Why are am3+ motherboards still so expensive?

[kaibsora]

So, I have 2 fx 6300s I need to test. I also need to set one up as a media/raid solution. Looking around on Ebay, a 970 chipset mobo doesnt go for less than 50 dollars, with 990 boards still ranging in the 100s. Does the 990fx boards have more sata ports? Or is it really just more "gaming/overclocking" features? The reason I'm using the 6300 for nas is because I have all the parts already minus mobo

[Bananasplit_00]

its because the 990 boards dont always go up in a fireball when you put the 9000 chips in them

[kaibsora]

9 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

its because the 990 boards dont always go up in a fireball when you put the 9000 chips in them

XD I agree with that. And how useless they were. Does that chipset have more sata ports? Or?

[Bananasplit_00]

4 minutes ago, kaibsora said:

XD I agree with that. And how useless they were. Does that chipset have more sata ports? Or?

they came with better power components and VRM cooling, im no AM3+ expert thats just what i remember off the top of my head. probably also had something to do with PCIe lanes and Xfire/SLI support and all that

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, kaibsora said:

XD I agree with that. And how useless they were. Does that chipset have more sata ports? Or?

MOre pcie lanes. Faster HT bus,  Quad gpu support.

 

Sata ports are on the south bridge, so not affected by north bridge.

 

 

[mariushm]

14 minutes ago, kaibsora said:

So, I have 2 fx 6300s I need to test. I also need to set one up as a media/raid solution. Looking around on Ebay, a 970 chipset mobo doesnt go for less than 50 dollars, with 990 boards still ranging in the 100s. Does the 990fx boards have more sata ports? Or is it really just more "gaming/overclocking" features? The reason I'm using the 6300 for nas is because I have all the parts already minus mobo

The 990 chipsets were used mostly on higher end boards with crossfire and SLI (because you had to pay for SLI license and have 2 x pci-e x16)

The 970 and SB950 pair is more common, and should be available in higher volume.

On the middle, you'll have 970 combined with the cheaper southbridges like SB710 and the other one I forget now, between SB710 and SB950

And on the cheaper end, you have the budget pair 760g + SB 710 chipset, which will be perfectly fine for your FX 6300 processors, but you won't have USB 3 , SATA 6 gbps, unless the motherboard maker added them separately.

This chipset is still available because of the integrated graphics (in chipset) which made it popular for office machines and cheap stuff.

 

So I'd say stop looking for 990 chipset as it's not really needed.  You'll find plenty with 970 + SB950 or SB710 chipset.

They won't be super cheap as the boards are big and cost money to ship.

 

[Zando_]

It'd be the same as any other overclockable platform, the best in socket CPUs (and then usually the next CPU down) stay expensive, as do the better OCing motherboards. Due to a smaller supply and guys who are really into OCing want them and will often pay a lot for them. 

[kaibsora]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

The 990 chipsets were used mostly on higher end boards with crossfire and SLI (because you had to pay for SLI license and have 2 x pci-e x16)

The 970 and SB950 pair is more common, and should be available in higher volume.

On the middle, you'll have 970 combined with the cheaper southbridges like SB710 and the other one I forget now, between SB710 and SB950

And on the cheaper end, you have the budget pair 760g + SB 710 chipset, which will be perfectly fine for your FX 6300 processors, but you won't have USB 3 , SATA 6 gbps, unless the motherboard maker added them separately.

This chipset is still available because of the integrated graphics (in chipset) which made it popular for office machines and cheap stuff.

 

So I'd say stop looking for 990 chipset as it's not really needed.  You'll find plenty with 970 + SB950 or SB710 chipset.

They won't be super cheap as the boards are big and cost money to ship.

 

I've noticed that the Asus tuf 990fx board has 8 sata ports. Would there be a board/chipset from am3+ that would have the same/more? I'm trying to set this up as a storage medium and have 6 hdds that's going in a freenas setup. I would like to have a ssd as a cache drive, but dont know if it would just be cheaper just to add a sata pcie adapter and insert it

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, kaibsora said:

I've noticed that the Asus tuf 990fx board has 8 sata ports. Would there be a board/chipset from am3+ that would have the same/more? I'm trying to set this up as a storage medium and have 6 hdds that's going in a freenas setup. I would like to have a ssd as a cache drive, but dont know if it would just be cheaper just to add a sata pcie adapter and insert it

Can't just get a PCIe to SATA card? Should be cards that can handle raid and everything and have multiple SATA ports. 

[kaibsora]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Can't just get a PCIe to SATA card? Should be cards that can handle raid and everything and have multiple SATA ports. 

