New parts for new PC (need help - little knowledge of hardware)

[soralx at cydem.org.ua]

> My only unexpected disappointment was the Gigabyte motherboard.  It was
> highly rated in a Tom's Hardware review.  They did not mention that he
> optional 8KNXP secondary cpu voltage regulator would not fit if you also
> used the Zalman CNPS7000 cpu cooler (which they also praised in the same
> article).  The workaround is to not install the secondary voltage
> regulator which the review article said was very nice to have but not
> necessary with current cpus.  (Side issue: the Zalman CNPS7000 cpu cooler
> comes in two models, Aluminum/Copper and pure Copper.  The Cu model cools
> a little better than the AlCu model but is much heavier than permitted by
> Intel cpu specifications.)
>
> I anticipated some difficulty getting FreeBSD to support all the nice
> motherboard devices, but I was prepared to do without the more exotic
> ones.  It turns out that FreeBSD 4.9 supports all the essential devices.
> I did not expect massive BIOS brain damage.  The BIOS passes a wrong
> disk number to the master bootstrap program.  This can have some really
> nasty consequences and there is no complete workaround.  The BIOS does
> not support booting through one of the primary motherboard disk
> controllers (the SATA controller in native mode).  FreeBSD 5.1 sometimes
> has problems reading from the PS2 mouse port, allegedly caused by some
> BIOS ACPI confusion.  Gigabyte technical support is almost totally
> unresponsive.  If I could do it over again, I would very seriously
> consider alternative motherboard brands.

just a note: I know that many people write negatively about Gigabyte
mainboards, and, therefore, people may think that they are not good,
and not even consider Gig as an option.
Maybe I'm lucky, but I personally never had any trouble with my GA-8IHXP,
and I think that this one is no worse than most Asus motherboards.
The board works very well: no problems with BIOS, on-board USB
(all 10 ports), audio, network, ATA and APM work well with FreeBSD.
The only thing I didn't test is RAID. The mobo is also very fast and
stable.

18.11.2003; 19:10:53
[SorAlx]  http://cydem.org.ua/