GA-880GM-UD2H: New Build Q's

[Krisbee]

Over the years I have used a succession of Abit m/boards with various AMD processors. My current build is nearly five years old and is based on an Abit KN9S with an Athlon 64 x2 4400.  I feel it's time to upgrade.

I was tempted by the dark side, but even though AM3 is near end of life I decided to stick with AMD mostly for reasons of up front cost, and I'd really like only to swap out my m/board, CPU and RAM and re-use the rest of my system including the ATAPI optical drives. 

Any new m/board has to be Linux friendly with no unsupported 3rd party controllers, as well as offering legacy ports like floppy and IDE.  Hence my interest in the GA-880GM-UD2H which is available at around £60 at the moment, a bit of a bargain..

I have a couple of question: 

1. Could someone please confirm I have read the supported CPU list correctly for version 1.4 of the GA-800GM-UD2H and that either of these CPU can be used “out of the box”:

Athlon II x4 640
Phenom II x4 960T

2. I'd like to use 2x4GB DDR3 RAM sticks with this m/board. Which corsair modules would you recommend?

I've yet to read the manual and could well need help with the best/suitable BIOS settings.  After 5 five years, I'm a bit rusty on this side of things.

PS I vaguely remember there being something about there being a right and wrong way to first power up a new build, i.e. PSU rocker switch on before wall socket switch on, or vice versa.  Is this  a possible gotcha?

Thanks,
Chris.

[absic]

Hi Chris,

Yes, you have read the CPU support list correctly and both of those CPU's are supported on the rev1.4 out of the box.

For memory I would recommend the Corsair Vengeance as I have found this to be very good and I use it in all of the builds I now do.

When it comes to BIOS settings this will depend on what you want to use and how you want to run your HDD's etc. The best thing to do heere is think about your hardware and how you want to configure it. You can always ask for clarification, here on the forum, if you have something that you are not sure of.

Not come across that little gem about switching things on before. I always power on at the wall then use the PSU switch (if it has one and then fire up the PC and never had a problem doing so.

If it's been a while since you last put a new PC together you might like to have a look at this post: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,3619.0.html where I go through setting up an 8 Series motherboard as it might help or give you some new questions to ask, that you haven't considered.

[Krisbee]

absic,

Thanks for the rapid reply, advice and PC build ref.  Aria Tech have just confirmed by email that it is the rev 1.4 they are selling. I'm not sure which CPU I'll pick but it's nice to know that it will run a 960T "out of the box".  I don't intend either to overclock or attempt to unlock cores, so I suppose any 3Ghz 95w quad core CPU will suffice.  In fact, I think I read somewhere that CnQ does not drop the voltage on the 960T only the frequency, which means higher power usage if true.

I'm downloading your build guide now, along with m/board's manual.

As to Ram, just to confuse people, corsair do white, black and blue Vengeance modules. But perhaps this is the stuff you mean:

www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Memory/DDR3/Dual+Channel+1600MHz/8GB+Corsair+Vengeance+Blue+LP+(2x4GB)+DDR3+PC3-12800C9+1600MHz+Dual+Channel+Kit+-+CML8GX3M2A1600C9B+?productId=45510

Of course it will run at 1333MHz ( I read your post about AMD CPUS and memory controllers).

Thanks,
Chris.

[absic]

Hi Chris,

yes that's the RAM I am talking about and they are all the same except for the White Modules which are rated at only 1.35V. I have a 16GB kit of the black Low Profile modules in my rig and they have performed perfectly.

[Krisbee]

OK, I just need to make a final decision on which quad core CPU best suits my needs. Mind you, some of the phenoms are getting hard to find.

My PC is general purpose with a slant toward multi-media. It's mulit-boot with various flavours of Liinux both 32bit and 64bit as well as WIndows 7 with an XP VM, I'd like to virtualise all my Windows OS use and this is where my current PC doesn't perform so well. And if I get the itch to try Gentoo again or FreeBSD then I don't want to be left with mulitple hour compilations.  Hence I reckon a => 3GHz 4core is my best  performance/cost choice. Most of the technical stuff is just tinkering around for my own interest, nothing serious.

[absic]

If you can get a Phenom ii CPU then it will perform better than an Athlon, especially with the way you are planning to go. You could also consider one of the X6's if budget allows as they perform very well and, in fact, the higher end versions out perform some of the newer FX CPU's

[Steve66a]

 A 1065t @ 95w would be a great choice - Great advice Absic

The FX is a grey area chip. I have a 6100 that replaced a 955be - it does some things very well, still learning.............

[Krisbee]

I looked at few refs on the 1055T today. I think I'm aboput a year late with this as all the full size gigabyte m/boards that interested me are no longer available ( Ga-870A-UD3, GA-880GA-UD3H and GA-890GPA-UD3H).

One  inescapable fact that crops up over and over again is just how much of a "performance per watt"  lead Intel has opened up over AMD,  and the price of a 95W 1055T is getting into the realms of i5 CPUs.

My PC use probably splits 80/20 or 70/30 between light use and more demanding use.  In some ways I could do with two PCs with different set ups. Buiilding a i5-2500K + z68 or Phenom x6 system just for web, email, office and multimedia is overkill.  But for running mulitple OS etc it's not.  Whereas a low cost low power system for mulitmedia, web and office apps could struggle with heavier loads.

For the cost of a i5-2500K you just about buy both an i3-2100 and a Phenon/Athlon Quad. And for the £140-150 asked for the better Z68 boards you could get £60 Sandybridge mATX board and a decent £70-90 AMD board to put the quad core in.

It just so happens I have two AM2  PCS. The second spare/backup machine is in an older Antec case, but otherwise it only needs a m/board, CPU, RAM upgrade. 

As you can see, I 'm finding it difficult to make the right choices.