[Alex of the West]

i am looking for a good motherboard for the 955.

-price range 100-150
-on-board video a must
-overclocks well when i throw in my 5850 later on.

i am strongly leaning towards this "ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 AMD 790GX" at newegg and would like to know if anyone else has any thoughts on it?

any other suggestions are most welcome,thanks in advance!

 

[donutpirate]

That's a fine motherboard.

 

[Alex of the West]

what ram would you go with, with that motherboard? this is my first build and i picked out g. skill F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ at newegg, but ive never set timings or anything, and im not even certain it will work with that mb. the motehrboard approved ram list seems outdated or somthing, so im havnig a little trouble. that site for that ram showed this motherboard as fine, but i dont know

 

[raisethe3]

Its best to ask ASUS tech support to see if they may have updated its memory test.

Good luck!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex of the West what ram would you go with, with that motherboard? this is my first build and i picked out g. skill F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ at newegg, but ive never set timings or anything, and im not even certain it will work with that mb. the motehrboard approved ram list seems outdated or somthing, so im havnig a little trouble. that site for that ram showed this motherboard as fine, but i dont know

 

[Kvjavs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex of the West i am looking for a good motherboard for the 955. -price range 100-150 -on-board video a must -overclocks well when i throw in my 5850 later on. i am strongly leaning towards this "ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 AMD 790GX" at newegg and would like to know if anyone else has any thoughts on it? any other suggestions are most welcome,thanks in advance!

Do you want Crossfire or just a single card set-up? You can get some other boards that are a little bit cheaper also, or ones with USB 3.0 or the 890GX chip set for around the same price.

How much were you planning on overclocking? A LOT, or just a bit.

 

[WIGILOCO]

I got that mobo M4A78T-E and been working good. Althought CPU-Z and HWMonitor shows the wrong VCORE sometimes, shows the CPU/NB voltage

But in all other programs like Asus PC Probe II and Everest etc it shows the actual VCORE. Those programs may fail sometimes.

Don't go with G.Skill memories with this board. I had those 12800-4GBNQ and they caused BSOD on cold boot with my M4A78T-E. In ASUS forums and in G.Skill's forums there are threads of this cold boot BSOD problem with ASUS boards and G.Skill's memories. I had to change to Kingston because of that problem and now working excellent!

But nothing bad saying about this board, get it! And you can play CS:S with the onboard HD 3300 with high settings 40-70fps

And I have heard only good overclocking experiences with this board.

 

[Alex of the West]

@raisethe3 thanks for the tip, i think ill do just that and ask them. is the asus forum the best place to look?

@Kvjavs i will never crossfire, it doesnt appeal to me. what is the 890gx chip, a better on-board video?! if so, you have my attention. in regards to overclocking, im not really sure, i probably wont be overclocking much for the time being, im not even going to get an aftermarket cooler unless its absolutely crucial. but id like to the that option is there if i want it. do the different motherboards vary in their overclocking ability a lot? or is it all pretty much just the cooler?

@WIGILOCO thanks for the advice, its great hearing from someone that has personal experience with it. ill make sure to avoid gskill, as i was looking at it, haha. good to know about the on-board video too. what are your overall thoughts on the board,best thing to go with or should i look at something else?

--im now wondering if i should pay a little more for a board that has a sata2 slot, those 80gig ssd's looks pretty sexy...

 

[Kvjavs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex of the West @Kvjavs i will never crossfire, it doesnt appeal to me. what is the 890gx chip, a better on-board video?! if so, you have my attention. in regards to overclocking, im not really sure, i probably wont be overclocking much for the time being, im not even going to get an aftermarket cooler unless its absolutely crucial. but id like to the that option is there if i want it. do the different motherboards vary in their overclocking ability a lot? or is it all pretty much just the cooler?

The 890GX is just the new chip set from AMD. The on-board video I believe is slightly better than the 790FX or 785G chip sets. I was mainly considering it for future proofing.

The boards DO vary in overclocking ability. The ECS brands arent necessarily the best for overclocking compared to ASUS or DFI or Gigabyte or MSI, but they are fantastic stable boards, and there are some people who have overclocked their "Black Series" to 4ghz.

Does size/form factor matter? Like are you using a small case or a regular sized one.

 

[Alex of the West]

-im probably going to be going with a cm 690,so a standard case,size shouldnt be an issue
-ive never heard of ecs, are you saying they come with the fancy 890 video cards?
-is there a better place to look for motherboards than newegg?

