# 32GB mobo for AM3 hexacore, upgradable to octacore?



## randall999 (Sep 25, 2010)

I am looking for a new mobo that can support 32GB of DDR2 or DDR3 RAM, and uses AM3 socket to work with my existing AMD Phenom II X6 hexacore cpu but that would also be upgradeable in the not too distant future to an AMD eight core. Very hard finding  such a mobo, can anybody please help?

I currently have an ASUS M4A79 Deluxe mobo with the AMD Phenom II X6 hexacore CPU and 8GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit. I really want to up my PC to 16GB and perhaps 32GB, definitely 32GB within a year, but 16GB very soon. And yes I need 16-32GB RAM (VST sampled instruments libraries for composing music on a PC, hogs massive amounts of RAM as you pile up instruments samples for recording and playing using software such as Sibelius, Cubase, samplers such as Kontakt, PLAY by Quantum Leap, etc; I have been getting messages lately that I am running out of memory for apps with just my 8GB)​.

Any help / links greatly appreciated.
--randall


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## Aastii (Sep 25, 2010)

The most you will be able to support for the moment is 16GB on a standard AM3 board. As for the going to octo core, you will have to wait for AM3+ later next year.

The only way to get around that is to get a server motherboard, and try to make sure that it supports your current CPU (which I'm assuming is a thuban core)


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## randall999 (Sep 25, 2010)

Aastii said:


> The most you will be able to support for the moment is 16GB on a standard AM3 board. As for the going to octo core, you will have to wait for AM3+ later next year.  The only way to get around that is to get a server motherboard, and try to make sure that it supports your current CPU (which I'm assuming is a thuban core)



Okay thank you. Maybe I should just live with my current mobo, upgrade to 16GB from my current 8GB (will have to dump my four 2GB chips, buy ($600) four 4GB chips, which will probably become obsolete when I need a 32GB system, sigh). But maybe going from 8GB to 16GB will give me the RAM I need for music composing without having to go all the way to 32GB, for now.

Any mobo I could buy that would have say 8 slots for DDR2 to let me keep my existing 8GB and just buy another 8GB, I so hate to toss my existing 4x2GB chips. But most PC mobos seem to have just 3 or 4 DIMM slots, so I suppose I have not choice but to dump my existing RAM and buy new (4gb DDR2 dimms) chips if I want to reconfigure from 8GB to 16GB? I know my mobo manual says it can hold 16GB if I go with four 4GB chips.
 r


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## windows97 (Sep 25, 2010)

The best way is to get a 16GB AM3 Hardcore.


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## TFT (Sep 25, 2010)

Windows97, there is no rule to say you have to post in a thread, do as others do, if you don't know the answer, don't post.


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## StrangleHold (Sep 25, 2010)

Its a theoretical limit on AMD boards. Phenom/Athlons memory controller can read more then 16gb.


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## randall999 (Sep 26, 2010)

*RAM question...*

EDIT: I ordered a new ASUS mobo (M4A88T-M/USB3 AM3) that uses DDR3, I found the cost of the mobo ($100) and 16GB of DDR3 (4x4GB) was about what I would have had to pay for 16GB of new DDR2 memory, a no-brainer decision! So now I will have a new DDR3 sweet mobo (with USB3 and also an HDMI port to stream stuff off Hulu/other to my TV) with 16GB of DDR3 RAM! Had to order a new wifi card ($27) also because the mobo lacks much in the way of PCI slots-- I just needed two plain PCI but it only has one; one for my X-Fi Titanium sound card, one for my wifi-- but I ordered a new wifi card to fit in one of the very short PCI express slots, not  much of an added cost.
 r


My mobo manual says "Due to CPU limitation, DDR2 1066Mhz is supported for one DIMM per channel only. For system stability when four DIMMs are installed, all DIMMs run at DDR2 800 Mhz as the default setting"

My mobo has two channels, four DIMM slots, can do 16GB max. So I am going to put four 4GB RAM chips in. I am having a problem buying DDR2 800Mhz at a good price ($99 ADATA out of stock at newegg), but I see a good price on DDR2 1066Mhz at several places $110. Can I put four 1066Mhz chips in, or is my mobo manual telling me I can only use two of them? I almost interpret the manual as saying if I want the full 1066Mhz then I should only put two in, one in each of the two channels? But can I put in four of the DDR2 4GB 1066Mhz chips and they will simply run at 800Mhz? (I am okay with that).

I want to get these puppies ordered, boost my RAM to 16GB. I did some testing earlier today and crashed my system to the dreaded BSOD which I had not seen for, well, forever. I was running Cubase and had about ten virtual instruments loaded with sampled instrument libraries, had about 1.5GB free memory. Then I also ran Sibelius 6 (music notation composition) and that instantly crashed me to a BSOD. I used up all my 8GB I assume, as I was dangerously low on RAM.

Help appreciated.
--randall


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