Help choosing a 990FX mobo

lukart

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 30, 2014
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Hey guys, winter came.. and my unfortunately I think my MSI mobo died with the cold winter, before I had already soo many issues with it and as such I need a replacement.
Looking for a mobo with CF options, for my 2 290! :D
what do you guys suggest? Trying to stay out of MSI for a while ...
 
As other motherboard manufacturers seem to be dumping the AMD product line, ASRock is still trying to revive AMD with yet another high-end AM3+ board – 990FX Extreme6. By being able to support AMD FX-9590 & 9370 220W CPUs, it manages to stay relevant in our high tech market and keep up the competition with the Intel campaign. Its worth to check it out!
 
all currently available 990fx boards support crossfire and the fx 9xxx cpus, so what i comes down to is how long you're going to keep it and how much you're willing to spend? what cpu are you using with your 990fx board? nothing short of an 8 core will sufficiently feed two 290s, and even then if that 8 core isn't at least 4.7ghz, you'd be leaving a good chunk of performance on the table. i like my asus sabertooth r2. it got my 9370 to 5ghz without much effort but the board needs exotic cooling to maintain that 5ghz day to day. if i had to choose, i'd probably take the crosshair 5 because i'm betting it would let me overclock beyond 5ghz.
 

The Fatalty board is not in stock...if you want Asrock it's not bad to go with Extreme 6.
 
The only good am3-3+ mobo is CHV
maybe sabertooth 990x and ta990fxe..

agree with the asus boards. liked the biostar board. used it a few times for my own htpc and some client budget builds. reliable fx 8xxx overclocker up to 4.5ghz, but no spacing between dual slot cards for 290 cf is not good.
 
Try to get a GB board if you can. I have a UD7 and a UD3 in 2 different machines and both have been great.
 
agree with the asus boards. liked the biostar board. used it a few times for my own htpc and some client budget builds. reliable fx 8xxx overclocker up to 4.5ghz, but no spacing between dual slot cards for 290 cf is not good.

Thats pretty good stuff... I can only say good things when it comes to my AR overclock experience using their mobos as well
 
agree with the asus boards. liked the biostar board. used it a few times for my own htpc and some client budget builds. reliable fx 8xxx overclocker up to 4.5ghz, but no spacing between dual slot cards for 290 cf is not good.


Yep! That is a concern for me... need enough room to fit those cards together, CF love :D
 
you should be able to hit 4.5ghz on all of the currently available 990fx boards. the other side of 4.5ghz is where it becomes necessary for a board with 8+2 phase voltage management.
 
you should be able to hit 4.5ghz on all of the currently available 990fx boards. the other side of 4.5ghz is where it becomes necessary for a board with 8+2 phase voltage management.

So the Extreme 6 should be pretty ok? as they do have the 8+2 phases.
 
the problem with the extreme 6 is that its an unknown quantity. its a brand new board fresh to the market. not all 8+2 phase power design is the same. i'm assuming you're looking at the egg. the asus m5a99fx pro is a known quantity. many users have been able to approach 5ghz with that board. the revision 2 board is even better as it now sports the digital vrm technology from the sabertooth board. the only caveat is the potential of getting reamed by asus rma if you need to use it. itsthinking vouched for the even cheaper gigabyte ud3 board and i have no reason to doubt that recommendation.
 
the problem with the extreme 6 is that its an unknown quantity. its a brand new board fresh to the market. not all 8+2 phase power design is the same. i'm assuming you're looking at the egg. the asus m5a99fx pro is a known quantity. many users have been able to approach 5ghz with that board. the revision 2 board is even better as it now sports the digital vrm technology from the sabertooth board. the only caveat is the potential of getting reamed by asus rma if you need to use it. itsthinking vouched for the even cheaper gigabyte ud3 board and i have no reason to doubt that recommendation.

Was not looking to push that far in overclocking personally... From what I was looking around the web, AR actually seem pretty good in the overclock department.
But thanks for the suggestions, will look them up..
 
as rock boards are decent overclockers. just like the biostar boards are capable up to a certain clock speed. the pricier boards are easily on par with the pricey boards from asus or gigabyte. again, i'm assuming your looking at prices at newegg, so if you're not aiming for an overclock close to 5ghz then i would go for the cheapest 990fx board which is the gigabyte ud3. you still haven't mentioned what cpu you're using, but if you have plans on dropping in an fx 9xxx as a future upgrade, then among the cheap boards listed on the egg, i'd go with the asus m5a99fx pro r2. it has the same digital power management technology as the sabertooth board to ensure that those 220w chips receive clean, ripple free power.
 
I personally had a very bad experience with the Crosshair V from ASUS. To be fair, it was when the board first released, so they may have fixed their issues since then.

I ended up switching to a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 and really enjoyed it. The only quirk I ran into was that it would not boot from a USB flash drive, which I confirmed with Gigabyte was a BIOS issue that they planned on addressing in a future update. I ended up selling that motherboard when Bulldozer turned out to be such a huge disappointment, so I was never able to confirm whether or not the newer BIOS did fix the issue. I currently have a 78LMT-USB3 from Gigabyte that suffers from the same issue of not being able to boot from a USB flash drive, so who knows? Other than that, the 990FXA-UD3 gave me no issues, had a great set of features, was less than $100 after rebate and is still the motherboard I recommend to people building on the AM3+ platform.
 
U3 is a pretty popular, I've had a friend that loves it too. Asrock Extreme 9 is good for sure if you want to spend a bit more.
 
Depends on your budget.

Here are the best 3 boards. Priced from lowest to highest

1. Gigabyte 990FXA UD3 Rev 4.0
2. Asrock 990fx Extreme 9
3. Asus Crosshair V Formula Z

There are other options as well, just how it breaks down for me at these price points. I've used just about every 990FX board. 1. cheapest option but solid overall choice. 2. best fully featured board that doesn't break the bank. 3. No corners cut you get what you pay for.
 
I went with AsRock 990FX Extreme3 in January 2012. My second computer build, but the first I did on my own.

Took me 4 hours to build. I swear I thought it (motherboard) was broke for how long it took me to install the cpu-fan. (Coolermaster Hyper 212 evo).

The motherboard also has a broadcom ethernet chip built-in. I hate realtek chips because they release drivers every month. Broadcom releases 1 driver only, as their is no need to release constant driver updates. Simple.

This motherboard is still rocking, and I got a good batch. :)
 
I've built two 9590 based systems on Sabertooth 990FX boards now, no issues.
Had an Extreme 9, nice board but they botched the fan controls if you want dc and pwm
and automated control, and the software sucked, and I never did get the USB3 working.
None of that with the Asus.
 
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