AOpen MK89-L Mistake

[joma416]

Great forum, I wish I had found it before making the following mistake…

I purchased an AOpen MK89-L socket 754 motherboard online a few months ago, because the price looked good and I figured a socket 754 motherboard would be good for a while. I am now ready to build a new system for the first time and started shopping for the pieces to go with my motherboard. After consulting the AOpen docs and website, I found out that the mb only supports Athlon 64 ClawHammer processors from 1.8 GHz to 2.2 GHz with a Front Side Bus of 200 MHz. I contacted their tech support to see if other processors are supported, but they gave the standard line that I should use the tested and approved processors. I would actually be OK with that, but the supported processors don’t appear to be on the market anymore.

I read on the AOpen site that another person used the same motherboard with a newer Sempron processor. It seems to work, but the BIOS doesn’t recognize the processor properly, so he cannot tweak the settings to overclock his system.

At this point I am a bit stuck. Should I ditch this motherboard and start from scratch with a better choice (chalk it up as a learning mistake). Or, should I try a newer Athlon 64 processor instead? I am leaning towards ditching the motherboard and getting a more upgradeable socket 939 board (maybe the AsRock 939 Dual?) rater than compounding my mistake.

Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

[joma416]

OK, more searching through terms that are confusing to a newbie like me, and I think I've figured out my mistake.

Please correct or confirm if you can:

All 754 AMD 64 CPU's actually run at a clock speed of 200 MHz and use a multiplier to get the actual rating. For example 9 x 200 = 1800.

So, I should be able to use a newer socket 754 AMD Athlon 64, becuase it is running at a clock speed of 200 MHz.

Is this correct?

[glc]

It will only support the processors listed in the compatibility table on the website. These would be the Clawhammer A64's from 2800+ through 3400+, both 512k and 1m cache.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103485

[MaxRat]

the clawhammers are still available...check www.newegg.com and/or www.pricewatch.com if you have no luck post back and we'll try to locate one for you....

[joma416]

Thanks for the replies. I was able to find an Athlon 64 2800 for a decent price. I am up and running now!

I'm pretty happy overall becuase it was the first time I've ever built a system. Right now it is a bit of a frankenstein pc with new parts plus some from my old system. I'm looking forward to adding some new hardware then tweaking it.

Thanks!