Best Budget MOBO for my Rig, under $200.

porterjonny53 · Jul 17, 2015

My motherboard (the Asus M5A78L-M/USB3) has had some issues since I first got it. The first one had a broken CPU slot. I ordered another and had no immediate issues. After months of use I noticed a strange performance decrease. I bought a new GPU thinking my 7870 was going bad. I purchased the GTX 960, but had little to no FPS increase. Battlefield 3 runs at 30-45 frames on high. Crysis runs at under 50 frames on medium. EVEN ON ALL LOW Assassins creed IV: Black Flag, constantly dips below 60. after much research and help from fellow forum users, I have come to the conclusion that my CPU is throttling, due to the weak VRM setup on the motherboard. They are overheating. I know its not the CPU overheating due to it running at 45 degrees Celsius MAX. CPU-Z shows the clock speed going from the usual 4 GHZ all the way down to 1.4 GHZ. I NEED a new motherboard, but I also need help picking out one that runs my hardware with no issues, for under $200.

PC SPECS:GPU: EVGA GTX 960 FTW 2GB
CPU: AMD FX 8350
MOBO: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
PSU: EVGA 600B
RAM: Corsair Vengance 8GB 1866 MHZ

Any suggestions?

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

The USB3 is a crappy board, period. Some argue that it's not, and for a budget unit it works, but it's terrible and every one I've worked with has had issues.

Best cheap option, but still very good, this. This will handle just about any overclock you want to throw at it much less stock chips:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($82.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $82.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-17 01:43 EDT-0400

The next options I'd consider are these two:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/compare/asrock-motherboard-990fxextreme6%2Casus-motherboard-sabertooth990fxr20/

N3rdR4ge · Jul 17, 2015

i had a fx-8350. had the same exact problem. vrm was overheating on 990fx killer board and caused throttling. it sux. after a lot of research i could only find the asus crosshair V to be the only sufficient board for what I needed.

https://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-crosshairvformulaz

instead of spending 209 on the board, i bought a i5-4690k for 230 and a asrock oc formula board for 160. i preferred pay 390 for a system without issues than invest 209 in a older fx-8350 chip that causes me problems all the time.

i hear decent things about Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P and Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

That's nuts. There are plenty of boards that don't cost 200.00 that can take any 8xxx FX chip to 4.7-4.8Ghz with NO problem. There is only one reason to buy the Crosshair in my opinion, and that's if you want the ROG color scheme, or can't live without dual x16 speeds due to having a pair of very large cards.

N3rdR4ge · Jul 17, 2015

all im saying is avoid asrock's am3+ mobos. i had a 990fx killer and i couldnt clock past 4.4 without throttling from vrm heat issues. the sabertooth you linked was my second choice. still decided to be done with amd because of frustration.

porterjonny53 · Jul 17, 2015

Darkbreeze :

Would this support Nvidia GPU's fine? If so would it also support SLI?

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

Any board supports Nvidia GPU cards. There aren't boards that only support either AMD or Nvidia. There are differences between boards when it comes to supporting dual cards in Crossfire (AMD) or SLI (Nvidia), but for single card operation, any 970, 990 or 990fx board will have support for any PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 graphics card.

porterjonny53 · Jul 17, 2015

Darkbreeze :

Thank you, man. I will check out the GIGABYTE 970A-UD3P

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

For your price range, if you want a very good motherboard, I'd go with this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($175.85 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $175.85
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-17 02:08 EDT-0400

But that 80 dollar Gigabyte 970A-UD3P will be perfectly fine with your CPU and any single graphics card configuration.

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

The MSI 970 Gaming is also another very good board, maybe even slightly better than the UD3P, but also a few bucks more.

porterjonny53 · Jul 17, 2015

out of the UDP3 and the MSI 970 what would you suggest for Overclocking?

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

Both. Or either. They can both handle pretty much whatever that CPU can handle depending on your choice of CPU cooler. If you were overclocking on the stock cooler, that was likely the problem. You need an aftermarket cooler if you plan to overclock, on ANY motherboard. Case fan cooling is very important when overclocking as well. Tower coolers don't help to cool the motherboard VRMs very much, so the case cooling becomes paramount to help keep everything cool. Plus, no CPU cooler is worth beans when trying to cool with hot air, so you need plenty of airflow through the case. What is you case model, how many case fans do you have and what direction is each fan oriented, ie, intake or exhaust.

porterjonny53 · Jul 17, 2015

Darkbreeze :

I used to use a stock cooler but now own a Hyper Evo 212 fan. Thanks, I think I will go with the MSI 970.

porterjonny53 · Jul 17, 2015

Darkbreeze :

I have a antec 900 series black steel.
http://www.amazon.com/Antec-Nine-Hundred-Black-Computer/dp/B000I5JHB0

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

Yeah, that case is supposed to have two front 120mm fans, a rear 120mm fan and a top 200mm fan. Does that sound like what you have running?

porterjonny53 · Jul 17, 2015

Darkbreeze :

Yep!

Darkbreeze · Jul 17, 2015

Then you should be perfectly fine. Might think about a better cooler though. The 212 EVO is a POS as far as I'm concerned. It's an ok starter unit, but if you want a steady stable 4.5 or higher overclock with that chip, you might want to also have an appropriate cooler. It's fine for now though.

Best Budget MOBO for my Rig, under $200.

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