Motherboard Compatibility with AMD fx8350 chip

[sunrunner]

I'm interested in putting together an entire computer system for Ubuntu 16.04 using the fx8350 processor and the R9 380 gpu. Mostly what I want to use this computer for is writing software for data-warehousing, data mining, and data modeling. I'm having difficulty trying to determine what motherboard to buy. I've posted the question on other forums and received mostly answers of ASUS Sabertooth or ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z .The problem I have with ASUS is they seem to be having severe quality control issues in all their boards that support the AMD chipset. The Sabertooth seems more promising but the one design feature I don't like is the one short pci-e slot they include is right next to the pci-e slot for the graphics card and it looks like if I put the R9 380 gpu on the board I will lose that short pci-e slot. I've also had suggestions for ASRock. I'm not familar with that manufacturer so it is difficult to know how AMD-VI compatible those boards are. I tried using a GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3P (rev. 2.0) board which posted a ton of AMD-VI errors, refused to support USB 2.0 and internet connection until I turned the IMMOU feature on and couldn't get the USB 3.0 ports to work at all.

Does anyone know of a more modern motherboard that supports Ubuntu 16.04 well, and that works with an AMD fx8350 without causing excess error messaging or functionality failure? Although I would like to stick to an AMD CPU, would it be wiser to switch to an Intel based processor and motherboard for better compatiblity between motherboard and chip? I've used AMD for years with very few problems but am willing to switch to Intel if it makes choosing a CPU chip and motherboard easier.

[Fanboy80]

The problem I have with ASUS is they seem to be having severe quality control issues in all their boards that support the AMD chipset.

What are those quality control issues? Could you be more specific about it? Asus is a better manufacturer than Asrock and Gigabyte imho. What virtualization software do you use?
I have an old ASUS motherboard with AMD 760G chipset + AMD FX-8350 and everything is hunky-dory.

Asrock is somehow related to ASUS I don't know the details but I my personal experience was not that good with Asrock boards.

[sunrunner]

Please note in the past I've had others build computers for me. I currently live in a technology desert where I find no one who can do such tasks. So I need to do this myself or outsource the build out of state. Between those two choices I rather do it myself and learn something new.

In concerns to quality control issues that are concrete in nature:
1. Documentation: Originally I planned to purchase either the ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 or ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z. I wanted to know what memory to put on either board. I downloaded the manuals for both plus the memory chip recommendations. Both were severely out date. It looks like the motherboards have been updated but the documentation is from the first version in 2011-2012. Either the chips recommended were not being produced anymore or difficult to find. For me this is hard to take because I write my own software that others depend on and my documentation has to be up to the minute. By the way I don't use virtualization. Currently I develop on an ASUS M5A97 R2.0 with a 8350 chip and an old MSI AMD 7600 series video card (before AMD renamed all the chipsets) using Lubuntu 15.10. The card has problems with the new AMDGPU driver which is why I cannot update to 16.10
2. Tech Support. Because I read in both manuals that these boards would be prone to damage if the wrong memory chips are placed in, I compiled a list of chips I felt had the same specs as the chips listed on the ASUS website approved vendor list documentation and sent it off to tech support.. Furthermore I inquired about the IMMOU support in either board. In concerns to the memory chips the response I got back is that they may work or they may not. For an out of production product I would accept that answer but not one still being manufactured. In terms of IMMOU support they say ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z had a bad batch go out where the IMMOU was not working properly.

Less concrete in nature but issues of concern based on comments from Amazon and Newegg:

1. ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 or ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z have problems recognize this particular drive as bootable :SanDisk SSD PLUS 2.5" 480GB SATA II Wouldn't you know it that is one of the drives I was going to put in it. I dread having to write back to ASUS tech support asking if a different drive will be recognized as a boot drive.
2. I had an issue with a Gigabyte 970A-DS3P that the IMMOU and the AMD-VI tables were not working correctly. IMMOU was not recognizing USB 3.0 ports or my internet connection and AMD-VI tables were spitting out error messages that entries could not be found. There are several comments on the NewEgg and Amazon that both are not working correctly with the . ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 or ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z. From what I've researched both these boards are supposed to be really good in concern to supporting AMD chips. What is really concerning is a lot of these errors have been posted within the last 3 months on Amazon and NewEgg.

3. Again in recent months I've been seeing comments about 1/3 of the motherboards of model ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z have stopped working due to memory chip errors within 4 months of purchase.

Again less concrete in nature, other forums that I have posted the question.

1. Several have replied that older ASUS boards were of much higher quality than newer ones. I've also read this from several comments on the ASUS forum themselves. I've been using ASUS boards for over 15 years with no problems at all so it is hard for me to believe it also.

