Since March I’ve proudly mentioned my 3-core box, which I built, a number of times; in both articles on this blog as well as comments on other blogs. As a quick rundown, the box uses an AMD Phenom 3-core chip on a Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 motherboard. It’s currently running Windows 7 Ultimate RC 64-bit, and I’ve fitted 8 gigabytes of DDR2 800MHz RAM.

Since I used that board in the construction of my box; which, prior to the advent of Intel Core i5 chips, was the only Gigabyte board I know of without built-in graphics capability, it appears to have risen in popularity. (The price has also dropped by around £10 GBP too.)

Since the board is becoming such a great budget-build accessory, I felt that it deserved its own little mention on this blog.

Its on the small-side of ATX-size, with an AMD socket AM2+ processor socket; which means that a Socket AM3 processor will fit nicely into the socket, but will be nevertheless restricted in operation. (Socket AM3 has one less pin than Socket AM2+, so while AM3 fits an AM2+ or even an AM2 socket, (Despite being thus unable to run at its full potential in AM2+ or AM2.) AM2 and AM2+ won’t fit an AM3 socket. – This is probably a good idea too, as AM2, and probably a lot of AM2+ chips too, may well get into difficulties when it comes to utilising DDR3 RAM.)

As far as I am aware, many Phenoms are available in a Socket AM2+ package at the time of writing, so finding a new chip to fit shouldn’t pose a problem. Whilst I run 3 cores on it, the board is capable of allowing a 4-core Phenom to run on it without any problems whatsoever.

It has an nVidia nForce 720D “chipset”: The reason why I put that word in inverted commas is because it isn’t really a chipset at all; more of a single chip. – However it does the business, although doesn’t provide any onboard graphics capability. – On that note, unless you’re using the board to build a server, (Which is a feasible suggestion, especially as time marches on and the board falls out of mainstream popularity.) which you’re only going to control remotely from another computer, then you’re going to have to fit a PCIe graphics card to the board’s single PCIe slot and output graphics from that. No worries there though: I’m currently running a Gigabyte GeForce 7200 GS card on it: 256MBs of dedicated graphics and no problems. The card cost under £25 GBP.

The “chipset” does tend to run rather hot; partially because it has no substantial cooler on it; just a small passive heat-sink. To offset this it’s best to ensure that there is a case fan attached to the box that you’re going to run this board in.

There are also 2 PCIe x 1 slots in addition to 4 PCI slots. I sometimes wonder about PCIe x 1; although a smaller and neater slot, it doesn’t appear to have much advantage to PCI, and the PCIe x 1 expansion cards seem to always be slightly more costly than their PCI counterparts. – Having said that, there’s probably a number of factors that I haven’t accounted for here. Perhaps maybe readers would like to expand on the subject?

Although I’m running 8 GB of RAM, the four memory slots can accommodate up to 16 GB of DDR2 and support the faster 1200MHz DDR2 9600 sticks.

The six SATA ports give it the ability to utilise currently up to 12GB of storage. The BIOS allows for RAID configuration also. There are also a single PATA port, and a floppy port too; should you feel the need for some retro-storage.

On the back panel there are 8 USB 2.0 ports, as well as a 4-pin and a 6-pin FireWire port. Despite there being no eSATA port, there are 2 x PS2 connectors, so the older mouse and keyboard still have their uses here. (I run it with a PS2 keyboard and a USB mouse without any problems.)

The analogue 7.1 audio outputs are from a Realtek  ALC888 codec. There are also optical and co-ax S/PDIF outputs.

A UK computer magazine is so impressed with this board that they have given it their Best Buy award even.

Have you used this board at all? If so; what do you think. Do comment. Also please comment with regards to PCIe x 1 ports too.

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3; an amazing budget-board.