Hello all. I'm looking for some help in choosing a new motherboard. I'm getting ready to upgrade my PC with a new CPU, Mobo and Ram. The CPU I have picked out is either going to be an AMD Phenom II X4 955 or 965, I haven't decided which yet. As for ram I would like to go DDR3 unless anyone can give me reason not to. I've got an Nvidia gtx 260 video card so I won't require the use of onboard graphics. I've also got a thermaltake toughpower 650w power supply that I'm hoping will still be sufficient for my new system. Lastly I will more than likely be installing Windows 7 64 bit, not sure if that is relevant to my question or not just figured I would mention it. I have built my last 3 systems and have always went AMD for my CPU and with an Asus mobo, but would be willing to try a different brand of mobo. Thanks in advance to anyone out there who may respond.

I am partial to MSI myself since pretty much you are wrangling a beast.  However, ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, and Foxconn have been coming out with good AMD boards, especially at the upper range.  As always the suggestion if you don't need an IGP is to get something like the AMD 790FX, or nForce 980a chipset since its high end.   Since you already have a nVidia, I suggest the 980a.  In which case there are 2 models, an ASUS and an MSI one.  I think the difference is if you want to invest into DDR3 or DDR2.  DDR3 is almost useless on AMD boards without either triple channel memory which isn't supported currently or over 1600mhz clock which also isn't usually supported.  So I would say the choice is the ASUS board at $169.99.

Biostar Tseries isn't bad, mine beein operating for a year now with out hassle.

i bought the asrock m3a790ghx/128m  . Very nice board indeed. Just make sure you do a bios update ( which is very easy with the bios windows installer).

Most brands 785 mobo will do you well, Gigabyte has been putting out good mobos the last few years as well as Asus, ASRock, MSI.. I'd go with a 785 or 790 w/SLI and keep the price reasonable.

Originally posted by hybridfury

Hello all. I'm looking for some help in choosing a new motherboard. I'm getting ready to upgrade my PC with a new CPU, Mobo and Ram. The CPU I have picked out is either going to be an AMD Phenom II X4 955 or 965, I haven't decided which yet. As for ram I would like to go DDR3 unless anyone can give me reason not to. I've got an Nvidia gtx 260 video card so I won't require the use of onboard graphics. I've also got a thermaltake toughpower 650w power supply that I'm hoping will still be sufficient for my new system. Lastly I will more than likely be installing Windows 7 64 bit, not sure if that is relevant to my question or not just figured I would mention it. I have built my last 3 systems and have always went AMD for my CPU and with an Asus mobo, but would be willing to try a different brand of mobo. Thanks in advance to anyone out there who may respond.

I went for AMD 955 BE *runs cooler than a 965 BE, less power consumption and it overclocks pretty much to the same values)and an Asus M4N72-E.

Quite good on budget and it's an SLI board. Be sure to check it out if you like Asus :)

Has integrated ethernet and some nice features overall 

BTW I'm currently using 8GB of 800mhz DDR2 and I'm running at 3.7ghz overclock and ram are at 840mhz and it's rock stable :)

I'm really not sold on the really fast and expensive RAM right now cause after doing some tests I rarely see any difference at 1920x1080 in games... (I use overclocked GTS 250 1GB in SLI btw)

Your PSU and videocard are fine unless you want to SLI that 260

I'd highly recommend the CoolerMaster V8 CPU cooler too ! I get 51 celsius under Prime95 torture test (100% usage on all 4 cores) at 3.7ghz !! :)