ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Features:Price Ratio
Installation Guide*
20/24pin mobo & 4/8 CPU pin PSU compatability.
All the 'cons' of this board are ineffectual.

Someone else here said it but you CAN use an old PSU with this mobo (20pin in the 24pin mobo slot and 4pin in the 8pin CPu slot). If you do then you should be sure that all your power requirements are still met by your old PSU. Pin backwards compatibility has absolutely nothing to do with the actual power consumption of YOUR setup.

Unlocked my fourth core (which wasn't stable).

OC'd my PhenomIIX3 (720-2.8Ghz) to 4.2Ghz with factory BIOS' SmartOC to %50. Ran up to 41C stable in Mprime (Linux version of Prime95) for 4hrs but I wouldn't do that continuously without buying more cooling.

BIOS is as easy or difficult as you would like it to be.

At this time I don't think any other board supports DDR3@1600mhz & ACC in this price range.

Full Featured clocking bios to boot.

IDE/PATA support to salvage my DVDRW and data from my old PATA

Cons: They muxed their colors up in the guide. Their pictures are of purple RAM slots and they call them blue (and they are blue) but they talk (and show pictures of white/purple) about blue/white PCIe slots but they're actually green/orange.

The Orange slot. Seriously, 4x4x is a joke. Either go 8x8x (%99 performance vs 16x16x) or just don't bother with Crossfire/SLI support.

Anything going into that slot is gonna suck bandwidth from your video card. Waste of space/features for a price that could have been brought down another $10.

No one who knows what they're doing is going to use this function on this mobo. If they need/want CFX/SLI support they're going to buy a different mobo.



(Borrowing from OT space)


This is the first time I've bought a computer from scratch and also the first time I've bought a mobo (have heretofore used a lot of hand-me-down stuff).

Overall Review: I was hesitant to buy anything but Gigabyte when i went in but the price of this mobo for DDR3, BIOS OC features I couldn't resist the gamble.

It paid off. I believe ASRock is making a name for themselves and I've read some bad reviews on both Biostar and ASRock (versus significantly fewer on Gigabyte's) but I think that if ASRock plays their cards right they will be...if they already aren't...a major player on the mobo market.

Build (from Newegg):
Crucial 2x2Gb Ballistix 8-8-8-24
Powercolor passively cooled ATI3450HD
PhenomIIX3 Heka 2.8Ghz OEM

(not from newegg)
HITACHI 2Tb Sata
CoolerMaster HyperN520 (Shoulda' Coulda' Woulda' bought from newegg -$10)

Salvaged - Sony IDE DVDRW, unbranded Chassis & PSU

This entire setup runs off a salvaged 400w unbranded PSU (COLORSit?) from a local B&M M&P shop with only a single 12v 18A rail. It has so far run my old AthalonXP 1.7ghz for almost 6 years now.

All in all $520 considering I also salvaged a PSU, Chassis & Optical.

Pros: Price, Features

Cons: I initially bought 2 of these for 2 system builds. 1 worked great. The other did not. Since I was building 2 nearly identical systems I had parts to test with. All the RAM, video cards, and processors worked in 1 of the motherboards. So I was able to narrow the DOA part down to the MB. RMAd the DOA board. Got another DOA board. RMAd the second replacement DOA board. Got a third DOA board. Second and Third DOA boards were also missing the speaker in the packaging which leads me to believe Newegg is repackaging RMAs that they test that work so they send them back out. Did a few hours worth of reading and came up with this thread which I believe is my problem. http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/671217.aspx All of my DOA boards turn on. Fan on processor and video card turn on. However there is no POST or video. (Luckily I had an old speaker from another computer since the last couple boards were missing the speaker) So it seems as if I am getting an old Asrock board

Overall Review: with an old BIOS that doesnt support my Phenom 2 555 Black Edition. I just seemed to get lucky with the first board and it happened to have a newer BIOS which supported my CPU. So now it seems the only way to fix my problem is to find an old AM3 CPU that was supported by the first version of their BIOS (I have no way of verifying which BIOS is installed without video) and install it temperarily to update the BIOS so I will have support for my 555 BE. Very lame! So for 3 weeks in a row now I have told my customer his computer will be ready and it hasnt because Newegg sells ASrocks old stuff even though in their product description it says it supports the CPU I have. And 3 weeks in a row Newegg has sent other obviously returned boards (Bent corner on 1, 2 missing speakers) because I am betting their RMA dept tested them with an old processor and they checked out fine so they repackaged them and sent them out assuming we were novices for RMAing them. So back to Gigabyte.