Motherboard is dead... Now what?

[NxB]

The Biostar TA790-GXB which I bought last year died. A cap vented near the atx connector and started causing issues. I replaced it and another cap but still felt a mosfet overheating. I ran it like this for a week and it completely died.

I've tried swapping 3 mosfets and an NPN transistor but I still get the same problem. Memory error LED is lit and no post. The chipset heats up quickly. Maybe another dead mosfet, I don't know but either way I want to upgrade...

This computer does a lot of video rendering and large file operations. I need a fast proc and lots of ram...

Should I go with a phenom II 965 BE (3.4 quad) or an AM3 Opteron (2.9ghz quad) the price difference is like $50, opteron is cheaper.

What is a good logic board to buy now? I need at least 2 pci slots, one for firewire and the other for a U160 SCSI card. I was using all 6 sata ports so I still need those and onboard sound. I have an Radeon 3850 soon to be upgraded too so no more onboard video.

I want to keep with AM3 because I have a huge HSF which will fit but I see that there are several new sockets out for opteron from amd. Anything worth it?

Any suggestions?

[NxB]

Re: Motherboard is dead... Now what?

Phenom II or Opteron... I can't decide on that one... its 75tdp vs 135tdp and unlocked multiplier....

Anyone? I want to order the stuff...

[acstech]

Re: Motherboard is dead... Now what?

Biostar has gone downhill quite a bit since a few years ago when they went to the AMI BIOS from the Award BIOS that they were using. I got bit on that one pretty bad, and had to replace a few boards. That yours developed bad caps does not surprise me.

I've gone to, and had excellent results with, Gigabyte's ultra durable line of boards. All solid caps seem to work well.

Tell me what you think of this unit:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128443

I'd go with the Phenom 2. More clock speed to start off with, and an unlocked multiplier so you can increase that even more if you decide too.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Motherboard is dead... Now what?

Another upvote for Gigabyte Ultra Durable. I've been running a EP45-UD3P with all solid caps since September 2009 and the board has been flawless in every way. A good buddy of mine is running and AMD one with a Phenom on it for about a year now and he has also been very happy with his.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Motherboard is dead... Now what?

Opteron series are geared more towards workstations and server application.
Phenom series are more for general desktop and gaming applications.

Either one will do video rendering, it depends on how fast you want to go.

The Phenom you picked would be nearly equivalent to the Opteron you picked. Frankly if you do alot of video rendering more cores would benefit, therefore the 6 or 8 core Opteron processor would reduce your rendering time. The only problem is AM3 versions of the Opteron is limited and you only have the choice of 2.5 to 2.9ghz and they only come in triple or quad versions.

Considering you want an AM3 system I would go with 3.2ghz 6 core Phenom it's only $175. But if you have the money and you do alot of rendering, a Socket G34 and 8 core Opteron would help you alot.

For motherboards... well most Desktop boards are just garbage.
Just pick one, MSI, ASUS, GIGABTYE, DFI, EVGA, the more shittier companies like ECS, Asrock, BIOSTAR, FOXCONN and the nobodies ZOTAC, and JETWAY.

[c_hegge]

Re: Motherboard is dead... Now what?

Myfirst 5 preferences for motherboards are:

1. DFI Lanparty
2. Gigabyte
3. Intel
4. MSI
5. ASUS <- Last resort only

I refuse to have any other brand in one of my systems

[NxB]

Re: Motherboard is dead... Now what?

Well I thought nobody was going to reply so I ordered before work. I've been down for over a month... I have the money now and no time to spend it

Clients started to get pissed off and my IT work (mainly processing the deliverables) was a PITA just working from the laptop.

I went with:
Logic:

MSI 790FX-GD70 - I wish I had seen the other board... it was $60 cheaper and had that extra PCI slot. This one has more PCIE slots so I can finally get a reasonable SAS controller vs the literally 1 available for PCIE 1x. FC is still a bummer, too many adapters and I have more larger sas drives anyways. I can also SLI and do some serious GPU computing (i.e Pyrit).

Proc:

AMD Phenom II X4 970 - It was only $130, the hexcore would have been more but I don't think that mobo supports those. I'd love an 8 core opteron but then I'd be paying 2x for a server board and have to get another HSF. I looked at some supermicro and tyan stuff and it was like $250-300+ for the board alone.

If I had waited a day and bought the suggested board I could have had 2 extra cores.


Memory:
4x Patriot PSD34G133332H 4gb DDR3 1333 - I THINK 16gb is enough, that's 4gb per core in after effects. Board won't support anymore and 32gb boards I saw were lacking other stuff.

My old system had noticeable lag at full size preview on 25mbps 1080p video even encoded in an intermediate format.

So I think I have pretty much 2x the system I had previously and everything should be smooth. The Kuma and the hd3850 was probably holding back the other system but it became moot when the mobo died.

Thanks for the help.