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Biostar TA890FXE cheap and awesome!

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xoke

Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Biostar TA890FXE

b20100512.jpg



If any of you were looking at this motherboard and wondering if it was any good, the answer is yes. I decided to pick this up for my first AMD build since C2D hit the scene and I'm glad I did. Like many people, I always thought Biostar was a "low end" budget parts company...and for the most part they are, but once in a while (more recently as of late) they release a flagship motherboard. I started looking into Biostar when I was competitively overclocking Intel 775s and they came out with the T-Power i45. Once that motherboard picked up a couple world records (with Intels) I jumped on board the Biostar train and I haven't jumped off yet. Their new AMD offering, the TA890FXE is no exception. I think it's probably on it's way to breaking another world record...

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1192969

I picked mine up for $139 from the 'egg...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138193&Tpk=ta890fxe

It is really is tough to beat a $130 motherboard that performs like this. In addition to that, Biostar's customer service treated me great when I thought I murdered one of their ATI 4890s. I don't work for Biostar or anything, but I like to give props when props are due.

Pros: Overclocks easily, built like a tank, cheap, good colors, has post code display, good cooling, good CS, core unlocking feature...did I mention its $130?

Cons: No USB 3.o support, layout might be cumbersome for some setups (PCIe arrangement issues, good for 2 card X-Fire and use of PCI slots...poor for 4 card X-fire ***see picture below), only 5 SATA ports.

Here are your basic screens though. This one is the main screen. Pretty obvious.
hpim2078p.jpg


This is a subset of that for multiplier and CPU/NB settings. Also, you can increase voltage from here in smaller increments to the CPU/NB and CPU by adjusting the VID. Otherwise in the previous screen you can simply add .50v to either.
hpim2077.jpg


And the RAM screen.
hpim2079s.jpg



All in all it's pretty straight forward. I'll post more pics of other subscreens if you would like.

I mentioned the cons of the PCIe layout for some, like I said, that depends on your setup. For me it's perfect, I can run two double slot cards, and I still have access to both the regular PCI slots (wireless card and a TV tuner). I'm able to easily get above 3.8ghz on stock voltage with my 965 BE, and I here the Tubians are doing so as well. It's RAID performance is pretty good, it will run 4 sticks of RAM at 1600mhz plus on stock 1.1v CPU/NB voltage, recovers well from bad overclocks, looks pretty sweet if your going for a red/black/metal color scheme, the fan speed controller works pretty well...even with a 3 pin CPU fan as found on my Enzotech, NB and Mosfets run pretty cool, documentation and CD are aveage, and the BIOS is very simple yet flexible.

Anyways, if any of you have any questions in regards to this motherboard post up and I'll do my best to answer them. xoke
 
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Very nice. Too many people bash on Biostar, but that's because they don't own them. I love my board as well. But I would love to have that setup. Well done.

Thanks man, I'd like some new GPUs...but what can I say, the 4890s are hot, power hungry, and ugly...but they still tear through games pretty well, lol.

To be honest, I'm glad Biostar operates like they do, keeps the prices down. The skimp on advertisement, skimp on their manuals, skimp on their packaging (honestly, do they not have the ugliest boxes ever? lol), but they rarely skimp on performance...at least since I've been messing with them for the past couple years. My T-Power i45, omg, I hit +5ghz on that think multiple times, insane stupid voltage, spilled water on it, had a nasty condensation incident and that thing just kept on going once it dried out. ha ha

xoke
 
Working on a detailed Excel sheet for Settings and Voltages for overclocking this motherboard. I will tell you this, in classic Biostar fashion...any more volts then you need for whatever your going after pisses it off, just like the 775 i45 T-Power. For instance, running 8gb 800mhz RAM with CPU@4ghz needs 1.112v NB/CPU...now you want to run 8gb 1066mhz RAM with CPU@4ghz, you might want to jump up to 1.200v NB/CPU, but you would fail, lol. The correct answer is 1.134v. Of course this is CPU dependent, and different for everyone, the point is you can "guesstimate" based on logic what voltages you will need for anything. You have to bump it, run it, test it, rinse and repeat, whereas with some motherboards you can just crank the voltages...get where you want...then back off. Biostar don't like that method, .1xxv too much and it crashes.

