Newbie about to pull the trigger - what do you think of this build ?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The main worry for me with the 700 series motherboards,are whether the VRM designs have been updated for the newer AMD CPUs,as they support more granular clock domains.

[hotjiggy]

Cheers guys, I have ordered the 760G with radeon xfx 5450.. and decided to keep the 16gb, with no coolers. It came to roughly £350 !.

Thank you. !

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That 760G based motherboard in the OP only has a 3+1 phase VRM,so I would not touch it with a bargepole. The only reasonable 760G based motherboard is this:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...vi-d-hdmi-matx

It has at least a 4+1 phase VRM with some cooling. The VRM cooling is important.

However,I would probably not use the 760G based motherboard with a FX6300 though myself. I just get the feeling that motherboard companies, just dusted off their old 760G based designs, and plonked an AM3+ socket into them.

[hotjiggy]

the hard drive I ordered became unavilable so I have a chance to amend the order as per the delay in shipping.

CAT, I think I will take your suggestion - can you briefly explain to me what VRAM cooling is ? Thank you.

[Bonebreaker777]

Voltage regulator module aka VRM.

"A voltage regulator module or VRM, sometimes called PPM (processor power module), is a buck converter that provides a microprocessor the appropriate supply voltage, converting +5 V or +12 V to a much lower voltage required by the CPU."

It is the part of the motherboard what directly feeds the CPU (and the RAM in cases where you see 4 + 1, four phases for the CPU, one for the RAM). More phases a motherboard has, less overheating it occurs (more things doing the same job, essentially sharing) and if lower temperatures, higher efficiency and longer lifespan. Where is a limited number of phases installed to the motherboard, a cooling over the VRM is suggested (of course it depends on the manufacturer) but some test shower that without a cooler, the elements in the VRM can reach really high temperatures.

Another good source and a lot more professionally written can be found here About VRMs & Mosfets.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 970 motherboards also have SATA3.0 and USB3.0 too,and SATA3.0 is useful if you want to install an SSD at some point too.