[TerminX]

I have the GA-990FXA-UD5 in one of my machines, though I have the 1.0 version and not the 1.1 version which added load line calibration or the new 3.0 UEFI version. It's a pretty nice board.

[Person of Color]

I'm pretty sure his dad bought the UD3. But I know the board he got totally lacks EFI. But after bundle discounts, it was $60, so who gives a rat's ass?

[Forge]

Viper The Rapper, on 03 September 2013 - 09:10 AM, said:

The Extreme4 has issues with Zambezi (Piledriver) chips. At least it used to.

My friend used the GA-990FXA-UD3 in a build for his dad. Micro Center gave us an 8350 by accident so they billed us for an 8320. Less than $200 for both, and it hauls.

I'm pretty sure that's the board he got. I'd go with the Gigabyte myself.

from what i've read the asrock no post problems with those chips were an issue with the 970 boards. people have been getting good oc results with the 990's.

even so, i'm more familiar with gigabyte's reliability & good customer service.

i wasn't sure about msi (their old boards are real crap, but supposedly this one is decent), and i really don't know alot about asrock other than they're working on building a solid foundation to be competitive so their customer service is good

[Person of Color]

ASRock is just another division of Asus. There's two motherboard engineering teams, the team at Asus, and the team at Pegatron, their OEM manufacturing division. Pegatron's team goes by the name ASRock.

MSI is complete fucking garbage, but their video cards and laptops are top notch.

[Forge]

i like asus boards (until they removed core unlocking from r2.0 boards) so i might look a little closer at that asrock board i listed to see if there are any major issues i should be aware of (if i can't get the funds together for the UD5 board)

i'll take your word for it about msi (their reputation precedes them)

the rumor about that msi board is it's reliable and won't burn up like their previous products, but you have to tune the crap out of it to adjust/compensate for the vDroop

[Person of Color]

I like the UD3. I would personally get that. If you ever upgrade to AMD's Cleveland Steamer architecture it would give you more overclocking potential.

[Forge]

been reading around

ASRock 990FX Extreme4 & Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

both are very good boards and overclock well, but the UD3 has more overclock features and can be pushed a bit more

course the UD5 goes without saying, but it's probably more board than i really need

since there's only about a $10 difference on most sites, the UD3 would be the best bet, unless there's some big special where i can get an extreme4 dirt cheap

thanks for the advice and shared knowledge

[TerminX]

Here's a tip which I've shared before for getting newish hardware really cheap: buy stuff from the for sale sections on big overclocker forums. You can get some really nice stuff that's barely even been used for a decent discount over what you'd pay for the same used item on eBay. A lot of hardware manufacturers are also using unique serial numbers to handle warranty stuff these days so you can often even find these discounted items with a couple of years warranty left on them. Shit like that is the only way I could afford to get any newer hardware for the longest time when I was surviving on pitiful SSI checks every month.

[Forge]

alright, thanks for the tip

still going to be some time before i do anything. it's not as simple as buying a case and a board. i still have to purchase a copy of windows 7 for licensing purposes. all i have is the oem version that came with the current computer and as soon as i hotswap the drive it's going to throw the not genuine error

[Person of Color]

You can call up Microsoft and transfer an OEM license. I've had to do it after a motherboard swap.

You just can't auto transfer over The Internet.

I have the student version of 7 Pro, and whenever I clean install I have to phone activate because it's an upgrade license.

[Kathy]

OEM license isn't transferable between motherboards.

[TerminX]

Perhaps not officially, but in the case of 7 you could always modify the BIOS on the new board to contain the proper SLIC entries in the ACPI table to allow OEM activation methods to function.

[Person of Color]

Microsoft denies it officially, but you can get away with it as long as you make sure the motherboard is designed for the same CPU manufacturer. You just have to call them.

I just wasted all this time typing out a huge diatrabe only to find out the student editions ARE transferrable. Thanks for the bad information Digital River!