I dont want a card to manage the raid, and I'll need multiple of them to manage at least 8 drives and most sata pcie devices only do 4 per card unless you can show me one that's budget friendly and is sata6g and or compatable with SAS drives

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, kaibsora said:

I dont want a card to manage the raid, and I'll need multiple of them to manage at least 8 drives and most sata pcie devices only do 4 per card unless you can show me one that's budget friendly and is sata6g and or compatable with SAS drives

6-8 port SATA III (6Gbps) PCIe cards are $40-60 on amazon. 

[kaibsora]

7 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

6-8 port SATA III (6Gbps) PCIe cards are $40-60 on amazon. 

I'll have to look that up. Any thoughts on the msi 970a-g43 motherboard for 50 bucks on ebay?

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, kaibsora said:

I'll have to look that up. Any thoughts on the msi 970a-g43 motherboard for 50 bucks on ebay?

Too expensive. 4+1 phase VRM for TDPs up to 125W (not much if FX CPUs eat anything close to the power I've heard they consume), and it was already under $100 new: https://www.techpowerup.com/219437/msi-intros-970a-g43-plus-socket-am3-motherboard

 

$50 for a board from a dead platform that's a meme is too much, it should be $20 at most. The high end chipset boards are the only thing that deserve to hold their value slightly, that and maybe a top end CPU or two, but even the good ones can be found for cheap brand new (same as how on X58 a good mobo can go for $125-250 or more depending on the model, but even the best in socket CPU is only $60). 

EDIT: only one PCIe x16 and then an x4 as well. You want two x16s or at least an x16 and x8. 

[kaibsora]

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Too expensive. 4+1 phase VRM for TDPs up to 125W (not much if FX CPUs eat anything close to the power I've heard they consume), and it was already under $100 new: https://www.techpowerup.com/219437/msi-intros-970a-g43-plus-socket-am3-motherboard

 

$50 for a board from a dead platform that's a meme is too much, it should be $20 at most. The high end chipset boards are the only thing that deserve to hold their value slightly, that and maybe a top end CPU or two, but even the good ones can be found for cheap brand new (same as how on X58 a good mobo can go for $125-250 or more depending on the model, but even the best in socket CPU is only $60). 

EDIT: only one PCIe x16 and then an x4 as well. You want two x16s or at least an x16 and x8. 

Then I'm at a huge loss. I dont want to spend 80 bucks on something that old that I also have to buy a cooler for. I'm better off buying a xeon ivy/sandy bridge board and going from there. If there is a reputable motherboard for 50 bucks somewhere to finish this nas that you know of let me know. I literally can buy an entry level am4 board for that price. The problem is I have like 16gb of ddr3 to spare already. And ddr4 should be going in my gaming rig Thanks for the help

Edited September 10, 2019 by kaibsora

[mariushm]

You won't find a lot of boards with more than 4-6 SATA slots... you'll get 4 or 6 from chipset, and 2 extra SATA ports from an extra sata controller. You won't be able to use RAID or some fancy features with it anyway..

 

Here's some good deals on eBay

 

33-34$ (sold from China) Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2  (and other sellers, search for the model)

1. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Socket-AM3-AM3-For-AMD-DDR3-Gigabyte-GA-78LMT-S2-Motherboard-760G-DDR3/283597156791

2. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Socket-AM3-AM3-GA-78LMT-S2-For-Gigabyte-AMD-DDR3-Motherboard-760G-USB2-0-16G/183900608662

6 sata , integrated graphics in chipset, supports up to 8 core fx series

 

37$ (shipping included, china seller) : ASUS M5A78L-M LX3 : https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-M5A78L-M-LX3-PLUS-AM3-AMD-760G-Motherboard-M5A78LMLX3-plus-MicroATX/142742693191

4 sata ports only though.

 

A 4 sata port card is as low as 15-20$ at newegg or other places ... you can get 8 port SAS/SATA cards on eBay for 30-40$ + cable cost ..

ex 1: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-LSI-SAS-9217-8i-HBA-6GB-s-PCIe-RAID-card/202753521259

ex 2: https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-SAS-9210-8i-OEM-for-DELL-SAS-HBA-RAID-CARD-6Gb-s-SAS2-SATA3-8-PORT-YCKHM/202681679974

 

or you can go with a HBA card with 8 ports from stores, ex 63$ for card and SATA breakout cables: https://www.unixplus.com/collections/raid-controllers/products/refurbished-lsi-9210-8i-8-port-6gb-s-sas-2-zfs-jbod-it-mode-hba?variant=6452682063899

 

The cables are standard .. SFF-8087  to 4xSATA ... cheap, 5-10$ each.

