Ga 890fxa Ud5 Review

8/8/2019 Ga 890fxa Ud5 Review

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Putting together a PC using Gigabytes GA-890FXA-UD5

I have just taken delivery of Gigabytes GA-890FXA-UD5 AM3 motherboard and I thought others might be

interested in how the build goes and what I can get from the PC once everything is up and running.

Im not going to go into the package details or the specifications for this motherboard as that has been done to

death by others but, if you are not familiar with Gigabyte products you can check out the specifications for this

motherboard here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3519&dl=1#ov

For the build I will be recycling parts from my current PC, which I think is the way that most users go when

upgrading. The steps are almost the same as for doing a new build but, before putting things together it is a

good idea to check that your components can be re-used. It is important to check that the CPU will be

supported by the motherboard or if it might need a BIOS update first. Another thing to double check is if the

RAM is compatible, just because it is working on your current system it doesnt mean it will work on a new

motherboard. If you are doing a new build, these are things that you really should check before buying any

parts as it can save a lot of heartache. Another thing to do is download any new motherboard drivers and

BIOS update that you want. This is a good idea especially as the drivers that come on the supplied CD with

the motherboard have, in most cases, been updated since its launch.

Its a good idea to do an initial build

on a bench or table, as this makes it

easier to troubleshoot if you run into

any problems. Make sure the build

area is clear and that you have all of

the parts you need close to hand.

To avoid any possible electrical

problems with the motherboard

shorting out it is a good idea to place

it onto something that is non-

conductive. Iuse the box that the

motherboard came in for this

purpose.


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The first thing to do is mount the CPU.

If you are reusing the CPUand cooler from

a previous PCyou willneed to use a little

thermal grease (new coolers usually come

with this pre-applied). Be careful not to use

too much as this can be just as bad as not

using enough. A small bead of about 3 mm

is normally enough.

You dont need to spread this out as if you

twist the cooler slightly, when you position

on top of the CPU it will be spread for you.

Once you have mounted and locked down the

Cpu Cooler, attach the lead from the fan to the

CPU fan header on the motherboard.

Once the CPU and coolerare attached its time to add

the RAMmodules and, if

you are using an add-on

Graphic Card, that too.

If you are building on top of

a box then you need to

make sure that the back

edge of the motherboard

hangs over slightly to allowfor the bracket on the card.


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The GA-890FXA-UD5 comes with a Power Switch, Reset Switch and

Clear CMOS Switch built into the motherboard, a nice feature but, if

your motherboard doesnt have these you will need to attach the

necessary cables from you PC Case. Dont forget to add the PC

Speaker or a separate Motherboard Speaker so that you can hear

the POSTBeeps.

This speaker should

come with the PCCase

not with themotherboard.

If you are feeling

extravagant you can

invest 5.00 in a PC

Motherboard Test

Switch Kit that has

everything you need to

fire up your

motherboard outside

of the case.

You also need to connect a monitor and keyboard. Take care when attaching the monitor cable to the graphic

card as the card is not securely fixed at this stage and can come out from the slot on the motherboard.

Itend to use a PS2 keyboard when playing with BIOS

settings as Ihave found this to be more reliable but if

you only have a USBkeyboard dont worry, that will still

work.

Now you have made all the necessary connections you

can power up the PC for the first time. If everything is

working OKyou should hear one beep from the

motherboard speaker, indicating that all is fine and the

Gigabyte Splash Screen should appear on your moni-

tor.

Thats all that we need, to

allow the PCto boot.

Of course, to get going we

need some power so the 24

Pin ATX Lead and the 8 Pin

ATX 12V lead have to be in-

serted into the sockets on

the motherboard.

Remember to attach the

power lead to your graphic

card if it needs one. Some

of the larger graphic cards

need two power leads, so

watch out for this.


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Congratulations, if everything is working properly youve now got your PC up and running. If you press the DEL

key (you may have to press this several times before it is picked up by BIOS) during the BOOTsequence you

can enter BIOS and make any changes that you may want to do at this stage. However, for me, the first thing I

am going to do is flash BIOS to the latest version using the Qflash Utility. If you are not sure how to flash BIOS

there is a useful guide that you can read here:http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2441.0.html

Whenever Iflash BIOS Iuse a USBstick as Ihave found this to be the easiest way.

On the QFlash homescreen highlight the updateBIOS from Drive option

My USBStick showed up as HDD 0-0.

As you can see from this image, my USBstick had

several folders on it. All Idid was highlight the

folder that contained the BIOS update file.

Then Ihighlighted the actual update file

QFlash then asked if Iwanted to update BIOS Ihit the enter key on my keyboard and the BIOS

updated without an issue.