[Forge]

oem & microsoft agreement

You can upgrade any components or peripherals on your PC and keep your license intact. You can replace the motherboard with an identical model or an equivalent model from the OEM if it fails. However, if you personally replace or upgrade the motherboard, your OEM Windows license is null and void.

i could probably get it licensed if i went with another ASUS board since the one i have is way outdated and no longer available

my other concern isn't so much about the license as not having a proper installation disk if i do need to do a clean/repair install to get the system running. the oem disk is going to throw a bunch of incompatible hardware errors and make it unusable

[Kathy]

Viper The Rapper, on 04 September 2013 - 08:46 AM, said:

Microsoft denies it officially, but you can get away with it as long as you make sure the motherboard is designed for the same CPU manufacturer. You just have to call them.

Call and say what, "I replaced my MB"?

[Person of Color]

Forge, on 04 September 2013 - 08:48 AM, said:

oem & microsoft agreementYou can upgrade any components or peripherals on your PC and keep your license intact. You can replace the motherboard with an identical model or an equivalent model from the OEM if it fails. However, if you personally replace or upgrade the motherboard, your OEM Windows license is null and void.i could probably get it licensed if i went with another ASUS board since the one i have is way outdated and no longer availablemy other concern isn't so much about the license as not having a proper installation disk if i do need to do a clean/repair install to get the system running. the oem disk is going to throw a bunch of incompatible hardware errors and make it unusable

The retail and OEM discs are identical as far as I know, the hardware check is actually performed by the activation system. Now a custom disc provided by a manufacturer like HP or Dell...that's a whole 'nother sack of shit.

If you search Windows 7 Digital River you'll get a ton of download links for official Microsoft ISO's. Digital River provides these for their student discount program and they are Microsoft's official partner.

Kathy, on 04 September 2013 - 09:42 AM, said:

Call and say what, "I replaced my MB"?

Yeah, basically. Or try to build sympathy like "My motherboard died, and now I'm having activation issues."

Sometimes the automated system will just take care of it for you.

It used to be so lax. Back in the XP days I took a Pro key off a dead Dell and installed it on what must have been over 10 systems using phone activation.

The best were those Dell discs for the business models. Totally stock except for a BIOS check. Non Dell machine? No problem. Dell machine with XP Home? Now it's Pro, and you don't even need to activate it!

[DustFalcon85]

Viper The Rapper, on 03 September 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

ASRock is just another division of Asus. There's two motherboard engineering teams, the team at Asus, and the team at Pegatron, their OEM manufacturing division. Pegatron's team goes by the name ASRock.

MSI is complete fucking garbage, but their video cards and laptops are top notch.

Well my desktop has an MSI Motherboard. What's your beef w/ the MSI's motherboards? Just curious.

[Forge]

Viper The Rapper, on 04 September 2013 - 12:31 PM, said:

The retail and OEM discs are identical as far as I know, the hardware check is actually performed by the activation system. Now a custom disc provided by a manufacturer like HP or Dell...that's a whole 'nother sack of shit.

i'm mis-using the definition of an oem disk. the one i have is from the manufacturer and is specific to the computer

DustFalcon85, on 04 September 2013 - 02:43 PM, said:

Well my desktop has an MSI Motherboard. What's your beef w/ the MSI's motherboards? Just curious.

prior to 990XA-GD55, msi was notorious for their cheap vrms burning up. when they finally decided to heatsink them they still had issues with dramatic voltage drops because of cheap material.
they were fine for daily driver grandma computers

supposedly the issue has been fixed with the new mosfets in their 990(f)x(a) series, but i've read they still have substantial vdroop

[Person of Color]

ASRock/Asus, Gigabyte and Biostar are the only manufacturers who rarely, if ever have faulty VRM's.

By faulty, I'm talking about failing under normal use. Some boards are still underspec'd though (3 phase on a 125W CPU isn't something I'd want to try anytime soon. I don't care what the sticker on the box says, I don't trust it).

MSI is the worst. Other companies like ECS are sketchy.

[TerminX]

One of the reasons I like Gigabyte a lot is because they make a point of using high quality components, physically beefing up the board, etc. The whole "Ultra Durable" thing they've got is pretty unique to them I think.

[Person of Color]

Yeah I love Gigabyte's build quality. It's top notch.

[Tea Monster]

DustFalcon85, on 04 September 2013 - 02:43 PM, said:

Well my desktop has an MSI Motherboard. What's your beef w/ the MSI's motherboards? Just curious.

