Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Lawrence Lee · **Posted:** Thu Nov 15, 2012 6:53 pm

http://www.silentpcreview.com/Gigabyte_GA-F2A75M-D3H

CA_Steve · **Posted:** Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:36 am

Nice to see another FM2 mobo review. Regarding power use, the simpler 4 phase design and having less crap...erm features on the board as compared to the Asus M Pro probably accounts for the lower idle power. Heck, if Gigabyte had bothered to put a heatsink across the VRM transistors, the lower temp would probably result in a few watts of improved efficiency and put it in line with the Asus mobo for non-OC loads. Too bad there is no undervolting.

porkchop · **Posted:** Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:34 pm

nice idle numbers indeed!

can someone confirm no bios undervolting, maybe a newer bios might reintroduce it?
do all gigabyte fm2 mobos lack it?
it seems like a very odd functionality to remove, it might even be deal killer for me at least until it's easily doable in windows.

squash · **Posted:** Mon Nov 19, 2012 6:06 pm

Another motherboard with neutered HDMI. I can't find a HDMI version spec for this board, but 1.3 supports the higher resolution screens of 2560x1600, and has been around for 6 years. It seems like manufacturers are arbitrarily limiting the resolution of their HDMI interfaces, but to what end? I've seen this on laptops, some of which claim to support hdmi 1.4 (Retina Macbook Pro 15, I'm looking at you!) but limit their ports to 1080p.

I realize I'm a minority, wanting to run 2x 2560x1440 from onboard video, but its frustrating that manufacturers are purposely blocking it when the interfaces and underlying hardware support it.

NyteOwl · **Posted:** Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:35 pm

Is it worth trying to track down the aftermarket heatsinks that people were putting on the Gigabyte boards for the higher wattage Phenoms a couple of years ago for these? I'd assume the 85X of this board version runs equally hot or hotter. Since there are no mounting holes any sinks would of necessity need thermal adhesive.

Re. HDMI

I think the max is 1920x1200. Most users of HDMI are using it on televisions or television scaled monitors for movie watching hence the roadblock at 1080p. It's the same phenomena that annoys me by limiting the number of 16:10 monitors on the market while panel manufacturers pander to the TV crowd.

holybob · **Joined:** Mon Nov 12, 2012 2:57 am **Posts:** 4

Hi guys,
Did you manage to control the speed of system fans on sys_fan2 and sys_fan3? I've got this mobo - sys_fan1 and cpu_fan work fine and I can control the speed but sys_fan2&3 contantly run at 100% regardless of bios setting. I've got a call open with Gigabyte for this.

Gavin

MikeC · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2012 2:37 pm

holybob wrote:

Hi guys,
Did you manage to control the speed of system fans on sys_fan2 and sys_fan3? I've got this mobo - sys_fan1 and cpu_fan work fine and I can control the speed but sys_fan2&3 contantly run at 100% regardless of bios setting. I've got a call open with Gigabyte for this.

Gavin

From page 6 of the review:

Quote:

Once again, if you're Windows user, a better fan control experience is available in the form of SpeedFan. Properly configured, it can control all three fans, though SYS_FAN1 only works with voltage control (3-pin) and the same control is tied to the voltage of CPU_FAN. To enable the fan controls, find the "IT8728F" chip in the advanced menu and change its PWM 1-3 modes to "software controlled."

We also discovered through trial and error that the temperature Gigabyte specifies as "System" corresponds to the area around the VRMs to the left of the APU socket. This is a good location for a temperature sensor as the circuitry in that location runs quite hot and lacks cooling aside from any spill-over airflow from the CPU fan.

holybob · **Joined:** Mon Nov 12, 2012 2:57 am **Posts:** 4

Thanks. That doesn't actually solve my problem though, however Gigabyte have since given me the answer.

Bascially, there were two problems:

SYS_FAN1 supports 3 pin fans, but SYS_FAN2 and SYS_FAN3 can only control the speed of 4 pin fans, which I find rather odd. If you use a 3 pin fan in these headers it constantly runs at 100%.

Although there are 3 system fan headers, you CANNOT control these independant. If sys_fan1 runs at 50%, then 2 and 3 also run at the same speed.

Which is fine, I've only got 2 case fans anyway - they're both 3 pin so I'm running them (and controlling them, albeit not independantly) both from sys_fan1 with a splitter cable.

Gavin

Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

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