Man I love overclocking! lol
 
Nice xokeman, I just purchased two of these boards and the same CPU fan/heat sink for one of the builds. I will be using the 955BE and Geil BD memory for mine. I was looking at the way you mounted the HS on the cpu with the pipes coming out over the memory and have noticed that most mounted it the other way when installing the HS. Did you do this to cool the NB chipset, rather than have the fan overhang and cool the memory? Thanks.
 
Nice xokeman, I just purchased two of these boards and the same CPU fan/heat sink for one of the builds. I will be using the 955BE and Geil BD memory for mine. I was looking at the way you mounted the HS on the cpu with the pipes coming out over the memory and have noticed that most mounted it the other way when installing the HS. Did you do this to cool the NB chipset, rather than have the fan overhang and cool the memory? Thanks.

The reason I mounted it that way was because it wouldn't mount the other way...the pipes run into the VRM heatsink on the motherboard. Mounting it pipes up cause the cooler to work very poorly, so pipes to RAM side was the only option.

I wish you had posted before ordering...that heatsink is nice in that it also acts as a motherboard cooler, but there are better ones out there for an AMD build. It's an amazing quality of heatsink, but with the 8mm pipes I think it is "tuned" to cool a hotter CPU, like an Intel. Don't get me wrong, for a mild overclock, it will work great...but, Phenom IIs don't overclock well once past 55c. Still, it's a great quality cooler, and it does cool the whole computer, just depends on what you want to do. I don't regret buying it at all, but there are better performing coolers out there. For a regular build with a mild overclock it will do fine.


I'm running this now...very pleased with it too, might be fun to try with your second build. It's very quiet, but still there are some air coolers out there that out perform it. This suits my needs nicely though. Compact, small, and I don't have to worry about motherboard damage lugging my PC around, which I do a lot.

hpim2073.jpg


As to the RAM and Motherboard, mine are still doing great...running as posted in my sig with stock volts on CPU. Mild bump to CPU/NB & RAM voltage is all I had to do.
 
Thanks for the info. I have one of the Freezer Pro 64's as well I was going to try. When I am ready it will only be mild overclocking (don't really know the tricks to O.C. I have done some mild stuff in the past but don't push my systems hard, I don't really game anymore. My son is turning 9 this week so the second build will be for him and I figured he would end up gaming more than me.

I just literally got the Big Brown truck pulling up to the door as I post this with the two heat sinks and am going to go put the builds together now so I will be off and busy for a bit but will check back in once I get them put together.
 
Cool, let me know how it goes. Like I said, for your average user/mild overclocker the Enzotech will work great.
 
Back up and have it running, the only thing I did not care for was its finicky about using a USB keyboard and USB mouse during the loading of the OS (Ya XP Pro 32 bit need to get a 64 bit OS). I ended up having the same problem during the loading of the OS that a lot of people have had with a lot of MB.

The first system I loaded has a PS2 mouse and keyboard and went without any issues, the second one had the USB and I noticed during several attempts to load the OS that it was always acting up at the point of the install where its loading USB files so I took some PS2 stuff and hooked it up and it loaded just fine. Probably would not have had the issue had it been a newer OS.

Now to learn the settings for my ram to get it up from 1333 to 1600 but I can work with that.

Edited to add once the OS was loaded and the drivers where loaded I turned it off and put the USB K/M back on and it works fine now, it just appears to have an issue during loading of the XP OS.
 
Back up and have it running, the only thing I did not care for was its finicky about using a USB keyboard and USB mouse during the loading of the OS (Ya XP Pro 32 bit need to get a 64 bit OS). I ended up having the same problem during the loading of the OS that a lot of people have had with a lot of MB.

The first system I loaded has a PS2 mouse and keyboard and went without any issues, the second one had the USB and I noticed during several attempts to load the OS that it was always acting up at the point of the install where its loading USB files so I took some PS2 stuff and hooked it up and it loaded just fine. Probably would not have had the issue had it been a newer OS.

Now to learn the settings for my ram to get it up from 1333 to 1600 but I can work with that.

