Having trouble deciding on a motherboard.

Cyborg Hacker

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May 21, 2010
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Well for the past six days i been spending my days on Newegg.com and trying to find a new motherboard for my custom build. My last motherboard was a Jetway HA08-LF (Rev 2), and i must admit that it was a pretty good MB for me; Work just fined, had all the features i needed at that time, and a good price. But last week i tried updating the BIOS (I know, i should have left it alone, but i wanted 6 core CPU support :pt1cable: ; "You live and you learn.") and now it doesn't boot up (No video, No post), i did have this MB for a little more than a year. So now I find out that Jetway as a company sucks, I been emailing tech support for 6 days now and no reply. So i just decide to buy a new MB.

My Specs before i move on
Memory: OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel
Power Supply: hec HP585D R585W ATX12V Power Supply
Motherboard: [strike]JetWay JHA08-LF AM3 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX[/strike]
CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 710 2.6GHz Socket AM3 95W
Graphics Card: HIS Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Case: CoolMaster Storm Scout


I narrow it down to two choices:

ASRock 890FX DELUXE3 AM3
GIGABYTE GA-880GA-UD3H AM3

The ASrock seems to have a some more cool features than the GIGABYTE, but the GIGABYTE has that sweet feature of DualBios.


I'm having trouble choosing, so I like to know which one you think is better, which company has the more reliable hardware, which company you think has the better Tech Support/Help desk, or even another board in the price range of $100-200.


I would be very thankfull. :love:
 

flaminggerbil

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Oct 15, 2009
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Are you planning on going crossfire at any point?

If not I'd go with the Gigabyte, not had to deal with either of their Tech support systems but they make good quality products.


I've never even heard of Jetway!
 
Jetway is fairly known for some miniITX boards.

That ASRock has a surprisingly good voltage system in the price range, but it is $40+ more then the other board. Depending on your needs(4 USB 3.0 and possibility for better overclocks due to cleaner power) the ASRock may be a good fit. You should also look at some gigabyte boards in the same price range.
 

Cyborg Hacker

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May 21, 2010
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Thanks for the replies.

Are you planning on going crossfire at any point?


If not I'd go with the Gigabyte, not had to deal with either of their Tech support systems but they make good quality products.



I've never even heard of Jetway!
I highly doubt i would use CrossFireX (not a big gamer). I think I would go for the Gigabyte.

Jetway is fairly known for some miniITX boards.

That ASRock has a surprisingly good voltage system in the price range, but it is $40+ more then the other board. Depending on your needs(4 USB 3.0 and possibility for better overclocks due to cleaner power) the ASRock may be a good fit. You should also look at some gigabyte boards in the same price range.
The Jetway motherboard was pretty good, but the company just has very bad support. And i agree the Asrock is a very nice board for the price, but I was planning on buying the Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU cooler and I think that fan will be in the way. But i think i will look at the more expensive gigabyte MB again, I really like that Dual BIOS feature of the gigabyte boards.

Again thanks for the replies. :hello:

P.S: Does anyone know if you can unlock the 4th core in a AMD Phenom II X3 710 CPU?
 
Unlocking cores is always a hit or miss affair. Sometimes to keep with the demand AMD will actually lock perfectly good cores, but other times they are in fact defective cores that will be unstable. You will not know until you try it and do some good testing to make sure its stable.

I just picked up the 4 and 6 core chips because they are for machines I sell. I can not sell something unstable(or at least I do not want to...).