Hawk's Babble-Log

This is my new kick-ass Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H motherboard. It’s a Socket AM2 with dual-channel DDR2 800 RAM (four slots), integrated ATI Radeon X1250-based graphics adapter, Dual PCI-E graphics interfaces which supports ATI CrossFire (though I probably won’t be using it here in my server… then again, I might), integrated SATA 3Gb/s (with RAID support… if I wanted one), 8-channel hi-def audio with S/PDIF in/out (and support for Blu-ray/HD DVD), and a gigabit ethernet adapter. I got it from mwave.com.

The processor is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+, and it also kicks ass. See that CPU fan? That came with it, and the CPU came pre-installed on the mobo because I paid an extra $10 to have it assembled and tested before shipping it out to me. BUT… that CPU heat-sink & fan is not the one I’m using now. More on that later.

Here it is installed into the case. I put insulator washers on both sides of the motherboard, just to make sure it was a good, snug, isolated fit. When one builds his own computer, one can use as many insulator washers as one pleases. As mentioned in the [previous article](http://jedihawk.com/hawksblog/?p=158), the connector backplate doesn’t fit, so I left it off.

Here’s one stick of the Crucial RAM, BL12864AA804 Ballistix 240-pin DIMM DDR2-800 PC2-6400, Unbuffered, non-ecc. I got this as part of a “kit”, meaning two sticks of 1Gb RAM sold together in it’s own cute little box. This is good because you need two sticks of RAM to take advantage of the “dual channel” feature of my mobo anyway. I got this from mwave.com also.

More to come.