The bottom line is that I really don't care what motherboard I put in as long as it works and performs well with the 8350 chip. The issue I've had of why I wouldn't want to continue using the M5 board for the new computer is that it is getting older and I want to find out in newer boards what will work. I've been working with FX8350 for a long time and am surprised at the amount of comments I'm finding about the problems that are occurring with the newer motherboards that support them. I'm not all that familiar with Intel Haswell or Skylake architecture so it would be much easier to stay with Pile Driver because I have quite a few libraries that access the 8350 internal registries for various functions I use. What I cannot tolerate is grub2 or lubuntu throwing out a bunch of error messages that interfere with the productivity of the code I write. It’s specifically why I don’t use virtualization. Unfortunately all kinds of interesting artifacts can show up. Some you can live with and some you can’t. It’s just easier to have 1 pc with 3 hard drives partitioned with different distros of linux to insure quality control of the things I do.

[Fanboy80]

1. I checked the memory compatibility lists of the mainboards you mentioned and they are indeed very old. On the other hand the documentation for my very old M5A78LMUSB3 is up to date (http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/.../HelpDesk_QVL/). That's quite odd lol. There even were BIOS updates till 2015 if I remember correctly.
I recently upgraded/replaced my RAM with the Crucial BLT2KIT8G3D1869DT1TX0 (2x8GB 1866MHz Kit) the module type is listed in the compatibility list.

2. AMDGPU is still new and should be considered experimental, if you want to use OSS drivers use the radeon module.

3. SSD incompatibilities are mostly caused by a faulty controller on the SSD. I couldn't find out what controller Sandisk uses on their SSDs they don't mention it in their specs, that is not a good sign. Besides that you can't boot from every SATA port on some mainboards these days, some ports just can't be used for booting and any device connected to such a port won't be listed in the BIOS in any way. You have to check the manual first. This may be different if the mainboard has UEFI but I dont know for shure.

If data security is that important to you, then you should get workstation/server hardware with ECC capability. Compatibility lists of those consumer/gamer products never have been good and never will be.

I would suggest that you try out lots of Linux distros (after checking out their concepts of course) and find one that suits you best AND gives you the most freedom. Accumulate as much knowledge about Linux and all it's components as possible. To be honest I hate Ubuntu and most of it's derivates there are better distros out there imho.

[sunrunner]

I think the overall concern here is that I've never really put together an entire computer system together. All these parts and components seem to be a mishmash of semi cohesive engineering. I rely on these machines heavily and am concerned with all these choices that are available and the numerous opinions both pro and con.

From my research and talking to various tech supports, because AMD does not release with such frequency as Intel new product. Most manufacturer's resources are being prioritized toward the Intel side of new production products. The only major releases within the last year from AMD that I could see are graphic card chip sets to cater to the gaming community which appears to have taken over the current purchasing PC Market.

Many of the issues both you and I bring up appear to me to be part of the lack of research to keep Asus motherboards (and other AMD based motherboards) current with newer hardware standards. The other trend I notice is that hard core gamers are buying AMD and Intel chips, over clocking both CPU and Memory to the max, causing their boards to blow out and then writing bad reviews that the boards don't hold out.

All that being said I received an interesting reply from the UK yesterday. The person was in a similar situation as me where he used to outsource all his hardware builds and then found it impractical to do so more recently. Similarly he found the motherboards to be the most difficult part of the process to identify of that which is the best to buy. His solution was to buy the best of the least expensive, the best of the middle of the road, and the best of the best that could be afforded. His premise is that one of them will work so well I won't believe it. To reduce costs he bought as many cross compatible components as possible that could be shared. Every time he needs to refresh his technology stock this works for him well. At first I was a little skeptical about this approach due to cost but as the day goes on it makes more sense to proceed in this fashion.

In concerns to Linux Distros I like Ubuntu because if there is a challenge on the horizon that I need to know about, that distro breaks more quickly than others. Furthermore I use Arch Linux, Fedora and Mint. For my purposes I've found each of these adequate for the purposes I need. To be honest Arch Linux is my favorite but I do distribute customized live cd (actually dvd's and flash drives) so booting from these devices is a critical functionality that any motherboard must support. Since many of my distributes are much more responsive to a user friendly GUI than a command line or bare bones interface Ubuntu works well in this respect.

Although I never really thought I would wind up building my computer from a test bench, it seems the best approach for me. Although more costly what this does is bring the process back into control which is more important. Finally I believe that I can order parts and have a build methodology which will get me to my final goal of a working PC that will be the base build for the next four years unless AMD decides to discontinue the fx 8350 in that time period.

[Fanboy80]

AMD will release their ZEN architecture at the end of this year (they will introduce new GPUs some time sooner too). The new CPUs will have a new socket and they will use DDR4 RAM. So you will need a new mainboard anyway. I wouldn't buy a new PC right now, but that's me. Who knows what new flaws and bugs the brand new system will have. The old platform is practically dead already.

[sunrunner]

I've read several articles about the ZEN architecture and had no idea AMD was suffering so badly in the marketplace. I generally replace my equipment every 4 years and don't spend much time keeping up with the latest and greatest until then.

