Upgrading my motherboard

Hi all, 

I am looking to upgrade my motherboard  from the crappy $50 one i own right now. The CPU I own is the fx 8120  (am3+) and I am looking to upgrade to an ASRock 990fx. Preferably this one http://www.microcenter.com/product/428792/990FX_AM3_ATX_AMD_Motherboard

will this motherboard be able to unlock the full potential of my processor and does this board overclock well? And also if I upgrade my motherboard will I have to reinstall windows even if all the other hardware stays the same?

Thanks 

-Scott

The board does have a 8+1 power phases, so yes overclocking is totally possible on that motherboard. If thats the one you want, go for it.

Also for the question about Windows, you shouldn't need to reinstall Windows but you might want uninstall all the drivers that your previous board came with before you install the new one

Thanks for your response, and as for uninstalling the old motherboard how do I go about doing that?

Well if you are an enthusiast overclocker, then stay the hell away from the Asrock Killer.

This board in particular, has overheating vrm issues, wenn you wanne overclock the hell out of your cpu, the vrm´s will overheat above 80 degrees, and starts to throttle the cpu, since there is not LLC option in the bios, to correct this. It will automaticly lead to a bottleneck.

The heatsink to cool the power delivery on this board, is nothing more then just a cover. It does not dispace the heat of the vrm´s and chokes very well.

List of boards that i would recommend for overclocking.

  1. Asus crosshair V Formula Z
  2. Asrock 990FX Extreme 9
  3. Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
  4. Asus M5A99FX pro R2.0

Grtz Angel ☺

Before you even attempt to change or uninstall anything on your computer you need to make a backup of your data because things have a chance of going catastrophically wrong very quickly.

Now to uninstall your drivers follow this guide on how to do the uninstalling:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/246041/how_to_uninstall_drivers_in_windows.html

What you will need to uninstall is your LAN driver, chipset driver, any USB port drivers, and audio drivers. Those are what you need to uninstall to get ready for the new motherboard. I can't guarantee that this will work however and you might end up having to reinstall Windows, but if you back up your data then a reinstall should not affect you much