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.

Most likely I received a returned board that had previously failed one of the many customers who purchased this product. I'm pretty sure it wasn't "tested" before putting it back up for sale. After taking all the time to properly install it, I powered on and only got my fans running at full power. No other sign of life. No Bueno. In theory this may have been a good board to start with. However it looks like they have been giving mixed results over the last 9 years. And in time with so many returns it would be pot luck getting one that had not been used and returned. The board itself is short, meaning the two screws on the 24 pin plug side are not there which makes that side of the board weak when connecting and disconnecting the main plug. Also it's missing three USB internal connectors from my RS880 Board, so this would have been a downgrade in that regard yet it does manage to add four usb 2.0 connectors on the back in place of the VGA/DVI ports. PS/2 connectors replace the USB Audio out on my old board (are those even a thing still?) In all Amazon failed to send me the OEM board https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AZ38BH0?ref_=ppx_hzod_title_dt_b_fed_asin_title_0_0 just says "Package left the shipper facility" a week ago, and UPS never received it yet (Due to arrive today, I doubt that), so I gave this a shot. Again it may have been a good board years ago in its release, but with all the returns and issues since I can not recommend buying it.

Motherboard performs very good and is a good board for somebody who wants to upgrade memory or graphics card.

Nice little microATX 970 chipset motherboard. I had this for a little over 2 weeks now and it has been running amazing. I only had one problem with the App Store application on the cd that came with the motherboard. It would give me an error that would pop up every time I logged onto my computer desktop it would say something like its not compatible with my motherboard so if you get that error uninstall the App Store application and it will go away. I have this paired with Athlon II x3 3.4ghz, 4gb ddr3 G-Skill ram 2133mhz, Crucial MX100 SSD, Sapphire R9 270x, 600w corsair PSU all inside of a Silverstone Sugo case. I can play Bo3 on high settings with 30-40 fps, I know I can get more fps if I add 8gb of ram just waiting for it to come in the mail. Black Ops 3 is the only game that I have tested so far. I will also update when I install my new cpu sometime later this week. Overall this motherboard feels pretty solid it looks better in person too. With 8gb of ddr3 ram I was getting an extra 10-15fps. Update: Okay I now have this with 8gb of ddr3 G-Skill ram at 2133mhz and I have a FX-4350 overclocked to 4.5ghz running stable for a week now. I ran Prime95 24 hours with no problems at all, to keep it cool I have a cooler master Hyper 212 evo. It does not get hot at all. I would say that my case plays a good part in keeping in cool. I have a 240mm fan on top of my case blowing down on the VRMs and the heat sink which helps it keep it cool. My cpu on load gets 40c and core temps get 49c. I can run Black Ops 3 on high settings with 80-120 fps, I wish it would only let me change my settings on extra(ultra) but the settings only let me go to high. Overall I enjoy this motherboard and I would buy it again.

I damaged my motherboard , but I wasn't ready to dump the money needed to bring me up to date with current CPU/GPU gen. technology. This ASRock motherboard for AM3+ socket CPUs and DDR3 memory capabilities was a solid alternative option at an affordable price