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: The BIOS is great! You can change virtually every single system setting thought this wonderful easy to use BIOS. Overclocking is a breeze! All you have to do is select the speed you want and ASRock does the rest. ACC worked great for me (see other thoughts). I like the VIA audio, it sounds better than realtek in my opinion.

Cons: nada

Overall Review: I paired this with an Athlon II X3 425 (2.7 ghz) and 2GB Kingston RAM DDR31600. Let me just say that this mobo allowed me to overclock that puppy to 3.6ghz and I didnt even try to go further. Also, the ACC unlocked my Athlon II X3 into a full fledged Phenom II X4 with 6MB L3 cache, and that overclocked as well. You don't need those more expensive 780 or 790 boards - this board is more than adequete for even super high end systems.

Pros: low cost 140w cpu support rock solid stable even with my fsb @ 300 4 memory sockets no onboard video to slow down chipset Works with older 20pin power supplies

Cons: no 920 or 940 cpu support but does support deneb x4 and Heka series see link below for supported cpu's http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Model=M3A770DE Second pcie slot is only 4x not 16. If you crossfire expect 20% hit on video performance over 8x or 16x in crossfire fastboot utility does not work right with windows 7 (no biggie)

Overall Review: I still gave it five stars, don't plan on crossfiring and can still upgrade later to a 4x processor with 6mg cache When they say 1600mhz is rated ram they mean it. I have some 1800mhz but can only get it to run at 1600 but I can tighten the timings. my specs Windows 7 rc regor 2.8ghz oc'd to 3.3ghz prime95 stable stock cooler 2 gigs ocz reaper ddr3 1800 @ 1600 7-7-7-24 1t HD 3870 video Windows 7 cpu score 6.3

Pros: Once you figure it out, it's awesome.

Cons: The manual doesn't describe very well on how to place pins and plugs. That is, until you look under the front cover and there it is in beautiful color. I understand why they did it is so they could put it in color without having a glossy page mid manual, but if you don't know where to look and have never done it before you will be lost for a while like me. The software disc comes with all kinds of bloatware and software. The reason I wanted to build a PC was to get rid of that stuff. You do have options to install seperate things, but they aren't described very well and I guess unless you've done this before you won't know exactly what's needed and what isn't. I just installed all the drivers and Adobe Reader.

Overall Review: This is my first build.

Pros: Nice Board and runs well. Be sure you set your memory settings in BIOS. See "other thoughts".

Cons: PCI Express X 1 slot. Bad placement on board due to Northbridge Heatsink being in the way. SATA 1 ....I pulled it off. Pulled to hard when disconnecting. Good thing I only need 2 of them.

Overall Review: I suggest for the previous owner who can't get his memory to run at 1600. Go into BIOS and uncheck the auto settings for detecting the memory speed and voltage. This fixed my problems for detecting the memory at the correct speeds.

Pros: 1.) Very cheap. 2.) accepts DDR3 1600 3.) Eats up any AM3 processor you throw at it. 4.) No video card integrated to slow down the mobo or over heating it. Yes, I said it. No video card is a good thing since it will take heat off northbridge. 5.) Lots of energy saving modes.

Cons: Needs more ports. (USB) PCI-E card slots need to spaced little bit further apart.

Overall Review: Overall, very good board. Liked the instant boot function (allows you to boot in 4 seconds but it's never really off and I didn't like that too much) until I found out that my 1000w system is on @ all times.

Pros: ACC on a budget board. ASROCK insta-boot (seriously, 4 second clean boot into windows) Energy saving software included By far the cheapest AM3 DDR3 ATX board available. Software disk had windows 7 drivers, although windows 7 already had drivers for everything (except maybe SATA because I disabled it in the bios and never tried it). I love the usage of space by not putting an expansion slot right under the main pci x16 slot.

Cons: Included port cover for the rear of the case feels like a piece of tin foil with a thin plastic over it to give support. Included sata cables and IDE cable seem very cheap

Overall Review: No onboard video: I think it's a Pro because I'm using this for gamming, but some may see it as a Con because there is no fallback if the add on video card fails. Insta-boot basically reboots your computer, and when windows is fully loaded after the reboot, then it hibernates it. The trick is that instead of writing ram to the hard drive like normal hibernation, it keeps the ram active with a trickle of power so that when you turn it on, it literally just turns on and resumes from where it left off in under 4 seconds. The reboot and hibernate happens automatically, but keep in mind total computer shutdown will take a lot longer. I have gotten it to work with windows 7 pro 64 bit. I wasn't expecting to, but I was unable to unlock the 2nd core of my sempron 140. In fact, when I turned on ACC in auto mode, the system wouldn't even post, and I had to reset the cmos. Overall very satisfied with this board, especially considering the price and Newegg's service.

Pros: This motherboard is an amazing buy! I've always been an ASUS guy, but now I'm rethinking it. This board is an overclocker's dream, especially at the bargain basement price. The number of configurable items is nothing short of astounding. It seems like you can tweak EVERY setting to a VERY fine degree. On the other hand, you can load some nice, default, tweaked profiles (or) use the included software to overclock. It also includes a very nice BIOS flash utility in the main interface making it easy to use. It was quite a bit narrower (about 2-3") than my previous board, but still fit nicely in the case. The power inputs accepted full 24-pin & 8-pin power connectors (but also runs on 20-pin & 4 pin if needed). Onboard audio is excellent. The set of powered, hybrid eSATAII/USB connectors in the back is a nice touch. Finally, the inclusion of 3 regular PCI slots along with 2 PCI-Express slots (use the green one first) makes this a very expandable and accomodating motherboard.

Cons: The CPU fan was set to the highest setting (9) by default. While that keeps it cooler, I wanted something a little quieter. Under the hardware monitoring section, I was able to set the desired fan speed to 1-2 which drastically reduced the noise until higher temps are reached. I had an odd ATAPI incompatibility error (Master) from my DVD Burner that took a few minutes to track down (it was a bad cable). Then, I had to turn off the slave IDE (to not installed) to keep the same error from showing up on the slave side.

Overall Review: If you are considering upgrading or rebuilding and want a very affordable solution, give this board serious consideration. Combined with an Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition and 4 GB G.Skill Ripjaws Low Latency RAM (item N82E16820231303 here) you have a nice, very overclockable setup for very little cash.