Need a recommended reliable motherboard that works with AMD FX-8350

elfwine

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I am currently using
1 x ASRock 990FX Extreme6 AM3+ Northbridge: AMD 990FX Southbridge: AMD SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

The PC randomly freezes, blue screens with memory fault error, reboots, won't come out of sleep mode. I even noticed if I just shut off the monitor using the monitor power button and turning it back on the screen just comes on as one color and I have to reboot it.

Eventually it wouldn't turn on anymore. I'm not getting any Beep codes, but the monitor would just say no signal, so I went and bought this new video card:

XFX Radeon GTR RX 480 DirectX 12 RX-480P8DFA6 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Triple X Video Card

I put in the new video card and machine booted up again. Possibly I fixed the issue, because it worked well for 1 day. Next day the random freezing, rebooting, etc started happening again. If I start up the computer and get a game going and play it, the pc usually won't crash for many hours, but if I leave my PC unattended for 15 mins or more and come back it will be locked up or find that it had rebooted.

It's really dry here in the winter and sometimes I would get out of bed in the morning and would get a static shock when I step on my floor of carpet. The power fluctuated on my pc because I had it just sitting on the carpet. I know it's stupid of me, but I can't change the past. It's on bricks now which I believe will not conduct electricity. I just didn't have anywhere to put it really. I had seen this happen a few times at least and I'm pretty sure at one point or another one of the static shocks wore down the capacitors on my MB enough.

I have ran memory tests on my RAM sticks. I do believe there is a RAM issue, but I believe it's on the MB itself. My other thought is the power supply. I have a bronze certified 750 watt power supply. I bought everything last Jan, so they are all about 1 year old now. I'm more apt to believe it's deteriorated performance of my motherboard from static shocks, which lead to a lot of BSOD memory fault crashes, which continues to deteriorate my board.

I'm not really writing this to troubleshoot. I've researched and tried enough things. I am going to buy a new MB, because I'm fairly certain that is the issue. Can someone suggest a new decent MB? I don't want to buy a whole new system. I already chocked down $250 for the video card which didn't fix the issue.

Here is my processor and RAM:

1 x AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.0 GHz (4.2 GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM

XFX Radeon GTR RX 480 DirectX 12 RX-480P8DFA6 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Triple X Video Card

* I forgot to mention. I leave overclocking on auto, but I really may just turn it off completely. Basically I'm not trying to overclock my system, but I need the MB to be reliable because it is in a warm room in the winter due to where I live. I have a humidifier now so the static isn't as bad, but the cpu already runs very hot and my room gets warm from using heat in the winter, so that is why I want a reliable motherboard, not so I can overclock it.

1 x ASRock 990FX Extreme6 AM3+ Northbridge: AMD 990FX Southbridge: AMD SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
 
Solution
If your really insistent on a new MB for your FX-8350 then the Crosshair V Formula Z would be my choice.

I have built several systems using CVFZ and Sabertooth and both are excellent. I just don't like the color scheme of the Sabertooth. I currently own two CVFZ and have never had issue. I run FX-9590 which is a beast of a processor and the CVFZ handles 5.2GHz OC. This of coarse also depends on your Cooling and Case fans.

I also agree with other sentiments when it comes to the platform as FX series CPU are "end of life" and upgrading the MB, Cooling system and possible PSU if you decide to OC would have to be considered.

It's just not worth it and waiting for Ryzen release on the new AM4 platform makes sense.
If your PC was plugged into the wall, and you live in a 1st world country - it was likely grounded the entire time and did not receive any static discharge what-so-ever.

The AMD platform has been around for so long. Almost any 990FX or 970 based board is going to be reliable. I have an old Asrock Extreme 4 - i imagine the differences between that and your 6 are few and far between, and mine is many years older.

It sounds like you have a lot of small problems going on. A new motherboard might help... But BSOD aren't usually caused by motherboards. See if the motherboard had a problem it wouldn't boot.

To me it sounds like RAM, or possibly storage.
It certainly doesn't sound like a GPU problem. Although that solid color thing is odd - are you still using an analog cable? (VGA?)

 

MattO1973

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I like Asus motherboards for reliability, I currentlt have an FX8350 on an Asus M5a99FX pro R2.0, other than that as Adrian posted the TUF Sabertooth 990FX is a great board too (depends what you want to spend on an aging cpu
 

elfwine

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I wrote this post at work, then went home. Here is what happened since I arrived home. I safely powered off my pc last night. I powered it on. It went to the Windows login screen. I typed in my password and pressed enter. It started spinning to load into Windows and locked up. I reset the PC. It won't turn on display, but I can hear the PC starting up just fine. I can hear the HD's doing their thing. I powered off PC. I turned off the switch in the back and turned off the power strip. I waited a couple minutes and powered it back on. I was able to login to Windows. I came to this forum and started replying to your post. I had 2 large paragraphs written and I opened a new tab on my browser and when I clicked to the tab the PC locked up. I reset the PC and it I hear my PC starting but the monitor says check connections, no input signal, monitor going to sleep. I powered it down again. Now I have left it off and am on my laptop. This all happened within about 45 minutes. I'm going to fry out my new video card again.