I've always found they have a tendency to go 'phut' a lot.

Yeah, Gigabyte is amazing. I've only had one board go splat on me and they got me an upgraded replacement board straight out to me.

[Forge]

ASUS makes some pretty tough boards as well.
i like their product, but they've been f-ing around too much with the bios

i had one doa board and that was a biostar. i was upgrading from a 66 to a p133 (so that tells you how long ago that was) I made a five minute phone call, mailed it back, and had a brand new board in my hand 8 days later (which was lighting fast for those days).

[TerminX]

I had a Gigabyte board fail once, but it was my fault. They found some physical damage on it and told me they would normally have to void my warranty, but that they had someone there who thought he could repair it... so they repaired my board by hand and send it back in fully working order. I was really impressed.

I would also go with ASUS in a heartbeat. I have an ASUS router (RT-AC66U), an ASUS tablet (Nexus 7) and an ASUS USB 802.11ac adapter (USB-AC53). I really like their stuff. All of their recent products that I've gotten my hands on have been very high quality. They're also really friendly towards community projects that utilize their stuff... for example, their wireless router line runs a custom Linux-based OS called ASUSWRT, and they've actually given unreleased source code to newer versions and upcoming hardware that isn't out yet to people behind customized forks of the ASUSWRT code, etc.

[Person of Color]

Asus routers are great. My brother has one. But I have Verizon FiOS so I have to use this shitty Actiontec router. I gotta call them up and chew them out so they can give me the upgraded model. They want me to pay $100 for a working fucking router. Despite having FiOS for a whopping year or two, this model is five years old and when you start running network printers, NAS, FTP, and file servers with remote access, it starts crashing. The file server will disappear for what seems like ages, and only shutting down the ENTIRE network, then just powering it and the router on fixes it. Printing has become a ten minute ordeal of power cycling and swearing. During heavy load, it'll crash harder than Princess Diana, about once a week. The firmware has shitloads of bugs that only come out under serious use.

It didn't have any issues until we started overhauling our network.

[Kathy]

Can't you just connect your own router to theirs and do whatever you want?

As for me... I have N16 with Tomato firmware. Recently bought their motherboard and was taken aback by the GUI BIOS.

[Person of Color]

There's a bypass function that would let me use it as a glorified MoCA bridge, but I'd rather not deal with it. It's a pretty big pain in the ass to do IIRC. I'd rather just chew them out and have them send me the newer router.

The problem is that FiOS mounts the ONT on the outside of the house and runs coaxial to the router. They wanted $200 to run an ethernet line, so I said "fuck it." I figured I'd see how their hardware held up.

It worked great until the big upgrade. I'm on my second router too, at first we thought the damn thing was failing. As we kept adding more shit we realized it was just bad firmware.

[Kathy]

My provider wants to connect me through fibre-optic, but I wasn't really for the idea of having their router in my apartment. Now I am kind of a down with it since it's possible to just place mine in DMZ with PATing every network port into it. On the other hand... I don't really need forwarding anything anymore.

[DustFalcon85]

Forge, on 04 September 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

prior to 990XA-GD55, msi was notorious for their cheap vrms burning up. when they finally decided to heatsink them they still had issues with dramatic voltage drops because of cheap material.
they were fine for daily driver grandma computers

supposedly the issue has been fixed with the new mosfets in their 990(f)x(a) series, but i've read they still have substantial vdroop

This is the MSI Motherboard Z77A-G45 I'm using. It's got overclocking capabilities. I don't have OC on. I have no problems w/ it so far.

[Forge]

not a bad board. should hold up well (even though it gets out-performed in most categories by it's competitors equivelants - including ECS - ref:tom's hardware - just google your board and go look at the review)

as far as MSI and the intel line the Z68A-GDxx/P67A-GDxx is the turning point - these are daily driver, little old lady from Pasadena boards, everything before it is crap, these boards and after started "improving". (when they started cooling their cheap vrms with heatsinks, got off the 3+1, 4+1 & started using 6&8+ phase, but still lacked protection against vrm failure/over temp/over current like most other boards - if you can catch all the smoke and put it back in the component it will work again)