Well, overclocking is fun and all, but after dealing with all this bs with Gigabyte and some hardware problems, I am planning to sell some of my old stuff for new stuff. The reason I want a cheap motherboard, is because I don't plan on overclocking. I just want to use my pc, I don't wanna spend hours testing stuff when lately I am busy. So what I want to do is, get a i7 (that will eliminate the need for overclocking), new mobo (cheapest stable mobo possible) and probably a Radeon 7770. The only problem is, my current motherboard has on/off charge and I kinda use it each night to charge my phone. But its not necessary at all, I have the AC adapter. So should I go with a ASUS, or any other specific type of board for the lowest price? I kinda hate Gigabyte atm though, just saying haha
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Cheapest but stable/trustable Motherboard?
- Thread starter moccor
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2012
With your current Cpu......
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131795
I ran a 955BE to 6ghz on it, paid 60$ myself for that board. http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2718901
Worth every penny. It lacks some features, but makes up for it with others.
Has the 760G unlocker chipset as well. Supports AMD FX-8350 and lower ANY.
Only has 2 ram slots. That is one draw back. But has the power for OCing and any cpu.
Only thing I can say personally, is that for a daily driver and the price it's nothing short of perfect for a gamer. It'll OC fine and unlock your cpu's I ran a 960T on 5 cores with that board as well. The power grid handled it with ease. Also has Cpu LLC or load line calibration for V-droops. And it works perfectly fine.....
If I had to choose between the M5A78L MX PLUS and this Sabo Rev 1 2 or 3, I'd pick the M5A despite some of the draw backs of the mATX form factor among other things.
After I LN'ed this board, my brother's wife now uses it as a daily driver without issues.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131795
I ran a 955BE to 6ghz on it, paid 60$ myself for that board. http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2718901
Worth every penny. It lacks some features, but makes up for it with others.
Has the 760G unlocker chipset as well. Supports AMD FX-8350 and lower ANY.
Only has 2 ram slots. That is one draw back. But has the power for OCing and any cpu.
Only thing I can say personally, is that for a daily driver and the price it's nothing short of perfect for a gamer. It'll OC fine and unlock your cpu's I ran a 960T on 5 cores with that board as well. The power grid handled it with ease. Also has Cpu LLC or load line calibration for V-droops. And it works perfectly fine.....
If I had to choose between the M5A78L MX PLUS and this Sabo Rev 1 2 or 3, I'd pick the M5A despite some of the draw backs of the mATX form factor among other things.
After I LN'ed this board, my brother's wife now uses it as a daily driver without issues.
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
- Location
- Manassas, VA
Yeah...if you want reliability, throw the Apevia PSU in the trash. 
- Thread Starter
- #5
Oh my god hahaha, I appreciate your comments, but I didn't mean for this setup. I know my PSU sucks, I was young and a noob when I got it. I already have a new one planned. I am selling pretty much this whole rig, except for my SSD, 1TB HDD, fan controller and GPU. Though off-topic, I am gonna try to sell all that for 450-500. So I will spend what I earn, on a new CPU, RAM, motherboard and HSF. Already have HDD's and a bitfenix case on the way (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...ffiliateID=lw9MynSeamY-Qc_voyQ1k0p8cvkD1z6YjQ) pretty awesome case and for a nice price. My problem is that I have zero desire to overclock after screwing with Gigabyte and w/e is wrong with this rig. I think the CPU's IMC is faulty. If not that, then the RAM. Either way I am gonna find out through memtest and then use the warranty to have it fixed before selling. I just wanted to spend the lowest possible on the mobo for a i7/i5 (will probably go to microcenter and pick up the i7 for 250$), RAM about 60$, and the remaining on a mobo/gpu. I don't want to sell my XFX GTX 260, cuz it has a lifetime warranty.
Also, this power supply is 4 years and probably 3-5 months old. Runs perfect from what I experience. I have about 7 fans running in my pc that aren't mentioned in the sig (not counting HSF or stock GPU fan). So I am stressing it a nice bit, about 12hrs/day. Surely I am not hitting 680watts, but I'd say for sure that I am hitting no less than minimum. I might have just gotten lucky though.
Edit: Nice overclock ShrimpBrime btw. So as I assumed, ASUS is a sure budget board manufacturer to consider.
Also, this power supply is 4 years and probably 3-5 months old. Runs perfect from what I experience. I have about 7 fans running in my pc that aren't mentioned in the sig (not counting HSF or stock GPU fan). So I am stressing it a nice bit, about 12hrs/day. Surely I am not hitting 680watts, but I'd say for sure that I am hitting no less than minimum. I might have just gotten lucky though.
Edit: Nice overclock ShrimpBrime btw. So as I assumed, ASUS is a sure budget board manufacturer to consider.
