ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX
The motherboard I decided upon after looking around and visiting many review pages was the ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX.This motherboard supports the Bulldozer range if I ever want to change to an 8 core in the future. Motherboard specs
!!:Word of caution:!! Before you buy the any of the recent CPUs (for example the Bulldozer Range) make sure you have a way of updating the BIOS as it may not work with the BIOS on the motherboard. You may need to borrow a AMD Phenom II to setup the BIOS in that instance. Mine had BIOS 0705 so would have worked with the FX range.
For me the following options (the AMD 990FX chipset and UEFI Bios) are very attractive on the ASUS motherboard.
Mobo installed: Worked straight out of the Box.
BIOS:
Arrived with BIOS 0705
Since then I have upgraded to BIOS 0901.
1 June 2012, now on BIOS 1102. cpu core temperature not visible
3 June 2012: Installed BIOS 1208 as the CPU Core temps disappeared with BIOS 1102....cpu core temperature visible again with BIOS 1208
AMD® 990FX Chipset
AMD 990FX Chipset is designed to support up to 5.2GT/s HyperTransport™ 3.0 (HT 3.0) interface speed and dual PCI Express™ 2.0 x16 graphics. It is optimized with AMD latest AM3+ and multi-core CPUs to provide excellent system performance and overclocking capabilities.
UEFI BIOS
Flexible and Easy BIOS Interface
ASUS UEFI BIOS offers a user-friendly interface that goes beyond traditional keyboard-only BIOS controls to enable more flexible and convenient mouse input. Users can easily navigate the UEFI BIOS with the smoothness of their operating system. Quick and simple overclocking and setup sharing is facilitated by the F12 hotkey BIOS snapshot feature. The exclusive EZ Mode displays frequently-accessed setup info, while the Advanced Mode is for experienced performance enthusiasts that demand far more intricate system control, including detailed DRAM information.
OK the motherboard has arrived and the one thing I noticed was how heavy it was...it felt like a piece of metal, solid and looked well built.
Let's hope it performs as well.
I have now loaded the ASUS App AI Suite II 1.01.30. This gives a variety of motherboard information.
I like this one immensly...Thermal Radar....with hotspots and their current temps.
I have had this mobo running prime 95 100% on all 6 cores for about 20 minutes and temp was below 40C.
Not too sure what to make of the temperatures shown of the CPU cores by various apps.
Thermal Radar showing approx 10C more than AMD Overdrive , EVerest and AIDA64.
See pictures here
To setup Erp:
Energy-related Products (ErP)
Want to turn on PC automatically power returns...