Warm ? 8120 MC combo down another $10....to $189.99+tax, free 970, $30 990fx boards!

Not bad...saves you over $100 versus a i5 and a decent Z68 board, and that 990FX Extreme3 is a pretty good board for $30.
The Microcenter deal is the only thing that would make me buy a Bulldozer.
 
The price went down because AMD dropped the price to $185 Monday on this CPU. It's still a few dollars over retail but who's going to argue when you get a $100 mother board for free nearly.
 
I just got this deal yesterday with the Sabertooth. If you get the 8120, definitly get the Sabertooth instead of the UD3 if you plan to OC at all. Ive used the 8120 in both boards, the UD3 uses the same power delivery setup as the 8 series boards which was designed for PHII, and cant handle the current of BD. You either get throttling, or in my case if you do a trick to disable throttling (not a BIOS setting) you get a dead board after 15min of Prime95 with stock clocks.

UD3 is a great board for PHII though, and maybe FX-4000/6000 series, but not the FX-8000.
 
I picked up this deal before the recent price cut and I highly recommend the Sabertooth board. If you go the 8120 route and plan to overclock, you need to take cooling into consideration. These things generate some heat when fully loaded, and cannot go as high as Intel chips temperature wise.
 
Max 61C recomended temp. I think Im settled in at 4.6Ghz with ram at 1886Mhz (235X19.5) with 1.35Vcore, 1.275 CPU/NB, 60C load temp (not using coretemp, using the actual CPU temp reading on the Sabertooth).
 
Cecil said:
I just got this deal yesterday with the Sabertooth. If you get the 8120, definitly get the Sabertooth instead of the UD3 if you plan to OC at all. Ive used the 8120 in both boards, the UD3 uses the same power delivery setup as the 8 series boards which was designed for PHII, and cant handle the current of BD. You either get throttling, or in my case if you do a trick to disable throttling (not a BIOS setting) you get a dead board after 15min of Prime95 with stock clocks.

UD3 is a great board for PHII though, and maybe FX-4000/6000 series, but not the FX-8000.
Click to expand...

is the UD3 fine with the 8120 if I don't OC?
 
z3r0- said:
can the asrock board handle overclocking?
Click to expand...

I have no expierance with them, but I know a few people that tried their Z68s and had issues with pushing the OC far. Only ones I know of that can really handle the 8 series with a high OC and not throttle are the UD5/UD7 and Sabertooth/CHV.
 
I am suprised to hear that the Gigabyte UD3 has some issues. It does have 8+2 phase for the power.
All the cheaper Asus and Asrock boards that you can also get in bundles are only 4+2 or 4+1 only.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=990FX Extreme3&cat=Specifications
http://asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=970 Extreme4&cat=Specifications
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A97/#specifications
How can they take a Bulldozer without getting fried? I am no motherboard design or VRM expert but in general I know more is better.
Are any of these cheaper boards decent?
 
pgaster said:
I am suprised to hear that the Gigabyte UD3 has some issues. It does have 8+2 phase for the power.
All the cheaper Asus and Asrock boards that you can also get in bundles are only 4+2 or 4+1 only.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=990FX Extreme3&cat=Specifications
http://asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=970 Extreme4&cat=Specifications
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A97/#specifications
How can they take a Bulldozer without getting fried? I am no motherboard design or VRM expert but in general I know more is better.
Are any of these cheaper boards decent?
Click to expand...

More does not mean better. Not all are equal. There are tons of parts to the power delivery system, not just how many phase units there are.

The UD3 has the same setup as the 8 series boards, the UD5 and UD7 got all new ones, but there is still the same amount of phase units.
 
I just may have to go pick this deal up this weekend. Yeah a 2600/2700 setup would crush this 8120, but board and cpu are the same as the intel CPU price at newegg.
 
pgaster said:
I am suprised to hear that the Gigabyte UD3 has some issues. It does have 8+2 phase for the power.
All the cheaper Asus and Asrock boards that you can also get in bundles are only 4+2 or 4+1 only.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=990FX Extreme3&cat=Specifications
http://asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=970 Extreme4&cat=Specifications
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A97/#specifications
How can they take a Bulldozer without getting fried? I am no motherboard design or VRM expert but in general I know more is better.
Are any of these cheaper boards decent?
Click to expand...

Whoa...even my old "AM3" -> "AM3+" 890FX Deluxe 4 is 8+2...
890FX Deluxe4 Specs
 
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