Pros: To begin, I have to say how well this motherboard served me from the time I was just a young man in 2013 to a slightly less young man in 2016. As I wrote in my first review on this board I just recently wrote in the beginning of March, 2016, this board never caused me problems unless I caused them. Well, speaking of never causing problems until I cause them...I killed my poor baby. Last week I received a new cooler for my FX-6300. The cooler did well, so I pushed up the clock speed. I paid close attention to my CPU temps, but I neglected my poor board! A part that HWmonitor could not name reached 85C (I only noticed this because my CPU suddenly underclocked itself while only being at 48C. so I looked at every temp in the program to find one at 85C. The board did not stop running, I never knew there would be a problem until the next day when I tried turning on my computer on to find that the board does nothing except route power to my fans.

Now, i am not trying to push the average person away from this board at all. This board is a solid, cheap board. I want to point out that I had a light overlock on this board for over two years before I killed my board with an extreme overclock. I thought too highly of this board, which is my fault. This board did not sell me "superdupper high overclocking capabilities." It was my mistake and I am going to stand by this board.

A moment of silence for this great board everyone

Cons: Still never could get my RAM speed to 1866. I will say that someone from Biostar commented stating that it should if the RAM supports the speed (it does, i guess they assumed that I tried to overclock my RAM), and I have to say how great it is that they are still supporting the board to this level in 2016 because I didn't even have to ask them.

I do want to point out to the next Biostar rep, who might find this, that I can make the RAM go to 1866 MHz, but I experience game crashes when I do.

Other Thoughts: Girls and Boys, if you plan to buy this board and overclock, keep the overclock light.

And thank you Biostar! I will be buying one of your $100-150 motherboards tonight to replace my old baby.

Minus one egg from Microsoft because their operating system locks itself to the motherboard it is activated on. Bad Microsoft, bad!

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for the kind feedback. Regarding the memory issue you are having running at 1866 speed. If you are running 2 memory sticks at 1866 with a FX cpu, there should be no problems, this is supported as stated in the manual. If you are running 4 sticks at 1866 speed, AMD does not officially support this speed due to the memory controller built into the CPU. This will be a hit or miss case, example you may have 2 same model FX cpu's but one is capable to run at 1866 speed with 4 stiicks, while the other same model cpu is not able to.

Pros: When it worked it seemed like a decent board. Paired it with an FX6300 and a GTX 960 FTW with 8gb of ram and it ran well for a few months then just died. RMA'd through Biostar which wasn't too painful. When received the RMA board it didn't look nearly as good of cosmetic condition as the one I sent in. Looked like it had been setting out on someone's workbench and kinda beat up. Didn't think much of it because as long as it worked I was ok with it. Got around to installing it and it was DOA. Will not post. Sent an email to Biostar to see what they will do. I refuse to pay shipping on an item that was DOA and already RMA'd once. Which I believe I had to pay shipping one way. When the 1st one went it took my CPU with it. It this point I think Biostar should upgrade me at no charge. They have cost my countless hours and a cpu. Which I didn't even complain about on the 1st RMA. I have 2 other builds up and running with no issues both AMD, Asrock builds with GTX 970's that run great. Pretty much everything I buy is from Newegg and they have great customer servce. They should really consider not selling Biostar anymore, well at least this board. I will give Biostar the benefit of the doubt that they may have other boards that are quality. Just doesn't appear this is one of them.

Cons: So far. Everything. We will see if Biostar or Newegg even responds to this review and tries to make things right.

Manufacturer Response:

Sorry to hear of your troubles, please contact gerry@biostar-usa.com for direct assistance.

Pros: It booted and ran most games

Cons: got hot

really hot NB heat sink idled at 86c

caused terrible micro stutter in ever game I tried

felt cheap and had to be forced into my case's standoff's

I/O shield was very poorly made and get caught on the inputs them selves

Other Thoughts: fx 6300 made the NB much hotter than the fx 8370 even though the tdp of the 8370 is higher.

I would not recommend this board to any gamer plain and simple.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer, sorry to hear of your issues, please if you are available to contact gerry@biostar-usa.com. We would like to know your configuration setup and see if we can offer some assistance to your case.