[Zando_]

5 minutes ago, kaibsora said:

Then I'm at a huge loss. I dont want to spend 80 bucks on something that old that I also have to buy a cooler for. I'm better off buying a xeon ivy/sandy bridge board and going from there. If there is a reputable motherboard for 50 bucks somewhere to finish this nas that you know of let me know. I literally can buy an entry level am4 board for that price. The problem is I have like 16gb of ddr3 to spare already. And ddr4 should be going in my gaming rig Thanks for the help

If you have spare DDR3, just yoink a 5520 SuperMicro board and a Xeon, X5650s are cheap and the 3Ghz or so X5670 is around $12-15. They can run dual or triple channel DDR3, usually have a few PCIe slots and should be cheap. The X58 OC boards are the ones that stay expensive. 

Hell I've got a server board sitting around with a cheap quad core in it and 24GB ECC Registered RAM (dirt cheap due to not being compatible with X58, but hella dank for home servers), IDK what the PCIe config is on that, can take a look at it tonight. 

[kaibsora]

10 minutes ago, mariushm said:

You won't find a lot of boards with more than 4-6 SATA slots... you'll get 4 or 6 from chipset, and 2 extra SATA ports from an extra sata controller. You won't be able to use RAID or some fancy features with it anyway..

 

Here's some good deals on eBay

 

33-34$ (sold from China) Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2  (and other sellers, search for the model)

1. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Socket-AM3-AM3-For-AMD-DDR3-Gigabyte-GA-78LMT-S2-Motherboard-760G-DDR3/283597156791

2. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Socket-AM3-AM3-GA-78LMT-S2-For-Gigabyte-AMD-DDR3-Motherboard-760G-USB2-0-16G/183900608662

6 sata , integrated graphics in chipset, supports up to 8 core fx series

 

37$ (shipping included, china seller) : ASUS M5A78L-M LX3 : https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-M5A78L-M-LX3-PLUS-AM3-AMD-760G-Motherboard-M5A78LMLX3-plus-MicroATX/142742693191

4 sata ports only though.

 

A 4 sata port card is as low as 15-20$ at newegg or other places ... you can get 8 port SAS/SATA cards on eBay for 30-40$ + cable cost ..

ex 1: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-LSI-SAS-9217-8i-HBA-6GB-s-PCIe-RAID-card/202753521259

ex 2: https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-SAS-9210-8i-OEM-for-DELL-SAS-HBA-RAID-CARD-6Gb-s-SAS2-SATA3-8-PORT-YCKHM/202681679974

 

or you can go with a HBA card with 8 ports from stores, ex 63$ for card and SATA breakout cables: https://www.unixplus.com/collections/raid-controllers/products/refurbished-lsi-9210-8i-8-port-6gb-s-sas-2-zfs-jbod-it-mode-hba?variant=6452682063899

 

The cables are standard .. SFF-8087  to 4xSATA ... cheap, 5-10$ each.

This helped me alot. As long as the onboarding SATA is 6gbps or sata 3 it works for me if it has 6. You said that the 78L board has onboarding graphics? Meaning I can use that pcie for the sas/sata hba? If itll work fine with the fx 6300 that might be the way I go. Thanks for your help on the hba part as well! Very awesome. I used to own a poweredge r420 and it sucked on the internal raid card. Wouldnt even be recognized by anything but windows because it was "fake raid" and then I had a sata expander card for tower use and it turned out to be only sata 2. It blows. 

9 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

If you have spare DDR3, just yoink a 5520 SuperMicro board and a Xeon, X5650s are cheap and the 3Ghz or so X5670 is around $12-15. They can run dual or triple channel DDR3, usually have a few PCIe slots and should be cheap. The X58 OC boards are the ones that stay expensive. 

Hell I've got a server board sitting around with a cheap quad core in it and 24GB ECC Registered RAM (dirt cheap due to not being compatible with X58, but hella dank for home servers), IDK what the PCIe config is on that, can take a look at it tonight. 

This convolutes what I already have. I'm all for the x5650s though. Reliable and I will be using the server for vm use as well, so this might be the solution. Thanks for checking for me. 

[Zando_]

Just now, kaibsora said:

This convolutes what I already have. I'm all for the x5650s though. Reliable and I will be using the server for vm use as well, so this might be the solution. Thanks for checking for me. 

I've been big on X58 for a while now, it's a fun platform and due to how cheap server hardware is it's great for smaller servers. @TopHatProductions115 would be another great source, they've tracked down some socket I never heard of that runs 10c/20t Westmere-EP CPUs (highest on LGA1366 is 6c/12t), IDK how affordable those are though. But if you want to run anything that needs lots of ports and/or cores/threads, older server hardware is usually affordable. Due to the fact they use it for years and then upgrade a ton of stuff at once, stuff 2-3 gens back usually floods the market and drives down prices. 

