ASRock Micro ATX DDR3 1066 Motherboards 970M PRO3

Used in my home Linux server. Been a few months still going strong. Worked immediately with no tinkering, easy swap out for the old board. Good way to upgrade an older PC.

I purchased this board about a month ago to replace an Asus board I was having difficulties with. The Asus board could not supply enough power to the FX-6300 in my system while under load, and still had no headroom whatsoever at the stock speed. It was limited to 95 watts, the base requirement for the 6300, and would crash in any intensive games. Seeing that this board could supply 140 watts, enough for a turbo boost to 4.1-4.3 ghz, I decided to purchase it. For a month, it worked fine. Then, I started experiencing the same problems as with the previous board. In Star Wars Battlefront, the pc would crash after just 5 minutes (turbo boost disabled, cpu at stock speed). Further research indicated that the 4+1 phase power connector used by this board is a poor fit for a performance cpu like the 6300, and very few people have ever had any success with this board and the FX-6300. I am currently in the process of looking for yet another replacement. As far as the board goes in general, it will probably work fine with FX-6300 that is underclocked or just being used for light tasks and games like minecraft or TF2. With that being said, I fail to see why someone would get an FX-6300 for casual tasks, so while this is the best micro-atx board for the am3+ platform, I would not advise getting this unless you have a low-tier FX processor or an older, less demanding cpu with lower power requirements. If you are looking to build a first-time budget gaming rig with the FX-6300, I hate to break it to you, but you're going to have to get a more expensive motherboard, and those boards are all atx, and cost at least 100 US dollars. Otherwise, you'll just end up unnecessarily spending more money replacing it. UPDATE------ I have recently discovered that the aforementioned crashes were in fact due to the graphics card overheating, which was caused by my own poor arrangement of case fans. With that in mind, I once again tried tweaking the cpu settings, and, with this board, I achieved a stable 4.3 ghz clockspeed on my Fx-6300. Temperatures remained perfectly stable (on the stock cooler, I might add), and I found that I could go for several hours of gaming, and I even sucessfully tried a shirt run at 4.5 ghz. After a bit of troubleshooting, I am happy to say that my prevoius issues were resultant of my own error and forgetfulness of simple thermal physics.

Bought to replace an old Asus mobo that failed after many years. Asked Asrock support if the board could be used with linux. They said no, as no drivers were available.. Figured worth a try. to my suprise ubuntu 24.04 and 25 worked very well and are doing great. All the necessary drivers come with the distribution.. good cheap board. recommended .. for both win and ubuntu..

This board replaced a MSi 890 micro with an IGP. The 970M's processor is in the EXACT same place, so my cpu heat sink lined up with the top case opening. I use a 3 hard drive switch in a rear PCI slot to power off the OS I am not using. Now I can dual boot 7 and 10 without any blue screen. This board supports OS are XP to Win10 and Linux. It might even work for a cash register. I can OC this board, and it runs cool, with no locks or blue screens. But OC caused the BIOs to get flakey over time. After a year and a half and several BIOs resets. I went back to the Optimized defaults, for Windows 7 and 10. I left C6, and Cool and Quiet enabled. I used default/auto for most everything else. My particular DIMMS did need manual settings 9-9-9-24-39 though. I left C1E off. Since doing so, the 970M delivers ROCK STABLE operation. Day in, day out! My 8320E beginning clock is 3.2 and Turbo to 3.5, so the default clocks have enough power for light gaming and editing tools. Idle temps for core, VRM and NB less than 40C. Full load, less than 55C. I use process Lasso to switch power schemes by Idlesaver feature. The CPU and Sys Fans can be controlled by Speedfan, but you must dilly dally with the advance tab in the config of Speedfan to make it work. If you OC and it cracks up the BIOs, it can look like hardware failed. Don't panic. Do Reset CMOS. (unplug, remove battery, push power button several times, then move jumper right then back left). It may need patience, sometimes stalls after f10, push any button. It may even need F8 to get back to desktop, but once it does, it and Windows are rock stable again. I reused a Windows install, and the 10MB LAN software that you unzip on a flash drive was useful. You can go to bios and install it, so your LAN is connected for Windows Update help GPU software. I put ASRock all in one drivers on flash drive, GPU Disc in optical drive and my system hobbled to the desktop and straightened itself out after a couple of reboots. The chipset software installed itself but I had to start GPU setup. I used Autoruns to clean up old drivers.

to everyone hoping if does support PCIe x4 to PCIe x16 nvme adapters , it does just as a test to see if the nvme adapter card would actually boot , it does , but windows 10 requires a repair first windows 10 booted to main screen in 4 seconds , now mind you i am using G.skill DDR3 2400mhz ram i used this adapter card https://www.amazon.ca/EZDIY-FAB-NVME-Adapter-Express-Support/dp/B07SXGQ94F/ref=sr_1_5?crid=NZSS5EYICVFY&dchild=1&keywords=pcie+m2+nvme+adapter&qid=1608121856&sprefix=PCIe++m2+%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-5 this asus 4 nvme drive adapter card should work as well https://www.amazon.ca/M-2-X16-Expansion-V2-Supports/dp/B07NQBQB6Z/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=asus+pcie+m2+nvme+adapter&qid=1608122133&sr=8-4

***Ojo la tarjeta no trae video integrado*** Excelente tarjeta para que puedas reusar componentes de tu PC viejita. Yo le instalé un procesador AMD FX de Ocho núcleos, 32 gigas de RAM y una tarjeta gráfica DDR5. Además le instalé Windows 10 Pro. Quedo muy bien.

Nachdem vorher ein ASUS-Board in Verbindung mit meinem FX-8350 und einer NVIDIA Quadro 2000 gerne mal abschmierte (mit einem Phenom II 1090T war das noch kein Problem), legte ich mir dieses Board zu. Bisher waren keine Abstürze festzustellen; ich führe dies u.a. auf die vorhandenen 8-Pin-Stromversorgung des Prozessors zurück. Die vorhandenen Anschlüsse sind reichhaltig und genügen vollends.

( ﾟ∀ﾟ)o彡°ASRock！ASRock！

2 months in and running well. Good simple overclocking features, wel layed out, well designed, black finish looks good with my pc mod. Would recommend so far. Amazing for the price I paid in fact. Nice styled bios, easy to navigate and understand, plenty of utility software if wanted that does make good improvemtns to benchmarking including xfast ram, xfast ethernet and xfast usb. Surprisingly high speed gains using these. Plus x boost feature is nice when booting up (their one click overclocking feature)