Pros: The motherboard works

Cons: This motherboard gets really hot when I OC my FX 6300 at 3.9GHz I have a Cooler Master vortex plus (CPU Cooler) and then after I play games it shuts my computer down because it was too hot. This will be my last time buying a product from Biostar.

Other Thoughts: Don't buy Biostar products.

Manufacturer Response:

Sorry to hear of your troubles, but for this configuration and overclocking experience, we do not recommend the Cooler Master Vortex series, we can recommend but the Hyper Series from Cooler Master for CPU cooling.

Pros: none

Cons: Can't plug in a regular monitor

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer. The TA970 motherboard is a discrete motherboard, it does not have graphics capabilities on it's own. You would need to add a graphics card. Please do not hesitate to contact Biostar support if you need assistance, 626-581-1055 menu 2, or email support@biostar-usa.com. Thank You.

Pros: The MB went together without any issues. It has a 8300 on it and 4 strips of Kingston memory for 32gb.A Crucial ssd --- A stock amd cooler for cpu. Video is Nvidia.Blu ray drivei LG. I like the board. Lots of usb on the back and 2 usb 3.0. Light overclock and it is running GREAT.Purchased here on newegg for a good price.------------------Had the Mb for a good year now and if is still working great

Cons: None really--It is solid and I made a nice purchase on all items on the entire computer.

Other Thoughts: A nice unit

Pros: Works great and I got my rebate so that makes it even better for the price I paid...
The Cross Fire is Nice ..
This Biostar TA970 Ver. 5.3 AM3+ Has CrossFire and the * core on my Biostar 990FXE will also work great on this one..

Cons: The Bios not mouse ready like my Biostar 990FXE , But still give you great control..
Will not do SLI , But that's great on my Biostar 990FXE Motherboard...

Pros: -Board does indeed support 140W CPUs (confirmed with Phenom x6 1400T, unlocked 840T)
-Works well with FX8320 as well.
-Yellow slots almost look UV with blue LED.
-Many features.
-Fast SATA.

Cons: -First board died due to fried CPU 4 pin connector, but Corsair (PSU manufacturer I sent the board and PSU to) said it was indeed the PSU that caused the problem.
-Doesn't have an 8 pin CPU power plug.

Other Thoughts: I would recommend this board to others, and I have indeed. Friend just bought one of these with an FX8320 and we are assembling his PC soon.

Pros: At first it ran really well, no problems what so ever.

Cons: When I decided to put a more powerful CPU in, it would no longer let me load in the BIOS setup or beeb when it boots up. I contacted BioStar to see if they could give me any suggestions. Their customer service was horrible and extremely unprofessional. they told me I should send in a RMA so they could "fix" it. I got it back almost 2 weeks later and it finally was able to enter the BIOS setup, but it still didn't beep when it booted. Just today all 6 SATA ports died! so now I'm out a computer for a while

Manufacturer Response:

Sorry to hear a problem has happened after the first RMA service. Generally if a problem happens and cannot be solved over phone or emails, then it's standard procedure to send item to Biostar to have the issue resolved. But your case if this is second RMA issue, please contact gerry@biostar-usa.com for direct support.

Pros: Stable, easy to use interface, Windows 7/8/10 drivers available at the Biostar website.

Cons: Limited overclock interface, but this board is not sold as an enthusiast board. That said, this board's auto settings voltages for DDR and CPU are entirely too aggressive. My FX-8150 was running hot for no apparent reason, I had to manually set the voltages. For the RAM, you cannot set the volts by number; you can subtract in stages from the auto. Backing down the voltages brought the system temps down and will extend the life of the system.

Spacing is NOT ideal for tall monster graphics cards like the AMD R9. Since PCI Cards are the legacy tech, why not locate those ports where PCI-Express slots usually are? This way, the mega GPUs don't block useful ports!

Other Thoughts: I got this board as part of a package deal at the Egg, but is has been really sure footed. I was intending to upgrade, but instead I will move the board, chip and cooler over to a new box and use it for my secondary comp/file server. It is simply too stable and smooth to be worth messing with.

I've been hit and miss with Biostar in the past, but I like this board for what it is, and at the price it's great for non-benchmarking builds. Whatever your level of expertise, you will need to go into BIOS and tune a few things by hand in order to get the most efficiency out of it.