No love for the AM3+ uATX?

Hi everybody, this is my first post on Tek Syndicate. I'm loving the videos on YouTube. Please indulge me as I rant a little.

Every few years I build my new PC... always very inexpensive, customized just to my needs. I only have to do this every 4-5 years... been doing this for a LONG time, and my builds seem to last forever until I need to play catch-up. That's where I'm at now.

I'm big on the price to performance ratio. I do "budget", not "cheap".

I also notice the long term trends where my PCs get more and more powerful, cost less, and get SMALLER over time. Let's call this last feature the space / performance ratio.

After a TON of research, I keep coming back to the Vishera for it's multi-cores and price to performance... I could make due w/ 6 cores, but will probably go for 8. Packed w/ 16GB of ram, I should be able to push a lot of data through these cores.

But there seems to be some sort of conspiracy !!! The only half way decent motherboards w/ the AM3+ socket are full size ATX.

Do I really need to build a PC as big as my old 2005 rig ?!?
  • I'm never ever ever ever gonna use SLI or Crossfire.
  • I don't need multiple PCIe ports... one 16x and one or two 1x would be just fine.
  • I don't need legacy support like PCI or Serial or LPT.
  • I don't need a case with a window or flashing lights, don't need room for radiators or large heat sinks.
  • I don't need room for six hard drives (I usually use two or three HDDs).

Now being it is 2014, the following are non-negotiable... this is why I'm upgrading in the first place:

  • 1600 DDR3 (minimum)
  • SATA3 (6Gb/s)
  • USB3
  • 7.1 (8 channel) audio
  • Of course I'll be booting from an SSD

8 pin 12v CPU power connector would make me feel a bit more confident, though 4 pin is not a deal breaker.

Mini ITX would be ideal, but I'll settle for uATX so it will be the same size as my current rig.

This should be really simple... these are not unusual or cutting edge features. There are a bunch of 970 motherboards out there, but I don't want to pay for features I'll never use... and MORE IMPORTANTLY, I don't want a big monstrosity taking up space.

So I punch up the specs in NewEgg power search, and I'm disgusted by what I see... only 2 motherboards in the uATX form factor that come close to these features. They have features like PATA (seriously? PATA ???) And they boast 1333 DDR3 memory before you start overclocking. When the HELL did these boards hit the market ?!?

I know there's a whole new crop of FM2+ APUs out there, but I'm not interested. At this point I'd even considering paying the same price as an ATX, and chalk up "small form factor" as a feature. But we're in an age of Arduino, NUC form factors, Roku 3 the size of a hokey puck, etc.

Is it really too much to ask for a uATX AM3+ w/ a decent chipset ???

AM3+ has no quality boards in anything but full ATX. Asus had a Itx AM3+ board in the works a while ago but that got canceled. Sadly Intel is the only way to go for small form factors. FM2+ Itx is good but its not very strong. 

Sad but true. 

AM3+ is a relatively old socket and AMD hasn't really made any comments on supporting it into the future with new FX processors. At worst it is a dead socket and I doubt you're going to see any new motherboard designs featuring it. 

Maybe on AM4 will get smaller form factors but it is up in the air if that socket or even new FX CPUs will be coming. AMD is putting all their eggs in the APU and server brackets leaving the enthusiasts out in the cold. 

Don't get me wrong, I love my 8350 and it performs really well but I'd like to see something new. 

The only thing I am seeing in an AM3+ platform, is ATX and MicroATX, and not many of those, and of those, none with PCI-E x16 or any PCI of those I saw for either 6 or 8 core CPUs. you may just want to get the lowest ATX you can get by with and then get the smallest case to fit it.

I would personally like to see lower power 8 vCores on FM2+ and on AM4 6 and 8 full physical cores...I can dream.

Pretty much the reason why I have an Intel i5-3570k in an ITX rig.

If you need the performance in a compact space, Intel is the way to go.  The FM2 platform isn't that bad for budget gaming, but they are much weaker in terms of performance.

Your only option is LGA115x...