- Intel X79
- Core i7 (LGA2011) / Xeon (LGA2011)
- DDR3 1066/1333/1600/1866 (O.C)/ 2133 (O.C)/ 2400 (O.C)
X79A-GD45 (8D)
04/24/2012
This review is from: MSI X79A-GD45 (8D) LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Pros:
Worked/booted out of the box w/ Intel 3820 processor
Overall seems that every slot is functional
Price was right
8 RAM slots -- solid platform to run memory-intensive simulations
All PCI-Express slots
Cons:
Experienced memory related-system hangs during Windows 7 install when I mixed 2 different memory types w/ v10.3 BIOS. Installed fine after I used 2 memory sticks of the same type. Subtracted an egg because before I narrowed this down, I had to eliminate the video card and installation media as viable culprits which took several reboot/install attempts.
Overall Review:
Reviewing an Open-Box item -- I found that the motherboard I/O shield/backplate and M-connectors (make front panel connections easier) were missing. I contacted MSI and they sent the parts within 3 business days. Props to them!
Had a Kepler & Fermi card on system: to have both cards work, installed v286 driver for Fermi, and installed v301 driver for Kepler w/o doing a clean install.
After updating the BIOS to v10.4 no further memory-related hangs have occurred.
BIOS Bootup feature seems to be iffy, used M-flash from within BIOS instead to reflash BIOS and was always reliable.
Dual-BIOS via switch saved me from RMA'ing -- flashed wrong BIOS image mistakenly and recovered by flipping switch, starting up system in BIOS, and using M-Flash w/ the correct BIOS image after flipping switch to route flash to bad chip.
One of the features of this board is a jumper-based sensor override in case the user wishes to use liquid nitrogen cooling... interesting, but fairly uncommon!
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- Luis T.
-
Verified Owner
-
Owned For:
1 week to 1 month
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