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- Joined
- Apr 19, 2012
Definately Asus OR find an AsRock board.
I am using a AsRock Z77 Extreme 4 pro (gold caps) it was on sale at micro center when I purchased my 3770K for the cheap price of 229$ cash.
A great combo to say the least and spent less than 400 on the two items. This board clocked my 3770K to 5.1ghz for benching and it's not even a Malaysia core.... The core to look for when buying ivy.
The Extreme 4 isn't the greatest board, but for the price, it OC's like mad offering an instant OC feature called "Turbo 30". It OC's the Cpu to 4.7ghz in a snap. Also it changes the memory clocks to an OC from 667mhz to 800mhz. But I would recommend liquid cooling.
Now I saw you say your don't intend to overclock, but it's just to simple not to. The 3770 and 4770 already OC from the manufacturer anyhow, I would suggest making your own OC cause most boards are known to just throw voltage when it may not be needed.
So when you get your set up, you should definitely ask around about how to set it up for air cooling if that's what your cooling is going to be.
- Thread Starter
- #7
Good to know. It's nice hearing some cheap boards getting some recognition. Most people choose to go expensive just because. I know someone that spends 200$ on a board and doesn't Overclock or even go in the bios haha. And yeah I don't have a need for it and I assumed budget boards wouldn't even include any options to overclock with. And yeah I am gonna use air cooling, I'll buy the hyper 212 evo for it too. That bitfenix case seems to have a very nice setup, like the antec 900. My previous case seemed alright, but I think the big fan setup wasn't as good as they looked.
I also know a good bit of info for overclocking, I did a lot of research for this setup I have here. But I couldn't really put it to use, due to the RAM or cpu, each setting would yield multiple results. In the end atm, at all default settings I can't even get it to recognize 8GB ram. It's causing freezes and slow boot ups. So I'll determine which is faulty and have it fixed, then I'm listing it on Craigslist.
- Thread Starter
- #9
When I was searching for a nice board to overclock my Phenom 965, the reason I turned away from ASUS/ASrock mid-range boards was due to reports of VRM failures. But from what I read, Intel has included the Northbridge in the CPU itself )(or was it the Southbridge?), so I guess that kinda brings up the stability of budget boards. Thanks for the recommendation.
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2009
- Location
- Illinois
This should be in the AMD motherboards section. But with that said, I always had very nice results using Gigabyte motherboards when I ran AMD cpu's. Asus obviously being another well trusted name.
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2013
- Location
- Southwest Michigan
i have one of the cheaper asrock boards you can get and it has no issues with 4.5 ghz on a 2500k. even under folding for 24 hours straight.
- Thread Starter
- #12
No, this thread isn't for AMD, you just didn't read the full initial post haha.
Hmm, when you get the time, could you let me know which board specifically you have? I want one like that haha. I really didn't expect any overclocking potential from a budget board, but you and others are proving otherwise. Must be a Intel thing.
Edit: awkward, its in your sig haha
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2013
- Location
- Southwest Michigan
IMO if it wasn't made for overclocking then they wouldn't make it in z77 chipset.
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2013
+1 - and all of them are but the boards above budget have a little more room because all of the components have a little more capacity. Generally speaking the highest end ones are a waste unless you're doing subzero or need the extra functionality they sometimes offer
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
- Location
- Manassas, VA
I wouldn't recommend overclocking on any board that only has a 4+1 or 4+2 phase section, and there's quite a few Z77 boards that fit that.
- Thread Starter
- #16
I really don't want to spend 90$ on a motherboard. But I guess it's a better idea to overclock even 0.2-0.4Ghz than to spend 20-30$ on DDR3 2000/2133 RAM. But it depends on if I do sell this PC. Do yous think its a good deal for 500$? The only thing that isn't new, besides the case, is the PSU haha. CPU and RAM is like 3-4 months, MOBO 2 months or less. 640GB HDD is only about a year or so, but its WesternDigital so its reliable haha. I hate Seagate so much
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2013
- Location
- Southwest Michigan
i don't know what that means.
is my pro 3 one of those boards?
Edit**
Yes it's a 4+1
after looking it up, it seems that overclock a 2500k on this board is fine up to around 4.8-4.9 ghz.
they say not to push an 2600k/2700k with this board though.
at almost 3 months of 4.5 ghz @ 1.35 vcore it does just fine. even under folding for long periods of time.
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- Thread Starter
- #20
Yeah, those are both about 100$ boards though. By budget I meant like, 40-50$ haha. But I think I will just spend the extra 30-50$ and get a board like you two. I don't need the power of a i5, let alone a i7. But probably even in 3 years a overclocked i5 will still be more than enough for the latest games. I don't even play the latest games though, I play League of Legends and sometimes render some videos in Vegas
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