AM3+ XL Mobo


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Hi, me again,

I asked earlier on this year about processors (at the time I was thinking bulldozer and was convinced not to get one because of the imminent release of vishera <model numbers irrelevant, as I'm not trying to troll you> )

My question is this...

Does anyone here have, or know of an Asus XL Am3 motherboard? I searched google but couldn't find one bigger than the crossfire v formula

This is satisfactory to my requirements, but as the pc case I am about to order is a HUGE coolermaster, I thought to myself I may as well get an oversized board, which I may make full use of in respect to the slots available on the back of the case.

Is there an enthusiast here that could spare some time to recommend something preferrably asus that will run an 8 core vishera 12 gig ram?

In respect to the RAM I could use some recommendations :)

Please note, due to an unforseen expense, (engine blew a gasket conveniently according to many mechanics, this is a common fault in v6 omegas) I no longer have the money today for the purchases, but this thread would help me greatly as I can simply save it to my favourites and have a record of what I'll need in a few weeks time when (hopefully) I will have the money to buy such a mobo. I don't mind getting a crosshair v if need be.

Spec includes <this is my personal preference>

Amd Vishera 8350

12 gig ram <not bought yet>

my existing hdd's <will upgrade to 7200 rpm ones at a later date>

Gtx680 nvidia <not yet bought, also, probably couldn't afford one of the 7xx models anyway>

Could use a psu recommendation also

Coolermaster Cosmos 2 (Yes Boz, I got this from you) :p

Also yes, funnily enough, the only thing I do have is the vishera.

Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

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why 12GB RAM specifically?

I'd highly recommend you buy a smaller SSD as a boot drive

the 680 has unofficially been replaced by the 770 - it's only $400USD. i'm obviously not sure what the price disparity would be in the UK b/w the 680 and 770.

PSU - Silverstone 650W or higher (SILVERSTONE Strider Gold Evolution SST-ST75F-G Evolution 750W)

i looked, quickly, for the motherboard you mentioned. i didnt find any AM3+ XL motherboards.

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why 12GB RAM specifically?

I'd highly recommend you buy a smaller SSD as a boot drive

the 680 has unofficially been replaced by the 770 - it's only $400USD. i'm obviously not sure what the price disparity would be in the UK b/w the 680 and 770.

PSU - Silverstone 650W or higher (SILVERSTONE Strider Gold Evolution SST-ST75F-G Evolution 750W)

i looked, quickly, for the motherboard you mentioned. i didnt find any AM3+ XL motherboards.

Thank you for your reply,

No real reason for 12gb than my now anciant dual core runs 8gb so I figured, why not...

I'm not convinced on SSD's yet, but that's not to say I wouldn't have one, just this very monent 7200's are reasonably cheap on ebay and I'll need 3 minimum.

Someone mentioned that the 680 was faster, I have no way of confirming or denying this rumour, but I can't see why the 680 wouldn't be supported for a few years yet (in games)

I do thank you for the Silverstone recommendation, I'll have to go and check to see if they do anything over 800watts (better to have room for expansion)

And this was the thing I feared, on the mobo front, not a huge deal, just would have been nice if one existed :)

post-354816-0-33159500-1370611279.jpg

(I would like to get the experience index closer to 7 which is one of the reasons I'm replacing as opposed to upgrading :) )

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What do you mean by XL motherboard?

ATX is the standard size, while WTX is the huge one.

Just wanted something that would make full use of the 10 +1 slots on the back of the coolermaster should the need ever arise

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(I would like to get the experience index closer to 7 which is one of the reasons I'm replacing as opposed to upgrading :) )

I guess your lowest score is your harddrive ? Every SSD will score a 7,8-7,9 there.

Also, 800 W is overkill for this system ! Unless you plan on heavy overclocking or SLI setups, 600 W should suffice you well.

http://www.tomshardware.de/Netzteil-richtige-Dimensionierung-Verbrauch-80,testberichte-240745-12.html

It's a german website, but you can clearly see, that even a Enthusiast system won't draw more than 500 W.

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I guess your lowest score is your harddrive ? Every SSD will score a 7,8-7,9 there.

Also, 800 W is overkill for this system ! Unless you plan on heavy overclocking or SLI setups, 600 W should suffice you well.

Hello :)

Yes they're 5400 rpm Hitachi models (I think) SSD right now is out of my reach but I could get later on in the year or next year.

Yes sli is something I'll be looking into eventually, right now it's not my main concern but in an ideal world I was thinking of 2 680s running sli.

But if the 600 watt psu is more than enough for such a build, I'm happy to get that. :)

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RAM: Don't fall for high speeds, they don't add anything to performance. Kingston (except Beast, because they're wacky), Corsair or G.Skill - usually can't go wrong. Can and does go wrong with Crucial Ballistix for some reason unknown at this time (I'm having quite many fresh builds with them drop dead)

GPU: 770 is a respin of 680 chip, enabling higher clocks. It *can't* be slower. It's just been announced, so prices will stabilize, too.