Right now I am still interested in putting together my own PC but believe it would be smarter to go with Intel architecture. Since there have been so many complaints about the recent AMD based motherboards it seems a new Intel build would serve two purposes. One would be giving me the opportunity to build a computer from scratch, which I have never done, and a secondary implementation of my software on a different platform. If this Zen architecture is more hype than fact at least I’ve got myself covered. The Haswell architecture is similar to the Pile Driver so I’m hoping porting won’t be too painful.

I have never been disappointed with the FX8350 nor have I read many bad reviews about the chip itself. The only real complaint has been the cooling fan is too loud which I compensated for by planning to purchase a third party unit.

I haven't used Intel in a long time but it will give me an opportunity to see how well it works with my Linux Distros. From my research ASUS Intel based motherboards are close to a 80% full satisfaction rate while AMD based ASUS motherboards are closer to 59%. What is more is disturbing is that AMD based ASUS motherboards have a total dissatisfaction rate of 20% while those of Intel have a 2% total dissatisfaction rate. I'm still not totally giving up on AMD or ASUS but for now it wouldn't make sense to invest in this technology until AMD’s new platform can be evaluated. From what I’ve read it addresses many of the issues I’ve been describing as being problematic with the current motherboard technology base. Although I plan on buying an ASUS motherboard for my Intel implementation. One thing ASUS offers which other manufacturers are boards which are less themed for gaming. Although some of these themes are quite colorful I prefer performance over looks.

At this point I believe there is enough information from the various sources I’ve contacted to move on. Right now waiting is not an option and I have to make the best decision I can based on the facts obtained.

[Melcar]

AM3+ is really old, so it's no surprise that documentation is outdated. Even worse is that Asus is really bad about providing long term support for most of their stuff. Still, their higher end stuff is good and the Sabertooth (I'm using one right now) works rather well. Biggest gripe I have is that most of its sensors are not detected by any version of lm-sensors. If you really want to go for an AM3+ system this board is one of the better ones.

[sunrunner]

Old does not matter to me as much as long as it works for the purpose intended. I've been using the fx8350 chip set with an ASUS M5 series board for roughly 3.5 years with zero problems. This reply is being done on an old Athlon 64x2 4200. It runs on an ASUS board of which I don't remember model but was used heavily during it's glory days. It has never been upgraded with the exception of multiple hard drives and video cards that died on it over the years. Eventually it will die and one of the older computers that are around will take it's place but until then it works very well for this purpose.

The comments I've made are based on my research and the input I've received from various forums of owners of both AMD and the motherboards that support those products. There has definitely been a downturn in the amount of satisfaction in the last five months of both AMD and the other manufacturers who support them with motherboards. For me I need to know today the quality of the products I buy. Before the beginning of the year it seemed most of the research showed a typical amount of dissatisfaction but not what is going on today where many people are giving out warnings about these products quality control and the service provided around them.

You could in the US account this to quality control due to heavy unexperienced outsourcing, Father and Mother day holiday builds or the new Zen platform that is coming out later this year. But this level of dissatisfaction does not show up anywhere near on the Intel side. Especially of note the Intel version of the Sabertooth gets a much higher rating than the AMD version. But the AMD version of the Sabertooth gets the highest rating of all from the AMD motherboards I've looked at and the least complaints (Again within the last five months).

The one question I've asked over and over again which I cannot get a uniform answer on either the AMD version of the Asus Crosshair-V or the Sabertooth is whether or not the internet RJ-45 jacks, USB 2.0 and the USB 3.0 connections work without turning on IMMOU. If you do have to use IMMOU do those functions work? It seems USB 2.0 and the internet connections come on with the 990 chipset but there are still problems with USB 3.0. I don't mind little quirks in these products that can be lived with but I do a large amount of backups and exclusively us USB 3.0 for faster transfer speeds. It is inconceivable that I am considering buying the best two boards rated out there for the AMD chipset at this time and have to wonder if USB 3.0 is going to work. Especially when the ASUS M5A97 R2.0, which is currently what I am using, has had no issues with USB 3.0 Even worse ASUS M5A97 R2.0 is half to three quarters of the money of the other boards.

[grndzro]

What are those quality control issues? Could you be more specific about it? Asus is a better manufacturer than Asrock and Gigabyte imho. What virtualization software do you use?
I have an old ASUS motherboard with AMD 760G chipset + AMD FX-8350 and everything is hunky-dory.

Asrock is somehow related to ASUS I don't know the details but I my personal experience was not that good with Asrock boards.

Asrock are now a decent brand. Their motherboards past revision 4 are really good.

My past experiences with Asus have shown me that they are not afraid to incorporate nonstandard technologies that don't work all that well. Sorry but I don't trust Asus. I'd go with MSI/Gigabyte/Asrock over Asus any day of the week.