just wanted something that made the 8320 talk to my GTX560 so I got the 760GM-P23 for only 40 euros.
The thing ran like it had an incredibly unstable overclock, on default settings. Crashed all the time. Underclocked it, turned off turbo core and it started to run more stable although prime95 still crashes it.
I figured it was my 430W corsair PSU not being able to give enough power so I bought a 700W OCZ. Since that didn't fix the issue I figured it has to be the motherboard.
Also, the on-board audio microphone port has so much static on it that it's unusable and the PCI port is placed so that my old dedicated sound card blocks the GPU fan.
I can't even return the mobo as DOA anymore because I had to wait for the PSU to arrive and it's been over a week so I'd have to pay to get it shipped back and then get the same crappy replacement motherboard. So I'm probably not even going to bother doing that.
Moral of this story: don't cheap out on the motherboard even if you don't need the extra features, it's going to end up costing you more
My questions: - Is there any way for me to be 100% sure it's not actually the CPU that's defective before I spend more money on a motherboard?
- I might get the ga-990xa-ud3, what do you guys think?