Installation
Test Rig:
AMD Phenom II X3 720
Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3
Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 2GB Kit
Spire TherMax Pro CPU Cooler
Thermaltake 800 Watt PSU
NZXT Tempest Extended Midtower
Windows Vista Premium 64-bit
Installation is very straightforward. Install the CPU into the CPU socket. Prep the CPU with isopropyl alcohol and a lint free cloth. Apply thermal compound as per the manufacturer’s instructions. Be aware if you are using a cooler with exposed heatpipes you will have to manually spread the compound on the CPU surface with a credit card or other thin flexible item as the cooler base will not properly spread the compound. Prep the CPU Cooler base with isopropyl alcohol and a lint free cloth.
Install the CPU cooler. Install the memory modules. When running two modules, install them into a pair of like-color slots, it doesn’t matter which pair.
Install the motherboard into the case.
Wire up the board and drives for power. It was nice not to have to plug in the ATX12v prior to placing the motherboard into the case, something that I have had to do with most boards lately. Plug in the case header wires. Since we aren’t running a discrete video card, that’s it.
No overclocking of the NB, which (as we all should know) has an enormous effect on the performance of an OC’d AMD CPU. No overclocking of the on-board video. No comparison with the HD4200, which this system is supposed to be faster than… and usually isn’t.
I have this board, I have good luck with unlocking both cores of my 550BE. I’ve had really bad luck with fglrx driver stability under KDE, but I’m not the only one. I’ve finally reached stability using fglrx 10.6/10.7 (AMD couldn’t make up their mind which version it was, it was labeled as both point six and point seven on their website and the internal documentation, such is their attention to detail). Word is that 10.8 re-introduces KDE incompatibilities so I haven’t tried it.
Except for that and the occasional KIO crash when using USB 2.0 this board makes a good cheap Linux system with some future-proofing for the USB3 and SATA3 features (I’m using neither at the moment). If AMD would only adjust to the fact that KMS drivers are here and modern Linux desktops use ALL the fade effects and they are expected to work, this would actually be a very nice alternative to buying an Nvidia card for every Linux system built. As it is they are almost there. Maybe. Just fix fglrx, like all of it.