ASUS DDR3 1800 AMD AM3+ Motherboards M5A97 R2.0

If you are looking for a great bang for your buck, I highly recommend this board. I recently "refreshed" my computer because of a motherboard failure (Gigabyte.. you let me down). I popped in an FX-8320 and 8 GB of Corsair Vengeance ram. Here is the link to the ram I used that works flawlessly with the board: (Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 Memory Kit for Core i3, i5, i7 and Platforms SDRAM CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 Just manually change Bios settings to "1600 MHz" and it automatically does the rest without worrying.I was worried about the board not booting because of the new FX-8320 processor. My bios was the older one that did not "support" the newer processor. However, the board booted and recognized the CPU on the first try. Not wanting to tempt fate, I loaded the newest bios drivers from Asus onto a USB flash drive and flashed the bios. The bios is very easy to navigate and you can use a mouse in it. The bios flash was painless and I was off and running. I loaded Win 7 onto it, and since I had previously had Win 7 on my Intel 330 SSD I tried to install it after formatting it through the Win 7 installation processor. Win 7 kept giving me an EFI error (something about my HD being formatted improperly for EFI). I almost decided to throw the CPU away at that point, but a quick look at the Bios settings, I turned off "Secure Boot" (I believe this is a Win 8 mandatory thing). After turning off Secure Boot everything went flawlessly. The only funny thing was Win 7 didn't automatically install drivers for the onboard NIC and I had to install the drivers which is the first time in many builds that has ever happened to me.Using this board for about 2 weeks now I cannot say enough good things about it. Absolutely rock solid, no issues or hangups. Motherboard runs cold for me and has enough goodies that I am impressed. I'd used Gigabyte for a few builds and after it failed I decided to change up to Asus. I'm very pleased with this board and if it holds up I'll always purchase Asus boards from now on.Side note, on my USB Logitech G35's I was plagued with the awful popping when playing music and was pulling my hair out trying to stop it on my previous Gigabyte board (I think it was a 770 version). I tried everything and just decided to get used to it. With this new board there is absolutely no popping whatsoever so a nice surprise there!Full specs:FX-8320M5A97 R2.0 AM3+ board8 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 DDR3Corsair TX-650Sapphire Vapor-X HD-5770 (Just ordered a Sapphire HD-7870, so hopefully it works just as good!)Intel 330 SSD 128 GBToshiba DVD burner3 Western Digital 500 GB HDs**UPDATE 12/2/2013**This motherboard has been absolutely great for me and I've been very pleased with it. I upgraded my CPU cooler from the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ to the Corsair H80 and worked around my cooling situation in my Antec 300 case with some great new fans including an Antec Spot fan directly onto my socket/VRM area. I've sort of reached a point where I can no longer increase my overclock because the motherboard(and my CPU) aren't allowing me to go any higher. Even with great thermals, I worry a little pushing this board really hard. Don't let that discourage you though, this is arguably one of the best "budget" motherboard's I've ever had.Since I've had a difficult time finding settings that work for OC'ing on this motherboard, I'll lay a few out to give anyone who is interested a starting point. I've seen people say this board will crash, burn, and melt when OC'ing so I'll sort of dispel that here.**(Obviously, overclocking your computer is at your own risk. You void warranties and risk damaging components by doing this! Please don't emulate me unless you are truly okay with any kinds of negative or positive consequences that may come about) **My settings for a decent overclock:Ai overclock tuner: ManualCPU Ratio: 22.0AMD turbo core: disabledCPU bus frequency: autoMemory frequency: 1600CPU/NB frequency: 2200HT: 2400PCIE spread and CPU spread spectrum both disabledCPU LLC: EnabledNorthbridge/cpu LLC: AutoAdjust CPU voltage manuallyCPU voltage: 1.4125Everything else set to auto. All C6/HPC/APM disabled.A manual CPU voltage of 1.4125 with LLC enabled on this board will shoot your voltage up around 1.44 or so under load with this board so be aware of the thermal commitment/power usage of that. Also, I chose to cool my VRM/socket area with the Antec Spot Cool just to be on the safe side messing with the voltages.Also, Cool & Quiet cannot be enabled when you manually adjust CPU voltages on this board (I don't really understand why). Thus, your CPU will