Motherboards Are there any mATX AM3+ boards worth buying?

My friend has a mATX case and with BF4 and and CryEngine games liking the cores I'm thinking about recommending a 8320. Trouble is, I can't find a single good AM3+ mATX board.

Anyone know of any?

 

get an FM2+ board - AM3+ is a dead socket

 

I have a bulldozer chip that I have on an ATX that I would like to move to a mATX, so I would also be interested in the answer.

 

Surely anything will do as a mATX is not going to need SLI or power user features and the like so just get the right no of memory slots and the appropriate GPU slot, job done, probably cost you < £40.

Just check manuals for tweaking options.

 

Simple answer - no! You won't get anything better than 4+1 power phases so overclocking is out of the equation. You wont get sata3 or many usb3 ports either. As far as I know Harlequin is right in saying AM3+ is a dead socket as they dont plan on developing it any further. For mATX your choices are either intel or FM.

 

This is the best one I could find - at least it has a heatsink on the VRMs!

 

I have one of these sitting in my bedroom after giving up on the idea.

 

How far did you get with OCing? Quite a lot of people seem to say a light OC is within its capabilities, so maybe bumping an 8320 (3.5Ghz stock) to 4Ghz (same speed as an 8350) might be fine?

 

Absolute crap, had one and a stock FX6300 throttled after a minute of full load.

 

Ah, so it sounds there just isn't any good AM3+ boards out there then.

 

I gave up on it as couldn't get the system to run stably even at stock speeds.

 

If you can find one with 4+2 power stages (as opposed to 4+1) then you should be OK. My SLI rig is running a £59 board with 4+2 (ATX mind) and I can get 4.3ghz out of it without it throttling. Which is more than enough power really.

TBH and I really hate to say this but Asus have pretty much got AM3+ sewn up. Gigabyte make some nice boards but many are plagued with iffy bioses that cause problems when overclocking.

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A78LMUSB3/#support

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-M5A78L...qid=1385556085&sr=8-1&keywords=am3++micro+atx

Is about your best bet. You will need to get a cooler on those VRMs though. I assume they are 4+2 but even with 4+1 I got 4.2ghz. But yes, cool off the VRMs and that board should do a fine job.

Ed. OK it seems that board is 4+1 with no VRM cooling. You're going to have to put some cooling on there tbh.

 

What about the Asus M5A78? I have been running its predecessor (m4a78) for a few years in an overclocked undervolted HTPC, no issues.

Sounds like AMD need to put their desktop chips on the more modern APU platforms.

 

4+2 won't make much difference over 4+1, it depends on the quality of the design not just the number of mosfets. A good Asus 4+2 VRM is likely to match or beat a poor 8+2 from MSI.

The problem with 700/800 series boards is that they were never designed to take 6-8 core PD CPUs. It's the disadvantage of forward compatibility with AM3+.

Basically, no - there aren't any MATX boards that can run an 8320 properly. The 6300, just about.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5pcs-100-...al_Components_Supplies_ET&hash=item3cd435e1ef

And a fan mod similar to mine



And you should hold a half decent clock.

 

The M5A78 is turd for FX chips, end of lol

 

Is the case expensive? There are decent ATX cases for £30-£50, some barely bigger than typical MATX cases. There are loads of good ATX options for AM3+ (all Asus, though).

 

It probably is but I've had two weak boards now and both overclocked fine. The only deficit I can see is the fact that the M5A78 doesn't have any VRM cooling at all, and it will 100% be the VRMs overheating and throttling, not the chip.

It might be worth a twenty minute mod....

 

The 7xx chipsets, that the mATX boards tend to favour, were released back in 2008. Even then, they were't really aimed at the enthusiast segment of the market.

(Read; they sucked then, and they still suck today.)

 

No.