Edited to add once the OS was loaded and the drivers where loaded I turned it off and put the USB K/M back on and it works fine now, it just appears to have an issue during loading of the XP OS.

Yea, thats an OS thing, I still have a PS2 keyboard around just for installs.

As to the ram, go to the overclocking screen, set to manual to open up the options below...near the bottom are dram settings...set limit, then down one set to 1600 (chioces are 800/1066/1333/1600. You may or may not have to overvolt your Geil up to 1.6 by adding +.40 to the overvoltage menu on ram. Mine would do 1600 on 1.35v...but ever set is different.

Also, in case you were not aware, don't get spooked when you see 3.25-3.5Gb of RAM in windows...thats about all 32 bit will address depending on other hardware. :D
 
Also, in case you were not aware, don't get spooked when you see 3.25-3.5Gb of RAM in windows...thats about all 32 bit will address depending on other hardware. :D

Ya that's something I have had to deal with for awhile. I really need to get a 3 pack 64 bit OS, the wife's computer is a intel i7 920 with 6 gig of ram and I would really like to be able to use that, having only a 32 bit OS is what has held me off from putting 8gig of ram in my systems I'm sure once I make the upgrade I will put more ram in. Thanks for all the tips I appr. it.
 
Pretty good considering its price point,when choosing a 890FX mobo,I will only pick Crosshair IV,I want nothing less than the best:rock:
 
xokeman, using the Freezer Pro 64 with Arctic silver 5 (dont believe it has had a chance to set in yet only about 16 hours of run time) with a core voltage dropped down to 1.356 and stock 3.2 on CPU. 24C ambient.

Heres where the problem is and I am wondering if you ran into the same thing with this MB.

Using several softwares to get the temp readings.

Toc (software with MB) shows idle:31C Load:54C
Core Temp shows idle:36C Load:57C
OCCT shows idle:36C Load:57C
PC Wizard idle:37C Load: Not tested

It seems to take about 5 minutes of OCCT running the CPU at 100% to get to these temps and it seems to hover there after that, I have only run it an additional 5 minutes to see what would happen I am hoping that letting the AS5 set in will help drop them later then I can give it a full run.
 
xokeman, using the Freezer Pro 64 with Arctic silver 5 (dont believe it has had a chance to set in yet only about 16 hours of run time) with a core voltage dropped down to 1.356 and stock 3.2 on CPU. 24C ambient.

Heres where the problem is and I am wondering if you ran into the same thing with this MB.

Using several softwares to get the temp readings.

Toc (software with MB) shows idle:31C Load:54C
Core Temp shows idle:36C Load:57C
OCCT shows idle:36C Load:57C
PC Wizard idle:37C Load: Not tested

It seems to take about 5 minutes of OCCT running the CPU at 100% to get to these temps and it seems to hover there after that, I have only run it an additional 5 minutes to see what would happen I am hoping that letting the AS5 set in will help drop them later then I can give it a full run.

The software that comes with the motherboard is junk, I played with it for a minute and removed it. I'd trust core temp or HWmonitor over any of them, or AMD overdrive as last resort.

One thing I found with the Artic coolers (I had the freezer 7 pro) they are great for dual cores, but just marginally better than factory for quads...or at least that has been my experience with them. The nice thing is I doubt you will have to add any voltage to hit 3.6ghz.
 
I just got done running OCCT for a half hour, I had the system shut down for a couple of hours. I replaced a small fan I had in the back of my case (Enermax Uber Chakra) with a 120mm 30cfm and reversed the flow on the side fan from in to out. Not sure if the AS5 is starting to kick in or if changing the fan helped I was able to drop the temps 5C. Thinking of bumping the multiplier up to 17 for 3.4 and giving it a try. Wish I could afford another Antec 1200 like I have the wife's i7 in, I don't believe I can go with a much taller cooler in this case because of the side fan, maybe in the future.
 
Still having an issue with my ram settings, it is recognizing it as 1333. I set the 0.040 and set it to limit and 1600 like you said. I left the rest auto and tried then set the 9,9,9,28 and still not luck getting the speed up.

CPUID1.jpg
 
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