PSU: do choose quality rather than pure juice. Silverstone are good, but if you're going for the very top, there are even better units - Corsair AX and Sea Sonic X and Platinum series being my favorites.

I highly recommend a hefty cooler or a closed water-loop, too. Vishera might be the very best for all I care, but the noise problem of the stock solution can't be denied. Cosmos will only mask it that much, it's just heavy, very sturdy metal, doesn't have any noise dampening or anti-vibration.

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RAM: Don't fall for high speeds, they don't add anything to performance. Kingston (except Beast, because they're wacky), Corsair or G.Skill - usually can't go wrong. Can and does go wrong with Crucial Ballistix for some reason unknown at this time (I'm having quite many fresh builds with them drop dead)

GPU: 770 is a respin of 680 chip, enabling higher clocks. It *can't* be slower. It's just been announced, so prices will stabilize, too.

PSU: do choose quality rather than pure juice. Silverstone are good, but if you're going for the very top, there are even better units - Corsair AX and Sea Sonic X and Platinum series being my favorites.

I highly recommend a hefty cooler or a closed water-loop, too. Vishera might be the very best for all I care, but the noise problem of the stock solution can't be denied. Cosmos will only mask it that much, it's just heavy, very sturdy metal, doesn't have any noise dampening or anti-vibration.

Ahha. You've hit on something I haven't thought about, thank you.

I'll need to go look for a good cooler and heatsink,

Also thank you for the info on ram, that will help save some money (currently using corsair in this system, so unless there's room, I'll need to buy 1 or more 4gb sticks) :)

Once the 770's become more mainstream and prices become less hecktic, I see no reason not to get them sometime in the distant future.

(as much as I would love not to get my engine fixed I need to travel to work, and I think my wife would kill me if I didn't get this built a little at a time as there's only a finite amount of money coming in and 3 kids that don't seem to see it that way lol )

By XL I think he means E-ATX?

Hi, thank you yes that was what I meant :)
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PSU: do choose quality rather than pure juice. Silverstone are good, but if you're going for the very top, there are even better units - Corsair AX and Sea Sonic X and Platinum series being my favorites.

Second that, I currently own a Seasonic x-460, it's running very quiet and stable.

If you plan to have some reserves for either SLI or other upgrades, I recommend you the x-850 or x-860.

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I see newegg have lowered the price of 680s significantly to keep them viable against the 770s. The MSI 680 Lightning is definitely the better buy at ~383$.

Noticed UK after posting. This 770 has a good price on OC.co.uk anyway (don't know that many large UK shops). Also, there's no point of upgrading to a 770 if you're going to get a 680 since the performance difference is very small.

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Second that, I currently own a Seasonic x-460, it's running very quiet and stable.

If you plan to have some reserves for either SLI or other upgrades, I recommend you the x-850 or x-860.

Thank you. Most of everything will be sourced from ebay so next time I'm on the pc I'll go see what's available.

Lol edit, probably will look into getting a seasonic after seeing the price of the silverstones...

(Embarrassed to admit I use Ezcool psu's)

I see newegg have lowered the price of 680s significantly to keep them viable against the 770s. The MSI 680 Lightning is definitely the better buy at ~383$.

Noticed UK after posting.

Hi no probs this is mostly research and motivation today, if all goes well, I'll probably start ordering all the parts next week/fortnight. :)

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Something I forgot to mention in my OP. I will be running air cooling on this system, (I have plenty of fans) this is one of the reasons I was looking for a larger than atx mobo (or e atx as I have now been informed)

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fwiw - i looked for E-ATX originally and didnt find any w/ the AM3+ chipset

if you want to go SLI in the future then i see no reason not to buy a PSU that sees to be overkill today.

about the SSD - they are not out of reach for most today. prices have dropped considerably. their performance is night and day, esp. compared to your aging hard drives! i highly, highly recommend you get one, at least as an OS drive.

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fwiw - i looked for E-ATX originally and didnt find any w/ the AM3+ chipset

if you want to go SLI in the future then i see no reason not to buy a PSU that sees to be overkill today.

about the SSD - they are not out of reach for most today. prices have dropped considerably. their performance is night and day, esp. compared to your aging hard drives! i highly, highly recommend you get one, at least as an OS drive.

Ok I'll look into ssd, btw do you off hand know how much slower an 80 gig 7200 would be in comparison to an 80 gig ssd?

(Or at the very least know where I can go and look for this information?)

If the difference is huge then ok, I can forgo something for now.

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It's hard to describe. As they say, you have to experience it. Read and write speeds as such may not surprise you (pricewise it would be just fair to have a certain jump). Access times will. If the rest of the system can keep up (and yours will), it:

* boots without even showing Welcome screen - it goes straight to desktop; Windows 8 can start in 5 seconds or less from a full shutdown and just wake up instantly if sent to Sleep

* programs start when you click the things you click to start them, many at once, if need be

* even most anti-viruses aren't able to bog down any given SSD

* there used to be game servers which would ban you for loading too fast - seriously

Here's a (not so) recent quickie test result of mine - Kingston HyperX 3K (one of the least expensive) and Seagate SV35 (a bit more than your average HDD, in theory) side by side:

VUhPnEY.png7FUwVux.png

Notice the huge difference for small 4K fragments - the kind of thing any system accesses most often.