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Once the BIOS updating process had completed I

pressed the F10 key to shutdown the PC. Re-Booted and

went back into BIOS by pressing the DELkey and loaded

Optimized Defaults. Pressed the F10 key again to the

changes to CMOS and then re-booted the PC again. It

was all very quick and utterly painless.

When Iremoved the cooler from the CPU Icould clearly

see how the Thermal Grease Ihad applied previously had

ben spread across the surface of the CPU. Iwiped this

away using a piece of soft kitchen towel before Iremoved

the CPUfrom the socket on the motherboard.

I removed the CPUand replaced it with the Phenom ii X6

1090T that Iwill actually be using on this PC.

As Iam replacing the stock AMDCooler with a

Noctua NH-D14, there are a couple of steps thatneed to be taken to allow for the fitting of this new

cooler. The first thing Ihad to do was remove the

Blue Cooler Mounting Bracket from the

motherboard. This is easy as it only has four

screws holding it in place.

I then had to attach the special mounting bracketsfor the Noctua cooler.

The observant amongst you will have noticed that I

left my CPUin place during this process but it

would probably be better if you dont do this!

Now that Iwas happy that there were no issues with the basic hardware set-up and also that the motherboard

was functioning correctly it was time for me to swap out the CPU and CPUCooler and build the PC inside the

PCCase.


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The Noctua NH-D14 is one of the larger Air coolers

available and it actually covers the four RAMSlots on the

motherboard. As Iam using Corsair Dominator RAM

Modules, Ihad to remove the cooling fins from the top of

the RAM modules and insert them into the RAMSlots on

the motherboard before Icould attach the cooler.

I am re-using my NZXTTempest Evo PCCase for

this build and Ihave stripped it down in preparationfor the re-build. Idid leave the HDDs and DVD/CD

writer in place as they dont intrude and it saves a lot

of work. The standoffs for the motherboard are also

still in place from my previous motherboard. If you

are changing from an MATX to an ATXmotherboard

or vice versa you will have to check the position of

these standoffs and reposition or remove/add them

as necessary. Also make sure that there are no

standoffs, screws or other bits under where the

motherboard sits as this is likely to cause your

motherboard to short out.

I then fitted the motherboard backplate into the PCCase (it

comes with the motherboard). It just pushes into the back of

the PCCase but a little bit of care is needed to make sure it

sits properly and also to avoid bending it as it is not the

strongest of items.

Next Iadded the Power Supply Unit (PSU) as it is

sometimes difficult to get this to fit after the

motherboard has been installed, especially if the

PCCase has the PSU fitted at the top of the case.


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Mounting the motherboard can sometimes be a little tricky but as

long as you line up the mounting holes on the motherboard with

the standoffs it shouldnt cause too many problems. Dont tighten

the fixing screws too much as you made need to slightly jiggle the

motherboard to get it to fit properly. As soon as Iwas happy that

the motherboard was sitting correctly Itightened the screws to

hold it in place. Dont be tempted to overtighten these screws as

it could cause damage to the motherboard.

Once Ihad mounted the Motherboard Iattached the 24 Pin ATX

cable and also the 8 Pin ATX12V Cable, making sure they were

fully seated and locked in position. Because of the coolers at-

tached to the motherboard the 8 Pin plug was a little tricky to get

in position so it took a little while to get seated properly and if this

plug isnt attached correctly the PC wont start.

I then attached the Noctua cooler. As the fans on this cooler dont

like the ramped voltage usually supplied from the motherboard

headers I will have to make some changes to BIOS to get them to

run properly from the motherboard fan headers. Iactually attached

these to the PWR_Fan and SYS_FAN2 headers as they are both

three pin. This is due to the design of the Noctua fans and not due

to the motherboard.

Then came the front panel wiring from my PCCase. Even after all

the builds Ihave done, Istill check this out from the Users Manual

as it is easy to make a mistake.

I also attached the USBHeader from the Case to the White USB

Header on the motherboard that allows for Gigabytes On/Off

charging.Ialso made sure that Iattached the motherboard speaker

as there isnt one built into my PCCase. This speaker came withthe Case and doesnt come with the motherboard.

Once Iwas happy with the header connections Iattached the SATA

cables to the Hard drives and the DVD/CDWriter. I do this before I

add the Graphic Card as Ihave found that with the length of some

of the high end cards this can be really awkward to do after it has

been installed.


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With the SATACables in place Ithen

add the Graphic Card, Im using a

Sapphire 4850X2 with the aluminium

shroud removed in an effort to

reduce the noise this card makes

and also any other parts.

In my case Ihave added the PCI

Card for my M-Audio Delta 1010

Soundcard and an extra two USBPorts to the rear from the add-on

USBBracket (Part No. 12CR1-

1UB030-5*R) that Ihad from my

previous build.

