Socket AM2 & AM2+

[Redhatcc]

I got a friend that built his own computer. He had a socket AM2 cpu he installed dual core, and wanted to upgrade.... he had purchased a AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition and installed it but it did not power up as normal. A brief view online i was under the impression that AM2 and AM2+ sockets were the same but different chip builds but i have two questions....

1. Will the AMD Phenom processor work in this motherboard M2N32SLI (looks to me to only support the AMD 64 etc. chips now that i look at the description on NewEgg)

2. This actual motherboard will let you customize alot of features in the bios, but he was also trying to OC it a little and was unsuccessful in being able to increase the voltage or anything that would contribute to a faster processor...

From what i understand the OC isnt a must but it would be nice for the cpu to work... does he need to upgrade motherboards from the one he has? And the one that he does have isnt a bad one at all from what i can tell, would it be worth investing into a new motherboard for the Black Edition AMD cpu?

[James_A]

According to Asus, this board does support Phenom processors, but not the 9950.

Spec here: http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmen...p;l3=0&l4=0

CPU support list here: http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupp...uct=1&os=17

.

[CoffeeFiend]

Will the AMD Phenom processor work in this motherboard M2N32SLI

It supports some phenoms (limited max TDP/wattage though -- I doubt the 140W 9950BE will work, seems to be 125W max), but either ways, you'll likely have to update the BIOS for newer CPUs. Edit: looks like James_A beat me to it. Darn.

OC wise, never tried that board, so no idea if it's any good at it (google for some reviews, most of them show boards' OC potential).

I just bought a pair of M3A78-EM for the kids as their old box died last weekend. Very nice board. 7.1 channel 192KHz/24bit audio with a spdif out, 5 sata with raid plus one esata, gigabit ethernet, firewire (1394a), vga/dvi/hdmi (with sound too) and even displayport! And you can use 2 different outputs for a dual head setup. PCI-e x16 2.0 and CrossFireX, 4 DIMM slots up to 1066 even including ECC memory, Solid caps, etc -- it's got it all. 780G does H.264/VC1/MPEG2 decoding in hardware too, and it's a DirectX 10 GPU, Pixel Shader 4.0, and even does OpenGL 3 with the latest drivers. It supports CPUs that use up to 140W (not that I'd want one) and has HT3. Not bad at all for a $80 board (especially considering I won't even need to buy vid cards). Picked up a pair of 45W (should be even lower using Cool'n'Quiet) 4850E's with them too (and 4GB of DDR2 for each as well). Oh yeah, and I'm now XP-free, and all running x64 OS'es too now. Yay!

Edited February 12, 2009 by CoffeeFiend