is it worth it to build on a asus m5a97

i currently have a decent gaming pc,
asus m5a97 mobo
ati 6850
amd phenom II x4 925 @ 3.4
2x4 gig adata 1600 mhz
anywho i was wondering is this mobo (asus m5a97) is good enough or worth running gtx 660's in sli with a amd 8350?

also will a corsair hx750 psu be powerful enough

Hey!

That mobo will not natively work with SLi as it is not certified, sorry.

The HX750 will be able to power a big SLi set-up though.

l3arrett82 said:

asus m5a97 mobo with a amd 8350?

Click to expand...

The M5A97 is actually not robust enough to handle an FX-8350 if forced into running all 8 cores at one time, which is the normal way people overclock. The Mosfets will die or the OCP circuit for the VRMs will continually throttle the cpu clocks back and that from what most say is not an exhilarating experience.
RGone....

Ther's the mobo police in action.

could yall suggest a decent priced mobo that will fit my needs.

The first four motherboards listed would have little trouble with the VRM circuit being powerful enough to push an FX-8350 into the 4.8Ghz range with REALLY good watercooling. No mini-loops need apply.

The last two Asus boards listed should be good for about 4.4Ghz in general. They will not however push an 8 core FX into that 4.8Ghz range since the FX-8350 just draws more power than those two boards VRM circuits can supply reliably.

Asus Crosshair V formula and formula-z > 2 x16 slots for dual SLi Asus Sabertooth R2.0 Gen 3(not yet released) > 2 x16 slots for dual SLi
Asrock Fata1ity 990FX > 2 x16 slots for dual SLi < This motherboard maybe superseded by the newer 990FX EXT9 board. No one has used it yet that we know of. Asus Sabertooth R2.0 and Asus Sabertooth 990FX > 2 x16 slots for dual SLi
Gigabyte 990FX UD5 or UD7 > 2 x16 slots for dual SLi
Asus M5A99X Evo > 2 x8 slots for dual SLi or M5A99FX pro > 2 x16 slots for dual SLi

RGone, charter member of the ILHOC and the mobo police.

thanks for your help

i think i will just get 1 gtx 660 and a fx 6350 for now and not worry about the 8350 at all, i dont think i would be using 8 cores. then around christmas i'll get the mobo and other gtx 660. but then on the other hand i kinda want to get the mobo and 8350 now and a gtx 680 around christmas. i dont really know what i'll do.

if i go with 2 gtx 660's in a few years i'll have to try to sell them so that i could upgrade again. but if i go with the not as fast gtx 680 than in a few years all id have to do is buy another. but then that makes me think would i even be able to find 1 to buy in a few years.

i think i'll just go with the fx 6350 and gtx 660 set up, if anyone wants to change my mind for any reason please feel free to try, as i would like to get ideas from all angles.

The way it has been working is that for an AMD system to even try and keep up with an Intel gaming rig is to clock the BeeJesus out of the cpu. Get cpu speed up. That motherboard you have is just n0t up to the task of overclocking much more than a 4 core FX processor and it up to about 4.2Ghz reliably. User caddi daddi has a capture in here of an FX-4170 clocked up pretty good on an M5A97 R2.0 motherboard. It took a good bit of cpu voltage and on BIG water it was still mighty warm.

Now you want to run an FX-6350 which has a new TDP of 125W and not the 95W TDP that the original FX-6300 had. Even if the FX-6350 has a TDP somewhere in between 95W and 125W, you are going to find the current draw of that cpu pretty hefty for a very entry level M5A97 to supply to the cpu.

You also say 660GTX setup and I assume by that you mean two video cards? If so the M5A97 will not have x16 or even x8 for available transfer speeds to the second video card. It is only electrically x16 and x4 electrically to the two long PCIe slots you would put the video cards into.

There is a lot more to this upgrade thing and even more so when you begin to think what you will do in 6 mos or so. Honestly you just did not buy a robust enough foundation in the motherboard to really deal with the high power consumed regularly when it comes time to push and FX processor up in speed to get the same gaming results as an Intel system.

It of course is your money to be spent as you please. But to the best of the knowledge floating around, I think you need to start with a much stronger foundation and that is a motherboard with a stout VRM to push an FX processor. YMMV.
RGone...

im only going to run this mobo for 6 or 7 more months and i will only have 1 660 until i get the new mobo in 6 or 7 months and i will not be ocing the fx 6350 or the gtx 660 untill then.