What I was trying to say before my PC locked up was the following:

I'm using Windows 10. I have recently reinstalled Windows 10 and installed the drivers from Radeons auto driver installer. The BIOS are v 1.4, which is the newest version. I have gone through the BIOS options 1 by 1. I have turned off any power related options in the BIOS regarding wake up by Mouse, etc, so I only rely on Windows for that. I just don't see this as a software issue. I could not find others having similar issues with Windows 10 and Radeon cards.

The reason I believe it is a RAM issue is before I kept getting BSOD with "PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGED AREA". I have ran mdsched.exe to test my RAM without any issues found. I thought it may be video RAM, but I replaced the video card. Now I believe it's on the MB itself.

If it is not a RAM issue, then it may be an error when writing to the page file on my HD. I do have 4 HD's hooked up. However, the HD using the page file is my newest HD and I bought it when I bought everything else, a year ago. I guess I can run a program to test my HD too.

The thing is what does that have to do with me turning off my monitor and turning it back on and then receiving a one color screen where I can tell Windows is still running (I can hear HD spinning when I mash buttons on the keyboard). If it's my HD with the issue, would it really cause that to happen?

The things I could do:
I have 2x 8GB RAM. I could remove one at a time and see if that helps.
I could remove all my HD's except my main drive.
If the issue persists, I would have to reinstall Windows on a different drive. I have one open I could do that on.

The problem I have is as you can tell by what happened today, the PC barely starts up. Once I get it on and it's working, I don't want to restart it because it may not start up again, then I have to unplug it and wait and every time I'm worried it just won't start up anymore like before.

If I buy a new MB and the same issue occurs, then for certain I can pin it on one of my HD's or RAM. It may be a waste of money to buy a new MB, but at the same time, when researching this I've found probably 100 solutions. This isn't something I can pinpoint easily. When it's power issues it can be almost anything. I don't think it's software or video card related. It could be RAM, HD or MB related. Although it does crash sometimes, it is more often now just locking up my video, so I do think it's somehow related to video processing. Also, I haven't been having the BSOD errors recently. I bought that video card a couple days ago and I haven't seen a BSOD yet, but the PC has crashed or locked up.

I've built my own computers for 22+ years on my own, but I'm stumped by this one. I guess I should try removing the RAM and HD's. It's just a big pain to do it. I don't know which drives are which, so I have to trial and error unplugging them and I still don't understand how a HD would lock up my video but continue running Windows.
 
If your really insistent on a new MB for your FX-8350 then the Crosshair V Formula Z would be my choice.

I have built several systems using CVFZ and Sabertooth and both are excellent. I just don't like the color scheme of the Sabertooth. I currently own two CVFZ and have never had issue. I run FX-9590 which is a beast of a processor and the CVFZ handles 5.2GHz OC. This of coarse also depends on your Cooling and Case fans.

I also agree with other sentiments when it comes to the platform as FX series CPU are "end of life" and upgrading the MB, Cooling system and possible PSU if you decide to OC would have to be considered.

It's just not worth it and waiting for Ryzen release on the new AM4 platform makes sense.
 
Solution

elfwine

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The problem is I play a MMO every day. That is my hobby and my laptops will be too slow. It's not really an option for me to wait for something new to come out. I'm not a fan of my CPU because it runs so hot and when I do upgrade everything I think I am going to Intel for the first time, because I'm pretty sick of how hot AMD runs. Maybe if those new Ryzen are good I will get that eventually, but right now I'm not too happy with it running so hot. I don't care about over clocking. I just want my PC to work. I also thought my issue may be from overheating, but it actually runs better after it's been on for a while and when it's running hot. When I get home from work and try to power it on that's when I'm seeing issues more often. I'd rather just let it go to sleep mode but that isn't working most of the time and the reason why I had to get a new video card is my PC was rebooting itself all night long while I slept and had left it in sleep mode.
 
I wonder why your FX-8350 is running so hot. What cooling do you have.?
If Overheating is your problem then you have 2 choices
1. Downclock the CPU and core voltage and loose performance.
2. Upgrade the cooler to an AIO water cooled setup. With a H110 or equivalent you can OC to 4.8GHz on a CVFZ.
 

elfwine

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Probably because I'm using the fan that came with the processor. I had read this chip ran hot before I bought it. I didn't have hardware monitoring on it before but I do now and I've seen it go to 70c. I could try down clocking it but I think the damage is already done. I had planned to buy water cooling. I never have used it and was looking into it but I didn't do it yet.
 

