So overwhelmed by Motherboards, AM3+

[afatpaws]

I built my own PC, and now it's time to upgrade. I bought a fx 4300 and am looking for a board for it. I've been looking at several different boards and people either love the board they got or have had nothing but issues.

I'm using my computer for gaming, and currently have 4x2 gig, 1600 speed g-skill ram sticks, a sapphire 6870, and I have a 630 watt power supply. is it worth getting 169-189 dollar board for my rig? Because I'd rather spend 100-120ish if there's no sense in buying a crazy fancy board. Also, I'm kinda lost on all the sata 3 and USB 3.0.. do I really need those?

also, am I going to need anything else, or is all my equipment going to work with the new board?

-Thanks

 

[afatpaws]

Hi, for you needs you don't need an expensive 990FX chipset based motherboard for example, unless you gonna be doing some serious overclocking. As for SATA 3 and USB 3.0 you don't need it but all current motherboards comes equipped with those features anyway. Here are my suggestions regarding motherboards:

ASUS:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-m5a97r20

GIGABYTE:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-ga970aud3

Any of these two boards will suffice your every need and will allow for some decent overclocking as well, if you were to do so further down the line

thanks a ton! I would like to overclock, but I should probably get something other than the basic heat sink, haha. I looked into that gigabyte board earlier and noticed it seems to have many issues, or is that pretty normal? I think i'd go with the ASUS. Any major differences between brands? Because I can't find any.. I'ev heard GIGABYTE uses better materials though

 

[afatpaws]

The Gigabyte board would be better suited for overclocking (higher overclocks) because it uses an 8+2 phase CPU VRM power design versus the Asus's 4+2 the Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 would match or beat the gigabyte board when it comes to high overclocks > http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A97_EVO_R20/

I'm sorry, I'm really confused on that last sentence. Sounds like it's contradicting itself. The board you linked earlier is the one you just linked that time, but yet I thought you just said the gigabyte was better.

 

[afatpaws]

Thanks a ton man. really appreciate the help.