--- by the way, thank you a bunch, you guys seem to really know what you are doing here, im learning more in a few minutes than i have in a few hours on other forums.

 

[Kvjavs]

Do you plan on having any other add-on cards besides the 5850?

I'm trying to narrow down some results. Also, the 890 chip set is not a video card chip set, it's just for motherboards.

And I tend to go to Newegg.com to look for something I like and then I look for it on Tigerdirect.com to compare prices. I get my hardware the next day from Tigerdirect.com so if I find it there for the same price, it end to buy it from them.

 

[Alex of the West]

i only planning on using 1 card, that being the 5850, nothing else in those slots.

i will use 2 hds at most. 1 possibly being an ssd in the future. but for now just 1 hdd. would an ssd require something special to use? if it does, scratch that.

ram all seems similarly priced, at around 105-115 dollars, so it probably doesn't matter too much which it holds, im assuming all the kinds of dual channel ddr3 are too close in performance that it doesnt matter, but i might be totally wrong.

im currently going with a 650w corsair psu, i probably wont need anything more than that for what i am doing will i? if i need to the 750w isnt much more money though, so its good to sort this out ahead of time, i coudlnt find what the 5850 required in terms of power.

oh yeah,i should mention this, one major concern i have read about is the new amd stepping causing older bios motherboards to be incompatible. is there a good way to avoid this while still getting the new cpus?

 

[WIGILOCO]

I'm not an motherboard expert but this board is proved to be good in my use. BIOS settings are easy and lot of different features come with this board. And the sound card is 8-channel and great

Read this review for more info: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...rd-review.html

EDIT: About the BIOS thing, I don't personally know was the BIOS old for PII because I bought my rig all setted up :/ But the BIOS update isn't hard at all. BIOS has a feature for easy and safe updating.

 

[Kvjavs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex of the West i only planning on using 1 card, that being the 5850, nothing else in those slots. i will use 2 hds at most. 1 possibly being an ssd in the future. but for now just 1 hdd. would an ssd require something special to use? if it does, scratch that. ram all seems similarly priced, at around 105-115 dollars, so it probably doesn't matter too much which it holds, im assuming all the kinds of dual channel ddr3 are too close in performance that it doesnt matter, but i might be totally wrong. im currently going with a 650w corsair psu, i probably wont need anything more than that for what i am doing will i? if i need to the 750w isnt much more money though, so its good to sort this out ahead of time, i coudlnt find what the 5850 required in terms of power. oh yeah,i should mention this, one major concern i have read about is the new amd stepping causing older bios motherboards to be incompatible. is there a good way to avoid this while still getting the new cpus?

I'm really not quite sure with the RAM. I went from DDR2 800 to DDR3 1333 and didn't see much of an improvement on anything. If any improvement at all.

I don't know much about SSDs except that they are too overpriced. IMO if you need a SSD, you need more patience. I cannot justify the prices to be as high as they are and for as much little space you get along with them. I don't care if they are fast.

Power wise, a 650W is more than enough for a 5850. You might even be able to do a crossfire setup with the Corsair 650W and a 5850 but you might be pushing the power supply a bit.

 

[Alex of the West]

good to hear! so what im getting out of this is:
get the cheapest compatible ram you can find
dont bother with ssd
power supply is ideal

i suppose that brings me to my next question, im assuming you guys like the motherboard? so what ram would you go with, keep in mind i dont know how to set ram timings at all. (and i should avoid gskil memory like the plague).

 

[Kvjavs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex of the West good to hear! so what im getting out of this is: get the cheapest compatible ram you can find dont bother with ssd power supply is ideal i suppose that brings me to my next question, im assuming you guys like the motherboard? so what ram would you go with, keep in mind i dont know how to set ram timings at all. (and i should avoid gskil memory like the plague).

g.skill isn't bad, it's just I hear that Ripjaw series has problems. I've had g.skill for the past 2 and a half years and haven't had any problems at all, besides they got a lifetime warranty.

As for the motherboard, yeah I can't find much of anything bad about it. ASUS is definitely a topnotch brand, so although you might find a cheaper board, you'll definitely know it's "cheap" if you know what I mean.

I'm on limited time right now, and I'll get back to you a bit later with maybe other board recommendations, but right now that's a good one.

And yeah, a power supply is the most important part of your system... why? Because if your power supply goes fries, it can bring anything it wants with it. Buy quality with power supplies, never do budget.