The last thing to do is connect all the power leads from the Power Supply to the Graphics Card, Hard drives,

DVD/CDWriter and the case fans. Thats it the PCis now built and ready to be put through its paces.

Full list of Components:

Chassis: NZXT Tempest EvoMotherboard: GA-890FXA-UD5 Rev. 2.1 (F5 BIOS)

CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE 125W

Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 Air cooler

RAM: Corsair Dominator 2 x CMD4GX3M2B1600C8 (8 Gig)

GPU: Sapphire Radeon ATI 4850x2 (1 Gig)

Monitors: 1 x LG L1715S & 2 x LG L194WT

Sound Card: M-Audio Delta 1010

HDD's: 1 x Hitachi Deskstar 1TB, 2 X WD 640 Gig Caviar Black SATA3, 1 x Seagate 1TB

DVD/CD: Liteon SATA

Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB

Keyboard: Microsoft Digital Media ProOS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (Retail)


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It is always nice to see the POSTScreen when you first

start up the PC and it shows that all of the Hard drives

and the DVD/CDWriter are being recognised along with

all of the RAM.

This screen also shows that the BIOS is version F5 and

the CPUIam using.

Pressing the DELkey on the keyboard at this stage

takes me into BIOS.

The BIOSHomescreen shows the various headings that

are available.

The first is for the Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker or M.I.T. This section allows you to change various settings

such as voltages and timings for the CPUand RAM. At this stage Ileave this alone as Iwant to know how the

system will run at default settings BEFOREIstart trying to adjust anything or do any overclocking.

Standard CMOS Features is where you can find details

of your Hard drives and you can also set the Date &

Time if needed.

Idisable the Floppy Drive Option as Idont have one.

So now the PC has been put together Ican start setting up BIOS prior to loading the Operating System (OS).


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The Advanced BIOSFeatures is where you can find the Virtualization, CPUCore Control, AMDCoolnQuiet

and CPUUnlock Options. This is also where you can disable the Full Screen LOGO Show to stop that from

showing every time you BOOT the PC and set your Graphic Card Priority, in my case Ihad to set this to PEG.

Under the heading Integrated Peripherals is where the main changes and settings are made to the on-board

hardware and SATAControllers. Iset the SATAControllers to Native IDE and Idisabled the E-SATAOption as

Ido not have any E-SATADevices. Ialso disabled the On-Board Audio as Iam using a separate Soundcard,

the Serial Port and also the Parallel port as Idont need those.

PCHealth Status shows the System and CPUTemperatures and it is also in this section that Idisable the

Smart Fan Controls for the System Fans and the CPU.


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Once the OS was installed Iloaded the Motherboard

Drivers. All Ineed were the Southbridge Chipset,

Realtek LAN and USB3 Drivers. I then installed thedrivers for my Graphic Card and then, the drivers for the

Soundcard.

A quick check in Device Manager showed that

everything had installed correctly and that there were

no problems.

Then next task was to download the updates from

Microsoft for the OS. The whole task from starting to in-

stall the OSto being ready to use the PC took about 90

minutes, the longest part of this process was actuallydownloading and installing the Microsoft updates.

CoreTemp and HWMonitor both showed that

the system was running nice and cool too!

The Re-boot time, at this stage was a pretty

impressive 53 seconds.

I have learnt to leave all of the other settings in BIOS at

their Default settings at this stage. Once Iwas happy

with the changes Ihad made to BIOS I pressed F10 on

the Keyboard to save them to CMOS and re-booted the

PC and then Ishut it down as Iwanted to remove three

of my hard drives, from the system before Iinstalled the

OS. All Idid was remove the power leads to the drives.

Ithen plugged in my USBstick that Iuse for loading

Windows 7 restarted the PC, pressed F12 on my key-

board to go to the BOOTMenu and selected USB-HDDand Installed the OS.

There are lots of articles on the internet explaining how

to load Windows so Iwont go through it all here. What

Iwill say though it was quick and painless. As Ihad set

the SATAControllers to Native IDEIdidnt need to use the F6 option to pre-load drivers and the whole install

took less than 20 minutes.


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One of the first test Iran was CrystalDisk Mark to find out the transfer speeds to my Primary Hard drive. The

reason Idid this was as a direct comparison to the Marvell 9128 SATA3 Chipset on my previous motherboard.

As you can see from the following images the AMDSB850 Chip handles this slightly better.

With the OS loaded and initial test completed Ican now get on with loading my programmes and using the PC.

Idont bother with stress testing as Ibelieve if the system is going to fall over at default settings Iam soon

going to discover that.

