Best MOBO for AMD FX8350? building new machine

[GSullenbergerIII]

Hi folks - first thank you for taking the time to read and respond. I've been a long time reader of Tom's, but have never posted.

I'm moving shortly, and have the opportunity to implement a "mancave." The centerpiece of the cave, will be the media wall. I'm buying 3 40" LED HDTV's for the bottom, and 1 50-60" 3D LED HDTV for above. the 3 smaller will be side by side and the bigger will be centered above.

I plan on building a machine to handle the following:
- will be hooked up to all 4 TV's (hoping to hear 1 graphics card will be sufficient, as long as it has 4 hd outputs)
- mostly used to display 4 HD NFL games at 1 time via Direct TV sunday ticket and it's available 'web streaming' ability
- will be burning all cd's, vhs, dvd's and blu rays to hard drive to stream to any available DLNA devices throughout the house (plus viewing on the TV(s))
- planning to get into PC gaming, but haven't yet - I will want to use the 3 hdtv's in the bottom row for this purpose
- will be running some form of Windows (7 or 8 most likely)

I'm not new to building PC's, but am not an expert by any means. I've decided on the AMD FX8350 black edition 8 core 4.0 ghz ( due to the power for the price (and all the positive reviews). Does anyone have any suggestions on the best MOBO for the uses above? Any suggestions on additional components would be greatly appreciated as well (graphics card, RAM(i'm thinking 24gb of DDR3 1600 should suffice))! thanks!

 

[s4in7]

I'd recommend and FX-8320 over an 8350 as it's the exact same chip, just lower clocked. I have my FX-8320 running 24/7 at 4.8GHz (so it's effectively faster than an FX-9590 for half the price).

Any 990FX motherboard generally will do you well--I'd recommend looking at the Asus Sabertooth 990FX, it's the mobo I use and it's a great overclocking board with 2 full PCIe x16 lanes for Crossfire/SLI setups.

There are single cards that can drive all your displays, but I don't know them off hand--I know you'll need a beefy card to game across three 1080p monitors so consider a Radeon 280X or GTX 770 at the least.

 

[GSullenbergerIII]

I'd recommend and FX-8320 over an 8350 as it's the exact same chip, just lower clocked. I have my FX-8320 running 24/7 at 4.8GHz (so it's effectively faster than an FX-9590 for half the price).

Any 990FX motherboard generally will do you well--I'd recommend looking at the Asus Sabertooth 990FX, it's the mobo I use and it's a great overclocking board with 2 full PCIe x16 lanes for Crossfire/SLI setups.

There are single cards that can drive all your displays, but I don't know them off hand--I know you'll need a beefy card to game across three 1080p monitors so consider a Radeon 280X or GTX 770 at the least.

Thanks s4in7 - appreciate the comment. Here's what I think I've decided on, let me know what you think. Any comments/suggestions/critiques welcome!

- Cooler Master HAF XB EVO (I know it's a large case, I actually like bigger cases - but either way, it's not going to be visible as I'm going to store in my networking closet) + Cooler Master Sleeve Bearing 120mm + 2x Cooler Master Ball Bearing 80mm
- SILVERSTONE Strider Gold S Series ST85F-GS 850W ATX 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply
- ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
- AMD FX 8350 Black Edition (just feel like sticking with this version, not worried about the price difference - not sure why lol)
- Cooler Master Hyper T4 + Cooler Master Sleeve Bearing 120mm
- GIGABYTE GV-N770OC-4GD GeForce GTX 770 4GB
- 3x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
- OCZ VTX460-25SAT3-240G SSD (OS, main apps/games)
- 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001 3TB (storage and backup)
- LG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model UH12NS30 - OEM

- 1x VIZIO 55” Class Razor LED™ Smart TV with Theater 3D® (HDMI -> HDMI) Main screen for console, live TV, Movies with audio
- 3x VIZIO 40” Class Razor LED™ (2x dvi -> HDMI)(1x DP -> HDMI) Eyefinity 3x1 for gaming (with audio), secondary screens for sports (no audio)

All devices will be wired on the network throughout the house when able, otherwise wireless N (phones, tablets) for streaming content throughout the house.

I haven't decided on the audio solution yet, but i'll have a 5.1 surround setup for every situation (gaming, movies, sports/tv from main screen) - I did confirm with directv that I can open multiple browsers to watch multiple channels at 1 time (i.e. 4 games on Sundays for football season)

 

[s4in7]

Only thing I'd change is your RAM--you won't get double data rates from an uneven number of RAM sticks so you either need 2 sticks or 4 sticks of RAM to get double data.

Other than that everything looks great!

 

[GSullenbergerIII]

I guess i'll just make it 32gb then... no sense in doing 2x8gb and 2x4gb, or 4x6gb... might as well just do 4x8gb - overkill obviously, but I shouldn't have to upgrade anytime in the near future...

thanks for your comments!!

 

[dovah-chan]

Protip: avoid the GA-990FXA-UD3 like the plague. It is an AMD board well known for its huge amount of issues. (coming from someone who owns it) Also I don't like the way the sabertooth looks personally and due to the styling of your case and other components and since you seem to have a bit of a roofless budget, I'd take a peek at a Crosshair V Formula Z.

Both the sabertooth and the crosshair aren't priced very far apart and they both are great overclockers (the crosshair holds the 8.6GHz world record along with an 8350). Or if you want a cheaper motherboard that is still a 990FX board get the M5A99FX.