Advice on my build

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This mobo is currently out of stock. Is this one any good? I'd rather not have to wait for them to get back in stock (who knows how long that will take), but I don't want to compromise on quality either.

Here is the Asrock webpage for the motherboard you linked to:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.as...Specifications

It looks good for the price although it uses the earlier SB710 southbridge and 770 chipset and won't be as good for overclocking as the ASRock 880GXH/USB3. However the SB850 southbridge the ASRock 880GXH/USB3 has can have issues with some Samsung F3 hard drives.

[intense.ego]

Here is the Asrock webpage for the motherboard you linked to:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.as...Specifications

It looks good for the price although it uses the earlier SB710 southbridge and 770 chipset and won't be as good for overclocking as the ASRock 880GXH/USB3. However the SB850 southbridge the ASRock 880GXH/USB3 has can have issues with some Samsung F3 hard drives.

I don't really plan on overclocking and if I do decide to do it, it will be a small overclock at most. Is inferior overclocking the only concern? Will a cheaper mobo such as this result in worse overall performance?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't really plan on overclocking and if I do decide to do it, it will be a small overclock at most. Is inferior overclocking the only concern? Will a cheaper mobo such as this result in worse overall performance?

The SB850 is supposed to have improved disc performance and can support 6 SATA 3.0 devices natively. The SB850 also supports more RAID options than the SB710 and the 880G based motherboards may have a better chance of supporting AMD Bulldozer althought this is not guaranteed. However, overall performance of the 770 based motherboards are not that much behind AFAIK.

[intense.ego]

Could you please check over my build one last time before I place my order to make sure everything is okay?





Thanks so much for all your help; you have no idea how much I appreciate it

EDIT: one last question - is this mobo any good/worth choosing over the other?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The motherboard is better and is cheaper at Ebuyer:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/206152

For overclocking this one is better:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/218937

However,the extra money could be spent on a better graphics card.

Also get the OCZ StealthXStream 2 as this is better than the earlier OCZ StealthXStream.

[intense.ego]

The motherboard is better and is cheaper at Ebuyer:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/206152

Yeah, I bought it from ebuyer because its cheaper.

Also get the OCZ StealthXStream 2 as this is better than the earlier OCZ StealthXStream.

I already bought the StealthXtreme. Oh well, it's good enough.

Once again, thank you for all your help

EDIT: One more thing (and I'm not sure if I should just make a new thread instead of asking here), but is it recommended to unlock a fourth core if possible? If it was working wouldnt AMD sell the processor as an X4?

[watercooled]

The idea is AMD sell chips with a defective core as tri-cores with the bad one disabled but demand far outstrips supply so they have to sell good chips with a core disabled, in fact probably most of them are good because of the high yield AMD is apparently getting per wafer. However they are probably binned so the less efficient dies go to be X3s, for example if a chip can do 4 cores at 65W then it will be an X4 but if it can only manage 3 cores at that wattage then it will be binned as an X3. If the motherboard supports it then yes you can unlock it although it will (AFAIK) slightly increase power consumption/heat output and you must remember to do some stability tests to make sure the core is OK, there's no guaranteeing it will work of course.

[intense.ego]

Not sure if I should make a separate thread but I have a question regarding the HDD/mobo. It appears, as some of you have noticed, that the Samsung F3 does not play well with SB850 chipset mobos. The parts have not been delivered as yet but when I do receive them I will build the computer straight away. Before I do anything with the HDD, I wanted to know whether it's safe to connect the HDD to the mobo before flashing it (it has to be connected to be flashed in the first place) or whether I should use another computer to flash it (with a different mobo).