Need Help Choosing Mobo

Hello all, first off I'd like to thank this forum. I haven't posted much but I've been trolling quite regularly. Between this board and an OCing friend of mine, I built my first rig (in sig) a couple of months ago.
Well, I'm already planning out my REbuild for next summer and I've hit a slight bend in the road.
The whole point in the REbuild began with me wanting a new chassis. I'm 99% set on the CM Storm Sniper.
Well there's no point in moving everything over without upgrading, so I then decided to do either a RAID 1 or RAID 1+0. I'm not as worried about speed as I am to quell my own paranoia of data loss.
Then I decided to buy another 5670 to set-up in Crossfire.
Well why the hell not upgrade to a Phenom II X4 965 in the process with an undecided quiet Cooler Master CPU cooler.
I will need more power, so I'm jumping that up to a Thermaltake Toughpower 675W. Plus, I read Thermaltake PSUs run pretty quiet and my current Antec is the loudest piece of my rig.
Well since I'm doing the Crossfire and CPU upgrade, I have to get a new MOBO.

Here's where my fundamental questions come into play. With the knowledge of my current and future setup ( and the hardware combinations ) what are the necessities I need to look for?
Obviously an ATI NB and at least 2 PCIe slots.

What are the differences between mATX and ATX boards?
My friend is dead set on Gigabyte boards, but I've read a lot of good things about Asus boards. Suggestions?

Lastly, I want to stay under $160 and I want cool and quiet. Cool is why I'm with AMD and ATI versus Intel and nVidia. I like to run cool and quiet, even if that means sacrificing a bit of performance. It's just my pet peeves.


Sorry for the book, but I just wanted to get all the information I thought would help in guiding me towards a board out there in the beginning.
Thanks in advance for the help, guys.

As long as you stay toward the top end (890FX or 890GX chipsets) either ASUS or Gigabyte are great boards.

I personally would not own an mATX. Most mATX boards have no MOSFET cooling and I don't think the best chipsets (FX) come in mATX flavor (though I could be wrong about that). I know neither Gigabyte nor ASUS has an 890FX mATX board.

If you want to stay under $160 you'll have to decide between the Biostar TA890FXE or the ASUS/Gigabyte 890GX boards. The Biostar overclocks well but I have no clue how well it'll hold up over time. On the other hand I've got several high-end ASUS boards that have passed 35,000 hours (4+ years) of OC'ed, non-stop, and at load running time ...

you already have a nice chipset in your MOBO, but if u want to upgrade...

mATX is a small ATX MOBO, with less ports... IMO
ATX is more worth it, because it gives more headroom in upgrading, and tends to have more features.
a nice GPU to start on would be either the 6850 or the 6870, because if you want to xfire, these GPUs do it nicely.

a nice MOBO to compliment these would be a 890FX chipset MOBO like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131644&cm_re=890fx-_-13-131-644-_-Product

hope it helps

As other folks indicated, stick with an ATX mobo. I've used many mobos from all the hitters over the past 25 years and I currently only use Gigabyte. The only mobos that I ever had fail were both Asus. Any 790/890 chipset AM3 socket mobo will meet your needs. You can go to the Gigabyte (and other maker's) website and actually compare the boards side by side for features, slots, etc.

nah, my gigabyte MOBOs fail, and my asus never fail, idk, different user experience IMO. i trust ASUS Mobos. don't mind any others.

Okay, it seems Asus vs Gigabyte is about like Chevy vs Ford lol.

And I understand to stay towards the upper end chipsets, but could someone explain the difference in the 790X, 880GA, 890FX and 890GX chipsets? I understand they are all progressively better, I guess I'd just like to understand why a little better.

They're not progressively better in the order you listed anyway. There are few differences between the 790 and 890 chipsets. 890's have SATA III and maybe (unconfirmed) a bit better at OC'ing. The last two letters are what's important. FX is top-end with GX and X tied at second, IMO. FX also has the distinction of having true 2x 16-bit PCIe slots while the others only have 2x 8-bit - for whatever that's worth.

But it's not so much that the chipsets themselves are better, it's that board manufacturers tend to put higher quality parts with the higher end chipsets ...

Ah, thank you sir.

To be honest planning for upgrades for the next summer now is probably not that great of a plan. Things change so fast in the computer world that whatever you decide now might not be the best option when the time comes to actually upgrade.

soulwatch5 said:

To be honest planning for upgrades for the next summer now is probably not that great of a plan. Things change so fast in the computer world that whatever you decide now might not be the best option when the time comes to actually upgrade.

Click to expand...

That's a good point. Argh. I hate being poor lol.

so, what about the Nvidia chipsets? nForce any good?
EDIT: 550W is enough for dual 5670s + 965

Extreme Edition said:

so, what about the Nvidia chipsets? nForce any good?
EDIT: 550W is enough for dual 5670s + 965

Click to expand...

They're OK but not the best overclockers.


Depends on the PSU and how much you want to overclock the main system (CPU/cpuNB/RAM). Some 550W PSU's put out more sustainable power than others. I always figure a 20% buffer so 550 - 110 = 440W. A well overclocked system will eat up at least 200W all by itself so that leaves just over 200W for video, if the PSU is a good one ...

What brand are YOU using???
good PSUs are usually OVER the marked wattage.

I've got several since I run a farm - Seasonic, PC Power&Cooling, and some older FSP's (not Everest). Channel Well is a good choice, too, but I don't happen to have any. Here's the tested list ...

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=589708