run at full voltage regardless of load. Using my H80 the socket temperature is around 35C completely idle. Under full bore load (OCCT), I'm running about 60 C on my CPU socket and 47C on my cores. A better quality board would keep the CPU socket temperature closer to the cores, but you will pay double the price for that. The thermal limits on the FX-8320/83250 is 62C on the cores and 72C on the CPU socket. All the processors that you buy are subject to the "silicone lottery" which means some will be great overclockers and some will be terrible. These are my settings for 4.4GHz on 8 cores running stable, so yes you can OC this board and it is pretty decent at it. If you want to push your chip any harder you're probably looking at the wrong board (I would steer you towards the Asus Crosshair Formula or Asus Sabertooth motherboards)

Before I begin I would like to point out that if you are planning to buy a motherboard, or any other major purchase, it is wise to go to the manufacturer’s website and do some research. This might even cut down on negative reviews. I downloaded the manual and Quality Vendors List (QVL) from Asus ([...]) to see which CPUs and Memory that was compatible with this motherboard. Also available at the website are the latest drivers and BIOS, a short video on how to use Bios Flashback to update Bios, and much more information.Now I would like to address some of the negative and less favorable comments/reviews I have read:1) No IEEE-1394 connectors or headers: The specifications say nothing about IEEE-1394 support but reading the manual there is a statement that trying to plug an IEEE-1394 connector into a USB header will damage the motherboard.2) No USB 3.0 front panel header: It is in the manual, shows up on the motherboard diagrams and I visibly see it and clearly labeled.3) Back plate for case does not align with motherboard: I had this same problem but after replacing the six brass standoffs on my case with taller ones everything aligned perfect. This seems like a case issue and not a motherboard issue.4) No SLI support: The manual does say it only supports CrossoverX, with the crossover cable or via software.One of the things I like about this motherboard is the Bios Flashback button on the board. I ordered this mother board on a Wednesday and received it on Friday, but no CPU yet. I installed the motherboard in the case, formatted a USB thumb drive to Fat32 (on my laptop), renamed and copied the Bios update file to the thumb drive, plugged the thumb drive into the designated USB port, applied power to the motherboard, pressed the Bios Flashback button and after a few moments the bios was updated – No CPU or memory installed and Bios still updated. So I know if I ever mess up the bios I will be able to easily recover my bios. I also read you can even backup and save your Bios settings for the very purpose of recovery.The 6 Sata ports are located out of the way and don’t interfere with anything, actually the motherboard is laid out to make it easy to install most peripherals without interfering with anything else. There is one exception, I installed an Radeon HD6670 graphics card in the first PCIe x16 slot and the card does cover one of the PCIe x1 slots.I originally downloaded the updated drivers and software from Asus but I ended up installing the drivers and software form the included CD then used the Asus EZ update to update the drivers. This was far better way than my first attempt at using the downloaded drivers.Bottom line, this is an excellent motherboard for the price if not the best in this price range. It supports many of the AMD CPUs including the AMD FX-8120 I ordered for this board. The UEFI bios is extremely easy to navigated and adjust. The included driver and software disk includes very useful software, I like the Ai Suite, it even has an auto tune function to safely overclock the CPU and memory. I highly recommend this motherboard.The following are the parts I ordered for the build and they all work well together. Keep in mind that the motherboard only comes with 2 Sata III cables.AMD FX-8120 8-Core Black Edition Processor Socket AM3+ - FD8120FRGUBOXCooler Master Hyper TX3 - CPU Cooler with 3 Direct Contact Heat Pipes (RR-910-HTX3-G1)Cooler Master BladeMaster 92mm PWM High Air Flow Silent Case Fan R4-BM9S-28PK-R0 (second fan for CPU cooler – push pull configuration)PWM Y Splitter Cable Adapter (for dual CPU fan setup)Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB (2X4 GB) PC3-12800 1600mHz DDR3 240-Pin SDRAM Dual Channel Memory Kit CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9BSapphire Radeon HD 6670 1GB DDR3 HDMI/DVI-D/VGA PCI-Express Graphics Card (11192-22-20G)Corsair Builder Series CX 500 Watt ATX/EPS 80 PLUS (CX500)