4K-64Thrd means 64 simultaneous requests. As you see, mechanical hard drive can't help with that - it has to move heads towards each piece of data, which may be scattered all over the drive. The SSD, however, handles it with ease, due to access time being near instant regardless of their physical location.

These comparisons are all reproducible and all show the same tendency. This was done on old Z68, too, so numbers are a bit less than they could be, too.

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Almost all of us see improvements with a SSD. 90% of us have one, and are very happy.

Go with a Samsung 840 Pro.

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Notice the huge difference for small 4K fragments - the kind of thing any system accesses most often.

4K-64Thrd means 64 simultaneous requests. As you see, mechanical hard drive can't help with that - it has to move heads towards each piece of data, which may be scattered all over the drive. The SSD, however, handles it with ease, due to access time being near instant regardless of their physical location.

This really sums it up - the small block operations that occur on everyone's computers.

A great example of this is when you first boot a computer. on a regular hd, try loading a bunch of programs right when you boot. the system bogs down, the hard drive is trashing and programs take forever to load. try the same thing with an SSD, and you'll see all the programs pop up almost immediately. You're able to boot, load programs, and get to work right away.

i got an SSD for my laptop at work about a month ago. my laptop used to take about 8 mins to boot to a useable state from powered off. now, it takes about 1 min.

here's a simple video -

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My OCZ Vertex 30GB used to (When I had Windows 7) boot up to desktop in 25 seconds. And I had a lot of programs. So, yes, it is very fast as the OS drive.

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This really sums it up - the small block operations that occur on everyone's computers.

A great example of this is when you first boot a computer. on a regular hd, try loading a bunch of programs right when you boot. the system bogs down, the hard drive is trashing and programs take forever to load. try the same thing with an SSD, and you'll see all the programs pop up almost immediately. You're able to boot, load programs, and get to work right away.

i got an SSD for my laptop at work about a month ago. my laptop used to take about 8 mins to boot to a useable state from powered off. now, it takes about 1 min.

here's a simple video -

Thank you to all 3 of you, I'll look into prioritising an ssd over something, hell, I might see if I can get one to replace my existing hdd in my current system in the mean time, you guys had me convinved before the youtube vid, but that helped with getting to see what ssd booting is like.

Guess the only thing I need is to get my car fixed then see if I have enough to start collecting parts for my build.

By the by, does anyone here have a motherboard in E-ATX form that is compareable to a crossfire v?

It's hard to describe. As they say, you have to experience it. Read and write speeds as such may not surprise you (pricewise it would be just fair to have a certain jump). Access times will. If the rest of the system can keep up (and yours will), it:

* boots without even showing Welcome screen - it goes straight to desktop; Windows 8 can start in 5 seconds or less from a full shutdown and just wake up instantly if sent to Sleep

* programs start when you click the things you click to start them, many at once, if need be

* even most anti-viruses aren't able to bog down any given SSD

* there used to be game servers which would ban you for loading too fast - seriously

Here's a (not so) recent quickie test result of mine - Kingston HyperX 3K (one of the least expensive) and Seagate SV35 (a bit more than your average HDD, in theory) side by side:

VUhPnEY.png7FUwVux.png

Notice the huge difference for small 4K fragments - the kind of thing any system accesses most often.

4K-64Thrd means 64 simultaneous requests. As you see, mechanical hard drive can't help with that - it has to move heads towards each piece of data, which may be scattered all over the drive. The SSD, however, handles it with ease, due to access time being near instant regardless of their physical location.

These comparisons are all reproducible and all show the same tendency. This was done on old Z68, too, so numbers are a bit less than they could be, too.

Almost all of us see improvements with a SSD. 90% of us have one, and are very happy.

Go with a Samsung 840 Pro.

I'm replying from my note 10.1 and it doesn't let me quote all 3 of you at the same time, so I apologise if the post appears confusing.
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~snip~

At the risk of asking what might be a silly question, do ssd drives only come in 2.5 inch sizes?

(just so I know if I'll need to buy a caddy for it)

(In other news, looks like I'll be getting the crosshair afterall...)

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They only come in 2.5 sizes. Mine is behind the motherboard plate. They have no moving parts, so it will not create sound.

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HDD trays of Cosmos II have screw holes for 2.5" devices, no need for cages or adapters (which you may still use, of course, but it arguably isn't that clean and pretty then)

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They only come in 2.5 sizes. Mine is behind the motherboard plate. They have no moving parts, so it will not create sound.

Ok and thanks :)

HDD trays of Cosmos II have screw holes for 2.5" devices, no need for cages or adapters (which you may still use, of course, but it arguably isn't that clean and pretty then)

Ahh, I looked at a youtube vid for the case, I didn't notice the fitting, (doh!)

Once again, my thanks :)

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