Need help finding a type of board

[Gravemind]

I'm trying to find a Mini-ITX board compatible with an AMD AM3+ socket, linked below.

Clicky clicky

 

I'm trying to build an AMD system in the EVGA Hardon Mini-ITX Chassis.

And I'm having a hell of a time finding a board that both fits, and has the right socket type. Only found one on Amazon, and somebody said it was an old board not designed for gaming, and it was just an AM3 with a new bios on an old board. Newegg didn't have AM3+ or even AM3 socket types, and really don't want to buy used off of eBay.

 

 

Help me LTT forum trawlers, you are my only hope.

[HKZeroFive]

I believe there is no mini-ITX motherboard for the AM3+ socket.

[Gravemind]

Just now, HKZeroFive said:

I believe there is no mini-ITX motherboard for the AM3+ socket.

 

Well... shit, are you sure? I don't want a bigger board that needs a bigger, bulkier and more expensive case.

[HKZeroFive]

Just now, Gravemind said:

Well... shit, are you sure? I don't want a bigger board that needs a bigger, bulkier and more expensive case.

I am pretty sure. You can try asking around to see if there is one but I don't think they exist.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 minute ago, HKZeroFive said:

I am pretty sure. You can try asking around to see if there is one but I don't think they exist.

Smallest I'm aware of are mATX (or µATX, as I've been pointed out ), and even then you can get picky about chipset (one ASRock with 970 chipset, and the rest are AM3 motherboards from the phenom days that can also work with the FX chips).

 

16 minutes ago, Gravemind said:

And I'm having a hell of a time finding a board that both fits, and has the right socket type. Only found one on Amazon, and somebody said it was an old board not designed for gaming, and it was just an AM3 with a new bios on an old board. Newegg didn't have AM3+ or even AM3 socket types, and really don't want to buy used off of eBay.

You may have to accept that this is a >4-year old platform and counting, and going used can be the easier path for you, and also the most reasonable value as it's hard to justify the retail price of AM3s these days. For reasons unknown, though, manufacturers have released some more 970 and 990 motherboards, so you may want to try your luck at Asus/ASRock/MSI/etc websites, but as far as I know they all recycled their full ATX designs, no new form factor, and your case wouldn't even accommodate the rare mATX models.

[comicsansms]

8 minutes ago, Gravemind said:

 

Well... shit, are you sure? I don't want a bigger board that needs a bigger, bulkier and more expensive case.

They don't exist. maybe HP or some other OEM used one in a prebuilt, but they don't exist for the PC builder market.

Also note some Micro ATX motherboards are 2 PCIe slots wide, so you might be able to use a Micro ATX motherboard.

There is 5 or so AM3 mITX motherboards if you want to use the Phenom X6 1100T or similar.

[Gravemind]

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Smallest I'm aware of are mATX (or µATX, as I've been pointed out ), and even then you can get picky about chipset (one ASRock with 970 chipset, and the rest are AM3 motherboards from the phenom days that can also work with the FX chips).

 

You may have to accept that this is a >4-year old platform and counting, and going used can be the easier path for you, and also the most reasonable value as it's hard to justify the retail price of AM3s these days. For reasons unknown, though, manufacturers have released some more 970 and 990 motherboards, so you may want to try your luck at Asus/ASRock/MSI/etc websites, but as far as I know they all recycled their full ATX designs, no new form factor, and your case wouldn't even accommodate the rare mATX models.

 

I think I found a good solution in a Micro ITX board.

Should work with the processor I want and an RX 480 right?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 minutes ago, Gravemind said:

 

I think I found a good solution in a Micro ITX board.

Should work with the processor I want and an RX 480 right?

Yes, that's the ASR I had in mind, but it's not mini-ITX, but micro-ATX, so you need to double check it fits in your case.

[Gravemind]

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Yes, that's the ASR I had in mind, but it's not mini-ITX, but micro-ATX, so you need to double check it fits in your case.

 

Well, I put all my components and the new case together without any conflicts, until I realized an RX 480 needs PCI Express 3.0, and 3.0 doesn't seem terribly common in a small form factor board, or any board that supports AM3+ for that matter.

 

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

 

And I'm assuming putting a PCI 3.0 card into a PCI 2.0 slot isn't a particularly great idea.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

9 hours ago, Gravemind said:

 

Well, I put all my components and the new case together without any conflicts, until I realized an RX 480 needs PCI Express 3.0, and 3.0 doesn't seem terribly common in a small form factor board, or any board that supports AM3+ for that matter.

 

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

 

And I'm assuming putting a PCI 3.0 card into a PCI 2.0 slot isn't a particularly great idea.

It's perfectly fine, they are backward compatible. The GPU doesn't need 3.0, it will just use it if available (typically graphic cards don't exhaust the PCIe 2.0 bandwidth; 3.0 is a standard allowing for more bandwidth). I have a pair R9 280, which are also "PCIe 3.0" running in an AM3+ board with PCIe 2.0 only.

 

There's no AM3+ board with PCIe 3.0 apart from a rare version ("Gen3") of the Asus Sabertooth 990FX. The reason is that the AMD chipsets for these boards didn't have 3.0 (it wasn't a thing back then), so manufacturers would have to add their own controllers to manage it, and graphic cards don't really need it. It's becoming increasingly important for PCIe SSDs, but that's a different story.