1st Build - Major help needed

Britton30 said:

Don't mix RAM , especially from different manufacturers, it will cause issues. One thing is all RAM will default to the slowest stick that is installed. Some RAM companies publish a list of boards they've tested with, G. Skill is very good at this.

Most RAM is compatible with all boards, yeah it is what has been tested that shows on the compatibility lists.

Is there another hole to put a stand off in for a mATX board? If it's a mATX case it will work. Mini ITX boards are very, very tiny, barely wide enough to fit a DDR3 standard stick in.

A SSD should work fine on any board that has SATA ports, they are all interchangeable, backward compatible, e.g. a SATA III SSD will run in a SATA II port.

Personally I have had bad experience with both MSI and Biostar. Biostar I think are very low end boards and MSI support was very, very poor with my bad board and a GPU.

You can check for yourself on the manufacturer's site for what is/is not compatible, that's what we do or use Google.

As for the A6 chip, look on the chip for the model number, that's what they show in compatibility lists. The model AD3500OJGXBOX isAMD's number for a boxed chip with the cooler.

When I said ' I'm looking at a board and it has 1 kingston, 1 crucial and 2 team for 1866 DDR3.' I should have said that the spec sheet for the board said that those 4 types of memory are compatible with the board. THAT is why I was confused as it seems incredibly limiting. But those are just the tested mem modules and it doesn't mean that other modules won't work.

Now on to the CPU. If my particular model is not on that board's compat list then NO OTHER A6 CPU will work on that board? OR, is it like the memory and that is the only tested A6 CPU.
It seems bizarre that a board that accepts FM1/3500 series/2.1GHZ/65W CPUs won't accept my FM1/3500 series/2.1GHZ/65W CPU

I am either looking in the wrong places or FM1 boards are hard to find. Most are Itx or mini-itx hence my question about them fitting. mITX are surely small enough and I/O shield seems to match up traditional case I/O placement but I have no assurance due to a lack of experience.

I have decided to stay away from the 50-60 boards...Asrock or maybe Asus simply because w/my lack of experience instead of just knowing it's broken I'll troubleshoot it for a month...I'd rather spend the money and better my odds of getting a good board. Seems like QC is chopped in the name of budget control.

linnemeyerhere said:

Have a look around for this or other ASRock mobo's. I've built all my 8 rigs with MSI and have nothing but great things to say about the boards and customer support. The one board other than MSI has been an ASRock and it was another great build and I came away impressed as well. My future miniITX build will be an ASUS mobo my first and I'm excited to build this next build.

ASRock > A75M-ITX

I looked at the board and it fits my needs I'm sure not quite sure about it fitting into my mATX case correctly. I *think* it will.

Actually, I don't see any ITX boards. They are all mini, micro, pico...

OK...I'm looking at Asrock boards.
compat list
ASRock > Support > CPU Support List

The A6 Llano, which is what I have, is not on that list....Well it is for A4 but A6 is only Husky. THOUGHTS?

Gigabyte board. I found another one that will fit my needs.
It does support a bunch of Llano chips
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...aspx?pid=3934#
Everything lines up as far as I can tell. Seems like it would work though I'd rather but in an Asrock just because the last Giga failed.

matts6887 said:

Micro atx should be fine; whatever your preference is should be fine. But you will save yourself some headaches in the long run by spending a little more and getting better quality.

ready and willing!
board 1
A75 Motherboard Series Manufacturing - ASRock Inc.
board 2
A75 Motherboard Series Manufacturing - ASRock Inc.
board 3 (last choice)
GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket FM1 - GA-A75M-S2V (rev. 1.0)

Memory and CPU
AMD A6-3500 Llano 2.1GHz (2.4GHz Max Turbo) Socket FM1 65W Triple-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 6530D AD3500OJGXBOX - Newegg.com
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL - Newegg.com