2 stages to my plan
1st stage, which is in the next month or 2 will be to get an amd 6350 and a gtx 660.
second stage will be around christmas which is also around my birthday. it is to get the mobo and the second gtx 660. i believe the fx 6350 and gtx 660 will be a big gain over my current phenom 925 and ati 6850.

this mobo came in a decently priced pc and i was on a very tight budget. i believe i chose well for the situation as i never intended to over clock anything. i did overclock the cpu from 2.8ghz to 3.4ghz via the performance setting in the ueif bios.
this morning i overclocked my little ati 6850 from 775 core 1000 memory to 850 core and 1190 memory. it was running fine at 1200 memory other than a hiccup once every 5 min or so. windows score went from 6.9 to 7.8. i was also able to put bf3 on high settings and still push out 60+ fps sometimes dropping just a tiny bit below 60. it literally shocked me at the boost i gained. the reason it surprised me is because long long ago i had a geforce 6200 and oced it and there was no noticeable difference. in gameplay but in a sterile environment it seamed to of gained about 5 fps if im not mistaken. anywho point is i do believe i will get into overclocking but in the 6 or 7 months time i will be saving for the mobo and second gtx 660 i will be reading and asking questions and learning things so that by the time i do get that stuff i should be somewhat knowledgeable about doing a stable oc that wont kill my cpu. i do not plan to oc the 660 or the fx 6350 until i get the new mobo if at all.

my wifes pc has the same mobo but with an fx6100. i put her pc in performance mode via the ueif bios and the turbo boost didnt work so well. it topped out at 3.5 something. where as in the balanced mode it would reach 3.9 ghz.

also i believe my PSU is powerful enough even though it is a 750 watt. 1 review/bench/stress test i read claimed they managed to pull 910 watts from it.

to day her cpu is ideling at 5c in a 21c room. and now her cpu isnt boosting to 3.9 anymore it stays at 3.5 except core 0 it fluxuates from 1.5ghz to 3.5ghz. i have not done any updates or changed anything except a few settings in the nvidia control panel. i did not overclock it just changed a few options to see what sort of fps it would yield in kombuster.

i did noting at all to the cpu or bios since i changed it from balance to performance then back to balanced again a day or so ago. any idea why its not boosting to 3.9ghz now?

l3arrett82, I was doing something like you were doing. Swapping back and forth from Balanced to Performance Mode in windows. I did it quite often in fact. BUT one day I swapped it back to Balanced mode and suddenly the cpu no longer would idle down in speed. I knew it was not idling down as before when I swapped back and forth because I was looking at it in CPUz and CPUz updates every few parts of a second. I looked here and there and then I noticed a part of the "advanced" settings in Windows Power Mode was different where you can setup the CPU itself.

Where at one time I could set the cpu IDLE to a percentage of full speed and where there was a setting to adjust the MAX speed to a percentage >> BOTH of those settings were NO longer available to use as was previously available before swapping back and forth over a few months I guess. The only option still available under the actual cpu settings was the CPU Cooling option for either passive or active. That option used to be grouped with IDLE > CPU Cooling > MAX but the IDLE and MAX adjustments were just GONE from that section of Windows Power Mode > Advanced > CPU. Just Gone. Looked for days to find an answer. No ready answwers anywhere. So since I don't play around with the computer I need, I just RE-installed Windows and the option was there again and I changed the settings back to what they were in IDLE mode and the cpu went back to doing as before. SO I don't just swap the Windows Power Manager back and forth from software like I was doing. I now go in bios and change the speed and actions of my Cpu from there.

Computers that I must use, I seldom if ever do any changing to anymore. I need them. This was a play computer and I did use it for my Video editting but otherwise, I was able to RE-install Win 7 without too too much grief. The software adjusting of cpu speeds has been more of a curse to me and others lately since it came on the scene. We used to do it when I benchmarked for scores day in and day out. But that was for funzies and the O/S was RE-installed pretty darn regular anyway. So no biggie. In your case you were just changing for the heck of it and seem bitten by something similar to what I saw after changing power modes for a month or two. I got bitten for sure. I looked for a way to 'repair' the way Power Manager worked and could not unearth anything, so I RE-installed Win 7 and everything was back to the way it was. I did the swap around of Windows Power Manager for months maybe before my problem surfaced. You seem to have done it once or so and you now seem bitten.
RGone...