ASUS M5A97 Evo – AM3+ – 970 – SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 – ATX AMD ATX DDR3 2133 Motherboards
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51hBuX8IcIL._SL160_.jpg
- Dual Intelligent Processors 2 with DIGI+ VRM – Digital Power Design
- UEFI BIOS – Flexible & Easy BIOS Interface
- Auto Tuning – Auto System Level Up
- Quad USB 3.0 & 6 x SATA 6Gb/s Support – Double Access, Double Convenience
- Quad-GPU CrossFireX Support
The ASUS M5A97 EVO AMD 970 AM3+ Motherboard features the AMD® 970 + SB950 chipset and supports the latest AMD® socket AM3+ for 8-core processors. With a new Socket AM3+, it offers usability of Socket AM3 or AM3+, allowing the user a choice of previous or current AMD CPUs.
Asus motherboard
ASUS M5A97 Evo – AM3+ – 970 – SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 – ATX AMD ATX DDR3 2133 Motherboards
List Price: $ 126.00
Price:
Great MB,
Matched this up with an AMD Phenom II 1090T Black Box Edition and an Artic Cooling Freezer 13. No problems, booted right up. The new bios is awesome! Overclocking seems to be limited only by the amount of cooling I can provide. Would recommend. My existing Windows 7 migrated to the new MB without a hitch from Microsoft. I changed MB, CPU and memory all at once, authenticated my existing Windows OS online, and changed the boot/OS drive a few days later without any issues.
Was this review helpful to you?
|This is a very nice MoBo for the price. Looking forward to Bulldozer as well.,
This is one of the few MoBo’s of AM3+ that will support Bulldozer at launch October 12. So I am very excited to get ahold of this board as I am on a budget. The bulldozer cpu’s are going to cost $249, the best one is anyway, and I figure since I was in the market for a PS3 I will just use that $249 on the new bulldozer cpu instead since 98% of my gaming time is on the computer anyway. I can not wait for October 12.
Was this review helpful to you?
|The Asus M5A97 EVO Evo Motherboard,
If You Can’t Boot:
: Before the Review:
(A quick reference for those having this trouble and need the solution)
The very first thing I want to say is to help those of you who have just installed this motherboard and are having trouble booting up. If you have a Windows 7 or Vista operating system and your booting up from your hard drive inside your case but can only get as far as the Windows logo before the screen goes black and loops back to the Asus EFI, (UEFI), screen, there is a high likelihood that the reason for this is that you’re trying to boot from a SATA setting “AHCI”.
Simply click on the “Advanced Mode” screen in the UEFI from the EZ MODE screen, click on the tab labeled “Advance”, and then click on the settings for the SATA drive options. The settings are in default as “AHCI” but to boot up you will have to switch them to “IDE”. Then just save it, close it, and reboot.
The screen will now light up with your familiar desktop icons although you should expect a lot of notification boxes, update driver boxes, and a number of reboots. As far as getting your hard drives back to an AHCI condition, (which is a little faster than IDE), don’t worry about that until you get everything else going. Then you can easily find out how to change the Windows registry so that you can then go back into the UEFI BIOS and return your SATA options to AHCI.
The Review:
This frustration happened to me, (took a lot of my time), and even though Asus does actually touch on this point 2 or 3 times in their instruction manual, I feel like they should have phrased it a little differently and in large bold type instead of the small font, (which was actually smaller than the rest of the font around it).
If any of you have read any of my other reviews in Amazon you’re likely to know that I don’t go much into specifications that are listed typically in the ad of the motherboard itself. So if you’re looking for exact specs regarding the number of USB ports, various connection capabilities, and things like that please refer to Asus’s website for the specifications.
I’m going to give this review from the point of view of someone who has never installed a new motherboard into the computer before. This is the first new motherboard I ever installed into my computer though I have moved an existing motherboard from one case to another and I’m very familiar with the processes regarding CPU, GPU, RAM etc. installation procedures.
I wish to note that before I installed this motherboard into my computer I did a lot of research and got advice from many experienced people online to reduce the possibilities of harming my hard drive, (back it up), and other hardware. I recommend this to anyone who’s planning to do this procedure. A good source is “overclock.net” for which I am a member and got almost all of my information.
A quick rundown of my system: Corsair 500R Computer Case, AMD Phenom 2×4 965 BE C3 CPU, ATI Radeon HD 5770, OCZ 700Watt PSU, Corsair Vengeance 2×4 Low Profile RAM, Corsair H100 Liquid, (closed loop), Cooling system, Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit O/S.
Installing the motherboard into the case was a matter of nine screws, (not supplied by Asus), and because it only went in one way it was really hard to make any mistakes. I did install it with the supplied I/O Panel and found that everything lined up very well if not for a little push and press persuasion for the best fit.
Aside from the user manual and that panel, Asus also supplies 2 SATA cords. This is a “no-frills” board but then for the money, what would you expect? I have to admit that I was not quite thrilled with this new “UEFI BIOS” panel at first. I was more familiar with the old-fashioned blue screen and white letters but I understand that they’re all going to this now.
I will say that once I stopped fighting it and started rolling with it instead it wasn’t that bad. But my knowledge of the more intricate settings in the BIOS is very limited and having been given all these choices to make, (or not make), made it very intimidating for me.
The end results that I got after installing this motherboard and setting things up was nothing short of fantastic!I can say without a doubt the board is worth every penny of the relatively low price I paid for the kind of results it gave me. I do strongly recommend this board for those who are on a budget but want to get some better performance and take better advantage of their perhaps, newly installed graphics cards or pc sound system.
In my case, in addition to the motherboard I also added 8 GB of the Corsair RAM I listed above. The combination of the two these additions leave me no doubt as to the reason for the fantastic results I got in my favorite hobby, (among many), Microsoft flight simulator 10.
And don’t get me started on how incredibly powerful the…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|