MattO1973

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If you've had temps of 70c on a regular basis you may have damaged the memory controller on the FX8350, FX cpus have a weak memory controller to begin with and heat just tears them up
 

elfwine

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I just unplugged one drive and took out 1 ram card. It booted to no operating system found. I hit ctrl alt Del to restart to select boot screen but it said no video signal. I swapped the ram back in and took the other ram out. Monitor isn't getting a signal again. I do not think it's RAM or HD. I believe it has to be power supply or MB. Since I just had less items plugged in I don't really think I'm over loading my 750 watt psu. I'm pretty certain it's the MB now. So which MB do you think would handle a hot processor the best and what liquid cooling do you recommend? I'll order both right now.
 


The Sabertooth 990FX R3.0 has AMD SB950 controller and supports:

5 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s),
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD
It has:
1 x M.2 Socket 3, gray, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage device support (both SATA & PCIE mode)
 

elfwine

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Now I understand. The one I purchased was R2.0....Grrrrr. So R2.0 doesn't have a hookup for SSD I guess?
 


The SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 MB has support for SSD

AMD SB950 controller :
6 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), brown
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
Main difference is ASMedia controller
ASMedia® PCIe SATA controller : 2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray and 2 x eSATA 6Gb/s port(s), red

Yes you can have a 2.5inch SSD plugged into your eSATA port and I recommend the Samsung 850 EVO at 500GB.
 

elfwine

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https://www.amazon.com/Sentey-Certefied-Metal-Supply-MBP650-HS/dp/B00I3NUDVC/ref=s9_simh_gw_g147_i3_r?_encoding=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=XT3V7ZFEXZVJFMQVPW4N&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=a6aaf593-1ba4-4f4e-bdcc-0febe090b8ed&pf_rd_i=desktop

I got the Power Supply also the same time as the other parts. Last January. Only difference is the power supply came from Amazon and everything else from Newegg. Funny thing is I was having somewhat similar issues with my old setup. However, I knew that was cooling issues because the clip broke on my old motherboard (Extreme 3 instead of Extreme 6) so my fan would not clip on properly. I ended up setting the PC on the floor and the fan was just sitting on top of the processor held in with thermal paste basically. I also ended up just getting a big square house fan and put it on top and it kept it cool enough. It was a bit dangerous because if the case got bumped the fan would fall off the processor and that would cause the PC to overheat and shut off. It's not exactly the same problem because I wasn't getting all the BSOD and video issues. However, because of the issues I had and I didn't know if overheating damaged anything else, I bought everything new for this PC. I even bought a new Tower case.

I spent more and bought nicer parts than I ever had in the past. I'm using processors and video cards that produce more heat. I can only guess maybe that is why this one led to issues even though I did have OK cooling. I mean I only used the original fan (in my opinion stop including fans with the processor if it's not good enough to cool it in the first place and just sell the processor cheaper or include a proper fan), but I also have 4 case fans and because my case is a large full size tower case, it has plenty of air flow room. So it should have better cooling then my previous setup although that 8350 chip runs really hot in general and my room gets warm, dry and prone to static during Winter since I live in the tundra. There is also an issue with using a cheap power strip. I'm not using a real surge protector and my house is old 2 prong outlets. I have a couple 3 prong outlets for the house, but not in my room. I have used the same power source for my pcs for about 9 years, so it may not be an issue, but I don't know enough about electricity It does worry me that I have to use one of these adapters to plug the power strip into the outlet:
http://www.markertek.com/productImage/450x450/NB-8419B.JPG

I'm not blaming the motherboard. The reason I was asking for a more reliable one is I meant one that can handle higher temperatures better. Most likely what I really need is a better cooling system. I was going to get the cooling system but I got distracted and forgot to go back to researching it. I haven't ever used liquid cooling and I want to make sure I order what I actually need.

I'm still looking for suggestions on the cooling. The MB is on the way and I can keep it cool with a big fan for now, but I need to install a permanent nice cooling system so it doesn't crap out on me again.
 

elfwine

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So I am pretty sure I figured it out now. Today my PC would boot, but it would lock up within a few minutes of starting Windows. This was consistent, so it made it easier to troubleshoot. Before it would crash very inconsistently. Anyway, I disconnected all my hard drives except Windows drive and the issue still occurred. I could now rule out HD as the issue.

Finally I moved my graphics card to another PCIe slot and now it's not locking up. I'm pissed at myself because I suspected this when it first started happening. My old motherboard, the Extreme 3, had a similar issue. I don't remember how it happened, but at some point my PC would not boot and was giving video card BEEP codes. I moved my graphics card to another slot and it worked. The only problem is that slot was not x16 like the other, so I wasn't able to make full use of the video card but it was still fairly fast.

So the same thing happened on my Extreme 6. The video card slot is damaged somehow or something that connects to it. The difference is this time I didn't get BEEP codes, which is why I thought it wasn't the issue.

My PC is working fine so far. Now I get to decide if I keep setup my new MB or just keep using this one and send it back or what. Next I'll have to test my old video card again and see if it still works in the secondary slot. I have 2 x16 slots on this motherboard, so technically it wouldn't matter. I just can't have 2 video cards, but I wasn't planning on it anyway.