Seeking: Good AM3+ micro-ATX board

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jamesgalb

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Feb 11, 2015
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Any new AM3+ micro-atx boards hit the market lately?

On the topics, I've heard that the lack of Micro ATX AM3+ boards is because it is hard to fit all of the AMD chipset onto a smaller board... So I look at current Micro-ATX boards and wonder how much would really be lost if they removed a PCI/E slot and 2 SATA ports. Combine that with some better I/O stacking on USB/Ethernet and I would think it would open up a fair ammount of space on these boards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

Is there really just no market for a smaller, cheaper AMD FX machine?
 
Back when the FX bulldozer CPUs were first released, there were 970 and 990FX mATX motherboards. But they weren't that great. IIRC one was a MSI that had a tendency to burn up. The low quality combined with the lack of demand, lack of new worthwhile AM3+ CPUs from AMD, AMD's greater focus on their APU platforms, and the fact that regular ATX AM3 motherboards are generating more profit as time goes on means that we haven't seen any new AMD AM3+ mATX motherboards any time soon or at all.
 
Dangman said:
Back when the FX bulldozer CPUs were first released, there were 970 and 990FX mATX motherboards. But they weren't that great. IIRC one was a MSI that had a tendency to burn up. The low quality combined with the lack of demand, lack of new worthwhile AM3+ CPUs from AMD, AMD's greater focus on their APU platforms, and the fact that regular ATX AM3 motherboards are generating more profit as time goes on means that we haven't seen any new AMD AM3+ mATX motherboards any time soon or at all.
Click to expand...

It was certainly a combination of factors, but at least there is a decent looking (specs wise, haven't used it myself yet) option with 970 and the mATX form-factor. I kind of wish I hadn't sold my FX 6300 now.
 
Dangman said:
Back when the FX bulldozer CPUs were first released, there were 970 and 990FX mATX motherboards.
Click to expand...

Were there? I cant find any reviews or any being sold on Ebay :\ Oh well, this ASRock solution is tits.

I again have to look at this board and wonder to myself... "why couldn't this be produced as mini-ITX?" Take away 2 memory slots, the PCIE/PCI slots, some SATA ports, some USB ports, and I'd have to assume things could be shrunk down considerably... Didn't they also remove a lot (parts and heat) by taking off the onboard video?
 
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jamesgalb said:
Were there? I cant find any reviews or any being sold on Ebay :\ Oh well, this ASRock solution is tits.

I again have to look at this board and wonder to myself... "why couldn't this be produced as mini-ITX?" Take away 2 memory slots, the PCIE/PCI slots, some SATA ports, some USB ports, and I'd have to assume things could be shrunk down considerably... Didn't they also remove a lot (parts and heat) by taking off the onboard video?
Click to expand...

I think the two biggest problems are the CPU power delivery and the 970 chipset power delivery. Socket AM3 faced the same problem. I saw one mITX motherboard announced based on the 800-series chipset: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131659

The sad part is that this was possible with 95W Sandy-bridge CPUs from Intel. Even if they capped support at 95W AM3/AM3+ CPUs, you would think they should have been capable of engineering something on the AMD side of things.

Perhaps we'll finally see it now that we have a broader selection of 95W AM3+ CPUs and nothing else coming down the AM3+ pipeline. We also only just recently gained the opportunity to buy an SLI certified (x8/x8) 970 chipset motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130790

There is also this engineering marvel from ASRock: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/ Seems like they are willing to take a chance on something different every now and then. It lists this beast as supported: http://ark.intel.com/products/81909/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2687W-v3-25M-Cache-3_10-GHz 160W power delivery in mITX form-factor is incredible.
 
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