So to summarize, what *should* I get??

I dont care about 1 or 2 PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots.. Make sense, I wont run SLI or whatever anyways... But the board has to support my existing hardware (8GB DDR3 RAM dual channel G Skill, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 CPU & the Zotac GT440)

Price no longer matters... if Im going to buy crap for 80-90 might as well spit an extra 25-30 and get something decent that will last and avoid the hassle all over again...

The store has these in stock (all below $120). From their stock, I've filtered out the boards with the 760 & 880 chipsets and got this list:

ASROCK AM3 N68-VS3 UCC NF630A $50.47
ASROCK AM3+ N68-VS3 FX NF630 $56.65
GIGABYTE AM3+ GA-970A-D3 AMD970 $97.85
ASUS AM3+ M5A87 AMD870 $101.97
ASUS AM3+ M5A97 AMD970 $101.97
ASUS AM3 M4A87TD EVO AMD870 $108.15
MSI AM3 NF750-G55 NF750A PCIE $108.15
ASUS AM3 M4A87TD/USB3 AMD870 $112.27
GIGABYTE AM3+ GA-970A-UD3 AMD970 $118.45

Not sure which one... The GA-970A-UD3 is in the list, but the most expensive. Ive had very good experience with Gigabyte in the past... Should I venture there again?

BTW, nevermind the micro-atx format.. my case can take bigger.

I would get ASUS, I've had problems with a Gigabyte board. I doubt it is worth the price. I also recommend a standard ATX format, because I've found that larger boards are less cramped and easier to work with and also cooler (less hot) because they are less cramped. Check the reviews on each mobo, I've found them quite useful.

Also, I would not get an ATI card.

Hey H_TeXMeX_H, you;re the king of slackware right ? ;)

I have a major problem with installing slack64-current without DVD and I hope you can help...

I have experienced the same problem with both a USB install and a PXE boot...

Basically, Ive used the usbboot.img file with

and then booted the machine with the USB stick. Then when I typed setup, nothing happens... I however noticed the USB external hard drive's light (a separate USB drive than the USB stick I used to boot) blinks whenever I type setup.

Then I setup the PXE boot with the files from the mirror of slack64-current Ive made and same thing.. I type setup, nothing happens.

The machine boots pefectly from the PXE server, get the pxelinux.0, I see the install messages but setup doesnt work.

Could it be a bug with the -current tree?

Asrock N68- I've got one (N68-S UCC, AM2+). All the N68 boards I've seen are horrible, some of the worst I've seen in a long time. IMO the GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a chipset is worse than the 760G/880G by a fair margin. Ruled out anyway, those boards only take up to 95watt TDP CPUs.

MSI NF750-G55- probably O.K.. I'd avoid it, but I really dont like or trust MSI. I've seen way too many MSI boards with problems over the years. The nVidia chipsets arent as good as the AMD chipsets anyway.

IMO it comes down to a choice between the M5A97, GA-970A-D3 and GA-970A-UD3.

The only thing that worries me about the M5A97 (and other newer asus boards for that matter) is that it has a rep as being very picky about RAM. There is a fair bit of GSkill RAM listed as supported by asus for the M5A97, but without knowing the exact part number for teh RAM you own I cant say for sure if it will work or not.

GA-970A-UD3 is superiour to the GA-970A-D3. Is it $20 better? If you were an overclocker, the answer is yes. For normal use? Hard to say.

If you have USB 3.0 ports on your case (unlikely) or are thinking about getting a case with USB 3.0 ports in the future, get the GA-970A-UD3. Its got an internal USB 3.0 header for connection to case USB 3.0 ports, the GA-970A-D3 doesnt. IMO the slightly better capicitors and extra copper in the 'UD3' ('ultra durable'3) boards should mean a longer lifespan. No way to guarantee that though.

No, the king would be Pat V, the BDFL of Slackware ;)

It would be better if you made a new thread for this new issue.

I've never tried pxe with -current, so I'm not sure. However, make sure to use the usbboot.img from here:
ftp://ftp.slackware.at/slackware64-c...xe-installers/
and follow the instructions there as well.

Remember that the usbboot.img doesn't contain any packages to install, so you must configure the 'network' before running 'setup'.

Just out of curiosity, which board did you end up getting?

Man, sorry for this late reply, I was in the process of doing a cleanup of my threads here at LQ and found this open thread...

I ended up getting the ASUS AM3+ M5A97 AMD970.. The local store gave me the board for $75 because I bought a Cooler master case as well...

The only advantage of replying to late is the fact that I can give accurate comments on this board. So far, the machine is pretty much on 24/7 encoding or processing, and its been running flawlessly so far.

I knew ASUS were good components but generally speaking they are a bit pricier than others.