Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

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Lawrence Lee
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Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by Lawrence Lee » Thu Nov 15, 2012 6:53 pm


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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by CA_Steve » 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.

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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by porkchop » 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.

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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by squash » 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.

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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by NyteOwl » 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.

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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by holybob » Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:04 pm

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

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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by MikeC » 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:
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.

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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by holybob » Fri Nov 23, 2012 4:17 am

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

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Re: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Budget FM2 Motherboard

Post by SlantNGo » Fri Nov 22, 2013 7:55 am

holybob wrote: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
Are you running a later rev of the motherboard? Mine only has SYS_FAN1 and SYS_FAN2, and like you said, SYS_FAN1 only supports voltage control, while SYS_FAN2 only supports PWM. I have three 3-pin 120 mm case fans that I hook up to SYS_FAN1 using a 3-way splitter.

My experiences with the PWMs in SpeedFan differs from the reviewer's. I don't have anything hooked up to SYS_FAN2 so I have no idea how the PWMs affect that.
  • PWM1 appears to control the CPU fan using voltage control--I can slow down the CPU fan as low as about 200 rpm, and then it suddenly stops spinning and won't start up again unless I "jolt" it by setting PWM1 back up to something quite a bit higher, starting it back up at about 600 rpm.
  • PWM2 controls SYS_FAN1, which is only voltage control.
  • PWM3 appears to control the CPU fan using PWM control--I can't slow down the CPU fan below about 400 rpm, even if I keep decreasing the PWM value.
If I had to guess, I think PWM1 is controlling the voltage (3rd pin) for both CPU_FAN and SYS_FAN2, while PWM3 would be controlling the PWM (4th pin) for both CPU_FAN and SYS_FAN2. Since I'm not using SYS_FAN2, this doesn't affect me, and I can use PWM2 and PWM3 to do all the fan control I need.

I use advanced controls to set the CPU fan speed according to both the CPU temp and the system temp. As the review mentions, the VRM chips get hot, so the system temp is often higher than I'd like. I run a Big Shuriken 2 as my CPU cooler so there is some spillover hitting the VRM chips. Thus I run the CPU fan faster than necessitated by just the CPU temp when the system temp is high. At under 1400 rpm I can't hear the CPU fan, so no problems there.

Nice review!

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