[ale] Defective MoBo?

[Scott Castaline]

On 01/23/2011 03:26 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
> Scott,
>
> Hopefully your luck will change.  I still think your motherboard may be
> working, based on what you've said.  It could be a Linux driver problem,
> or maybe an interrupt conflict when you plug in an external graphics
> card.  I would definitely consider flashing the BIOS to the latest level
> if you keep the board.  Also, boot a Linux live CD of your favorite
> distro and see what happens.
>
> Since you asked, I'll share a bit more about my MB.  I don't consider
> myself a MB expert.  I listen to a podcast with experts on it though,
> This Week in Computer Hardware ( http://www.twit.tv/twich ).  Frankly, a
> couple of years ago, I had been wanting to build a computer for a long
> time, and finally got my hands on some discretionary money.  I first
> bought a Gigabyte MB from Fry's, not really knowing much about the
> choices.  I returned it because I couldn't get the alternate boot
> sequence from CD to work.  One advantage of buying from someone such as
> Fry's is that you can return the product within 15 days without having
> to ship it.  You can also extend the warranty for 3 years for a not too
> unreasonable cost.
>
> The MSI board I bought was one of several they had on display.  It turns
> out to have been a good choice.  I have a general rule of not buying the
> cheapest of anything.  Pretty much, every time I violate my rule, I get
> burned.  The Gigabyte board was one of the cheapest there.  I would also
> avoid MB's where the latest BIOS is version 1.0.  I decided I wanted to
> go to the mid to upper price range.  The features of this board looked
> very impressive, including the heat sinks and LED digits I mentioned
> before.  It's a big board, with lots of slots, designed with an AMD AM3
> socket for AMD CPU's.  It can take chips with power dissipation up to
> 145 W, which allows for the latest Phenom II X4 (4 core) and X6 (6 core)
> chips if you flash it to the most recent BIOS.  It will also run the
> Athlon chips, and possibly others.
>
> I cannot say a whole lot about their "support" for Linux one way or the
> other.  I'm running Ubuntu on it, and it runs fine.  However, there may
> be features of the board that I'm not or cannot take advantage of.
> Pretty much all their utility downloads are designed for Windows.
> Things such as surround sound and HDMI may or may not work with Linux.
> I've tried to use FireWire, and thus far, have been unsuccessful.  I
> haven't pursued trying to get Linux support for those features to any
> degree.  I did to a search for the word Linux on their site.  They make
> a few Linux based computers.  A search for Linux on their forum led to a
> number of messages, but I haven't read them.
>
> One nice feature of this motherboard is what they call MFlash.  This
> means you can flash the BIOS from a file on a memory stick, without any
> operating system running.  This is very handy.
>
Gigabyte calls their BIOS Flash update QFLASH, will install from USB 
Flash Drive. It's a BIOS boot option, I think F8 during POST. It also 
allows backing up the BIOS CMOS to a USB Flash Drive. I don't recall 
what ASUS calls theirs. As a rule of thumb I generally will only do the 
update if I'm having issues and even then will hesitate if none of the 
changes seem to have a direct effect on my problem. In this case I had 
updated it since it was at the initial version for my hardware revision 
and one of the entries in the changelog was in regards to the North 
Bridge which controls the PCIe x16, x8 and x1 slots as well as the 
integrated video.
> MSI has a bewildering array of products depending on what CPU, socket,
> and chip set you want.  I searched their website for some with the
> features I described.  I'm not sure I looked at every board, but only
> found a few with the features I described, particularly the 2 digit LED
> and the heavy duty heat sinks and heat pipes.
>
> The board I have is the MSI 790FX-GD70.  It has an AMD AM3 socket, and
> supports AMD / ATI CrossfireX technology for ganging graphics cards
> together.  These boards do not have on board graphics.  It comes with a
> nice assortment of accessories and cables.
>
> http://www.msi.com/product/mb/790FX-GD70.html
>
> Their website is pretty impressive.  The board I have is a bit dated by
> now, and the technology has moved on.  You might want to try their new
> flagship product, which is the MSI 890FXA-GD70.  This more up to date
> chip set might be important if you want extreme graphics support and
> DirectX 11 support, etc.  They claim to use military grade components,
> and while this may be partly marketing, I believe the components are
> very good quality.
>
> By the way, if you get something like a Phenom II X4 chip, assume the
> supplied cooler is lame and cannot do the job.  When I first cranked
> mine up, it pegged the CPU temperature at 62 degrees C within about a
> minute, which is the limit for that chip.  I think the chip throttled
> itself to prevent frying.  Note that the maximum temperature is
> different for every chip.  I went to a Corsair H70 liquid cooling unit
> and the chip never gets above 50 degrees C even under full load.
>
> http://www.msi.com/product/mb/890FXA-GD70.html
>
I have the Phenom II x4 965 with the standard cooler. So far haven't had 
any issues with it. It seems that most other coolers tend to block one 
of the memory slots due to the close proximity of the CPU socket (AM3) 
to the RAM banks. This seems to be a common problem with both ASUS and 
Gigabyte with the 890 series chipsets.
> If you want to use an Intel CPU, I found the following board, although I
> don't know anything about it.  The features look similar.  This is the
> Big Bang-XPower board and has a Socket 1366 (Intel i7).  I think that's
> the only kind of chip it supports.  This MB supports ATI / AMD
> CrossfireX AND Nvidia SLI technology for ganging GPU's.  I've owned a
> number of computers which came from the manufacturer with Intel chips.
> However, for building computers, I lean toward AMD for price reasons.  I
> have no experience with building computers with Intel.  Just based on
> appearance, it looks easier to mount the CPU and cooler with AMD.
>
> http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Big-Bang-XPower.html
>
> One more thing that the ALE members might appreciate.  On the website
> for the 890FXA-GD70, I find this feature, which relates to Linux:
>
> quote -->
>
> Winki 2.0
>
> Winki 2.0 is a free Linux-based O/S which is based on the Linux core.
> With an ultra-fast  booting speed and a multi-language interface, the
> built-in Winki 2.0 provides an easy-to-use internet environment that
> includes the most popular functions such as internet surfing, web mail,
> instant messaging, picture browsing, and more. It’s the most practical
> way to be online in the shortest time.
>
> Features
> - Power On and Run Applications in a Few Seconds
> - Access Internet without Any OS
> - Multi-language Interface Support
>
> <-- end quote
>
> I don't know anything about this, but I thought it sounded cool.
ASUS has the same thing, I don't remember what they called it. It does 
require disk access and I seem to remember that it needs to be an NTFS 
partition which didn't make sense to me. I stopped going into it any 
further when I found several complaint on the forums on how it would 
change their web browser settings, so the next time they booted from 
hard drive the browser would be messed up.
> Hope this info is useful.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron