Legit Reviews

I was lucky enough to win one of the AMD 965BE's during the recent Folding War!(Thank You AMD & LR)
I plan on building a mostly new system based on this CPU and would like some suggestions on a MotherBoard and Memory.

I have been an ASUS fan but, I am always open to other brands if they can match or exceed the features and quality ASUS has been putting out! The one feature that I would like is SLI.
Of course OCing features are a plus!

To the other 965BE winners......What boards & memory are you guys using?

sli kinda sucks on amd platforms now since the only nvidia chipsets are now outdated and of course there are no new ones coming. So you don't really have many choices. Your options are one of the two 980a boards in the high end. Both are about $160. The asus board uses ddr2 the msi board uses ddr3. Otherwise they're pretty equal and are solid choices.

Then there is probably your best choice the ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe 780a board. its only ~110 after rebates and is fairly feature full. Avoid the foxconn 780a board. Its had some bios issues and incompatibilities with the newer phenoms that I'm not sure ever got fixed.

Finally there's still a few 750a sli boards kicking about. They're cheap but most are pretty feature barren.

For memory I like ocz ddr2 and gskill ripjaw ddr3

Thanx mx6er2587!
You're not lieing, the pickings are slim when it comes to AMD/SLI.
I may have to give up on the idea of SLI and shoot for one of the other boards out there! After looking at the boards you suggested and a couple others, I'd have to say SLI is out but, I would like to go with DDR3 since the CPU I have is fairly current I'd like to make the rest of the system fairly current also. I like the Crosshair III Formula for its features and of course its ASUS!
I'm going to keep looking, I still have a couple weeks before I really get serious about buying anything!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131363

if sli isn't a requirement this is where my money wold go

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131627

if you really want sli, 980a isnt a bad choice, the thing is asus doesnt have it with ddr3. i would recommend the MSI NF980-G65. it has ddr3 up to 2133mhz, 3 way sli, and good cpu overclocks according to reviews. this board cannot handle extreme overclocks.

I agree with trucz. It looks like the MSI board is the only one that dos what you want.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813130236