For me, building this PC and setting up BIOS was a breeze but Ihave built a lot of computers using Gigabyte

Motherboards so Ido have the advantage of being familiar with them. Setting the SATAControllers to Native

IDE made installing the OS really easy but Iknow that others will want to use there system in either AHCI

mode or using a RAIDconfiguration so, as a matter of interest Idid re-install the OSa couple of times using

both options.

AHCIMode presented no problems at all and, as in Native IDEMode, Ididnt need to pre-load any drivers

during the Windows Install. Once Ihad installed the basic drivers for the motherboard Ionce again ran

CrystalDisk Mark. First Iran the test with the native AHCIDriver from Microsoft and then Iinstalled the AMD

AHCIDriver. Both offered a slight improvement over Native IDEMode but the Microsoft AHCIDriver actually

performed better than the AMD one

SATA3 Hard drive running on the AMDSB850 in

Native IDEMode

The same SATA3 Hard drive running on the

Marvell 9128 Chipset in Native IDEMode


AHCIMode using the Microsoft Driver


AHCIMode using the AMDAHCI Driver


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Setting up a RAID0 Array was a little more difficult but, by following the instructions in the User's Manual I

managed to figure it out.

I decided to build this array using two WD Caviar Black SATA3 HDD's mainly because these were all I had at

hand and also because I could not get these to work in RAID on the Marvell 9128 controller and Iwanted to see

if they would work with the AMDSB850 controller. There were several steps that Ihad to go through to build the

RAIDArray before Icould install the OS.

I had to set the controller in BIOS to RAID

Pressing CTRL+F on the previous screen gave me this

screen. I had to hit the number 2 on my keyboard to get

to the next screen

When Ire-booted the PC Iinitially thought something was

wrong as it seemed to hang before it showed

me this screen.

Once again Ifound this screen a little confusing but read-

ing the Users Manual pointed me in the right direction

and pressing CTRL+C was what Ihad to do.

Using the Up/Down Arrows on the keyboard Ihighlighted

my Hard drives then hitting the space bar changed them

to being active.

I just hit the enter key when Icame to this screen and

used the default name for the Array.


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At this screen Ihad to hit the CTRL+Y keys to actually

set-up the Array

I then hit the Enter key to use all of the space on the Hard

drives rather than specify a different capacity.

Once Ihad completed all of the steps, hitting Y on the

keyboard finished with the PCrebooting.

When Iwent to install Windows the RAIDArray wasnt

immediately recognised....

....and Iwas asked to install the needed driver. Luckily Ihad loaded the driver on a USBStick and once I

had located it and they were installed.....


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... the RAIDArray was recognised and Windows installed

without a problem.With the OSinstalled and all of the drivers Iran

CrystalDisk Mark again and the returned speeds for the

RAID0 Array were approximately 2X that of a single drive.

Device Manager also showed that everything had installed

without a problem and that the RAID array was using the

AMDAHCICompatible RAID Driver.

The reboot time for RAID was well over a minute.

This is primarily due to the way that the RAID is han-

dled in BIOS and it was quite disconcerting the first

couple of times Irebooted the PC as the

Monitor Screens went black with just a small white

cursor flashing in the top left-hand corner of the

screen, for what seemed like a very long time (10-15

seconds) before it moved on to recognising the RAID

Array and then into loading windows.

And that's it, the build is complete, the Operating System is installed and running, all without any grey hairs being

added. So what can I say about the GA-890FXA-UD5 motherboard?

Well, it is solid and well made. The ease of initially building the PC is enhanced by the addition of the Power and

Reset buttons built into the board and the fact that they are lit with blue LED's only adds to the overall feel of

quality. The Clear CMOS Button hasn't had to be used yet but I'm certain that it will prove just as useful when I

really start playing with the BIOS when it comes to actually Overclocking the system.... but that will be another

story.

The boards layout and design is pretty standard but the Mosfet, Southbridge and Northbridge cooling didnt in-

terfere with the Noctua CPUCooler which had been an initial concern when Ifirst unpacked the board.

If I were to make one criticism it would be with the position of the SATA ports. I know it is difficult to layout every-

thing that this motherboard carries, on to such a limited space but, positioning them just where a longer GraphicCard will sit, makes it very difficult to attach SATA cables if it is done after the GPUis installed. It will also make

re-configuring the system a little harder to do should the need arise in the future.

Overall the GA890FXA-UD5 is an excellent motherboard, rich with features and a breeze when it comes to build-

ing a PC. The drivers installed without any problems and the fact that Iwas able to install in Native IDE, AHCI

and RAID0 with relative ease is another tribute to the motherboards capabilities

Ga 890fxa Ud5 Review

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