[kaibsora]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

I've been big on X58 for a while now, it's a fun platform and due to how cheap server hardware is it's great for smaller servers. @TopHatProductions115 would be another great source, they've tracked down some socket I never heard of that runs 10c/20t Westmere-EP CPUs (highest on LGA1366 is 6c/12t), IDK how affordable those are though. But if you want to run anything that needs lots of ports and/or cores/threads, older server hardware is usually affordable. Due to the fact they use it for years and then upgrade a ton of stuff at once, stuff 2-3 gens back usually floods the market and drives down prices. 

Yup. It's why you can get a r710 on Ebay for like 130 shipped. The 5650s will always hold a spot in my heart as I work in a data center and they are still very capable cpus

[Zando_]

Just now, kaibsora said:

Yup. It's why you can get a r710 on Ebay for like 130 shipped. The 5650s will always hold a spot in my heart as I work in a data center and they are still very capable cpus

Hell yeah. I've had one and it was pretty nice, mostly had X5670s and 75s though due to them having unlocked multipliers and usually being slightly better bins for overclocking. The X5690s are the absolute nicest CPUs, but they're usually around $60 each so they don't offer the best value. 

Also don't forget dual socket boards if you need more threads or throw away all your money on an SR-2 and OC

[kaibsora]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Hell yeah. I've had one and it was pretty nice, mostly had X5670s and 75s though due to them having unlocked multipliers and usually being slightly better bins for overclocking. The X5690s are the absolute nicest CPUs, but they're usually around $60 each so they don't offer the best value. 

Also don't forget dual socket boards if you need more threads or throw away all your money on an SR-2 and OC

You see this is budget friendly right  

 

Alot of the dual socket mobos are eatx and I'm trying to repurpose a deep cool tesseract case that's atx. So supermicro is kinda out of it. 

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, kaibsora said:

You see this is budget friendly right  

 

Alot of the dual socket mobos are eatx and I'm trying to repurpose a deep cool tesseract case that's atx. So supermicro is kinda out of it. 

I think they're usually SSI EEB, bit bigger than EATX. EATX mobos on the smaller side can be stuffed in ATX cases, but the dual sockets would be the biggest the form factor allows so RIP, single CPU it is. 

Also lol speaking of board sizes, the SR-2 is about as big as an S340 Elite good gosh I need to actually use mine smh I paid a uh... yes I paid monies for it and I haven't used it yet but I can confirm it was not budget friendly

 

That bastard @WhisperingKnickers scored his in full working order for only $250 though  
Fit his in an ATX case as well IIRC, but I think a dremel was involved in that fiasco... 

[kaibsora]

10 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

I think they're usually SSI EEB, bit bigger than EATX. EATX mobos on the smaller side can be stuffed in ATX cases, but the dual sockets would be the biggest the form factor allows so RIP, single CPU it is. 

Also lol speaking of board sizes, the SR-2 is about as big as an S340 Elite good gosh I need to actually use mine smh I paid a uh... yes I paid monies for it and I haven't used it yet but I can confirm it was not budget friendly

 

That bastard @WhisperingKnickers scored his in full working order for only $250 though  
Fit his in an ATX case as well IIRC, but I think a dremel was involved in that fiasco... 

250??! That's a steal! Still need to pay 450 for the CPU too xp

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, kaibsora said:

250??! That's a steal! Still need to pay 450 for the CPU too xp

Aha but you can get X5675s for $30 each, total for the package, then OC those suckers 

That's what I have, but I haven't bothered to track down coolers other than some CoolerMaster ones, which are epic coolers but good lord is the mounting system garbage. Sticking your hand in a blender is probably nicer than trying to use that mounting system, really should get Noctua ones and the LGA 1366 bracket, but expense 

[mariushm]

15 minutes ago, kaibsora said:

This helped me alot. As long as the onboarding SATA is 6gbps or sata 3 it works for me if it has 6. You said that the 78L board has onboarding graphics? Meaning I can use that pcie for the sas/sata hba? If itll work fine with the fx 6300 that might be the way I go.

Board is Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2  : https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-78LMT-S2-rev-11#ov

Yes, it does have integrated graphics in the northbridge ... for a server it's good enough.

I'm not 100% sure you can use the pci-e x16 slot for things other than video cards, but I think you can.

Even if you can't, you can plug cards in the pci-e x1 slot (even pci-e x4 or x8 can be plugged in the x1 slots with pci-e risers, but you get less bandwidth)

The board's SATA ports are maximum 3 gbps , limitation of the SB 710 chipset.

 

Remember these are shipped from China, it may make more sense to just eat the loss and get something more expensive from US seller , or spend ~50$ buying board from Newegg instead of waiting 1-2 weeks for one of these boards to arrive.

 

example us seller 50$ , 6 sata ports etc: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-M5A78L-M-PLUS-USB3-760-AMD-AM3-mATX-DDR3-Gaming-Motherboard-B/123629929939