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.
- 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 ???