Motherboard Opinion

[greddy23]

Hi everyone, so I came to these forums to get some second opinions from the community to help me choose the right motherboard.

So my current motherboard is a MSI 790FX-GD70, yeah its a 3 year old build and now I want to upgrade,main reason is because last year's Black Friday I bought 16gb of 1600mhz RAM and found out some DIMMs were bad, only the first and third DIMM were working and then the third one stopped working, so I been using one stick of 4gb since then.

Finally I have decided to buy a new motherboard and there are many options and I came here to get some opinions.

I was looking at the Sabertooth 990fx, the Crosshair V formula, 890fx MSI, and 990Fx MSI,( aside from the extra pci-e slot the 890 has I would like to know what is the difference that really separates the two) now If i go by looks I would choose MSI again because both motherboards have blue coloring and my led fans in my antec 1200 case are blue.

But If i was to overlook the color scheme and go for something that will be a good product, I would consider it.

I have read reviews on all of them, but I still can't decide on one,since they all seem to be the good ones and all are AM3+ compatible with BIOS updates as I always like to future proof, my current processor is a Phenom II 945 Deneb @ 3.0GHz and it is AM3 but in the future I might buy an AM3+ processor.

Any help and opinions are appreciated as this is going to help me decide on which motherboard I will be purchasing soon.

Thanks

 

[nikorr]

Sabertooth 990fx gets my vote. Stability, OC, dual x16,

Rock solid mobo.

The design quality is great, the features good and the aesthetics,

though personal, are good.

The SaberTooth series always manages to impress in terms

of value for money versus good looks.

Warranty
Limited Warranty period (parts+labor): 5 years

 

[s3anister]

and found out some DIMMs were bad, only the first and third DIMM were working and then the third one stopped working, so I been using one stick of 4gb since then.

I'd just like to make sure here, you mention that the DIMMs were bad but was it the memory modules or the DIMM slots that went bad? I ask this because DIMM means dual in-line memory module, ie. a stick of RAM. If it's the RAM that's bad and not the slots do you need to buy a new motherboard? If you're just trying to upgrade, I'd recommend the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX as it's an excellent motherboard and relatively cheap. Personally, I like the ASUS Crosshair V Formula 990FX a lot more ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131735 ).

 

[greddy23]

Hi, yes I meant to say the DIMM slot on the motherboard, and I know its bad because the system wont POST whenever I put more than 1 stick of ram, and even if i put one stick in any other slot other than slot 1, i went to friends house who owned same mobo and he tried my ram and it worked fine, he tried his ram on mine no post,so we knew it was the mobo slots,and reason for upgrade is because I'm sick of just using 4gb of ram when i purchased 16gb and its just sitting there doing nothing, and also because I want to keep upgrading my pc, its outdated as hell lol

About the motherboard,I kinda was going for sabertooth( i was at my local tigerdirect and had one in my hand almost bought it but i was like, let me ask for advice just in case), also a co worker purchased a formula board for her bro and now is going to return it, i might ask her to sell me it, well see,if not ill choose sabertooth i guess.

 

[s3anister]

That's unfortunate, I feel for you. I had an MSI board back in the day that was like that, very particular about what RAM worked then one day it just stopped accepting any RAM other than slot 2. Very annoying.

As for the motherboard, I wouldn't buy any motherboard second-hand as you don't know how it was handled and if it was exposed to any ESD (even the smallest amount discharged can affect long-term stability) or in general mishandled. Also, I'm not entirely sure but warranty could be an issue, I don't know about ASUS but there are companies that don't validate warranties if you're not the original buyer; definitely something to look into.

In any case, both the Sabertooth and the Crosshair V are excellent motherboards, but it really comes down to personal preference and what you want; the Crosshair V has two more USB 3.0 ports (4 total) and better onboard audio (I think it's X-Fi 2) than the Sabertooth has so it's really, IMO, just a more featured board. If your goal is to overclock then I'd suggest the Sabertooth, if your goal is overclocking and great sound and a bit better connectivity than go with the Crosshair V.

 

[greddy23]

UPDATE: So I finally bought the Asus Sabertooth today, I got home and plugged in everything, and had some problems with getting a POST, found out it was the infamous memory I bought, 2 sticks were bad and only 2 work,I'm going to contact Gskill for an RMA soon,but now I have a question, right now my case is open and before my computer was a little bit noisy, keep in mind i have the antec 1200 case, with 3 120mm fans in front in med setting, top 200mm in low and 2 exhaust in med, and the middle and side fan at default, but now I noticed my pc is too quiet.

Checking Everest I see that the CPU Fan is going at 50 RPM right now,before it used to go at 2,500 if I can remember correctly, and kept my cpu at 79F-90F around there, and right now its at 90F and 88F for the mobo, while this is still quite decent for not being watercooled this makes me wonder if its because i did not add new thermal paste?

And also,I did watch a video on the sabertooth's gui bios and how you can tweak the cpu fan and profiles,but could you explain to me what would be a good setting for it? i dont want this thing overheating when playing games, 50rpms seems too low imo.

Btw the temperatures posted above are during idle.

Anyways thanks for the help and hopefully i get my doubts answered.

Edit : So I tried putting 8gb of ram, and I put 2 sticks that I know worked,1 in the first slot, and the second one in slot 3, meaning one in the black color slot and the second stick in the other black slot, went into bios said 2 slots were installed but then in windows it said 8gb installed but only 4gb usable, so then i decided to install 1 stick in slot 1, and the second stick in the slot next to it, so slot 1 and slot 2, went into windows and it says 8gb installed 6.06 usable, i do not know what to do. I did try msconfig and going to boot advanced options and clicking max memory and it sets it to 8192 but then goes back to default.

And lastly I did have a screenshot of everest and yes my cpu fan ran at about 2500rpm,i still do not know how to make that change in the bios,still getting used to a gui bios lol anyways thanks for the help in advanced.