[geeks] Gigabyte MB question

[Lionel Peterson]

Hello,

As some may remember, I recently upgraded my Dell T105 to a killer
quad-core Opteron (1356, IIRC), which left me with a "spare" Opteron
1210. And, in my passive way I've been looking for an interesting MB
to put that Opteron 1210 on, and I think I found it. The Gigabyte
GA-MA78GM-US2H:

Mfg. Website: http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=2997&ProductName=GA-MA78GM-US2H

OpenSolaris HCL: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/30688.html

On Sale for $68 (after $15 rebate):
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0306586

Interesting points:

 - Takes up to 16 Gigs (4x 4 Gig) of DDR2 RAM (though cost would be
prohibitive - 8 Gigs (4x 2 Gig) would be affordable)
 - Gigabit Ethernet
 - Seemingly decent integrated graphics (ATi Radeon 3200, spec sheet
talks about Blu-Ray palyback support)
 - Five SATA, one eSATA connectors
 - On-board "fake" RAID support (presumed Windows only)
 - One 16x, two 1x PCI-Express slots, two PCI slots
 - DVI-D, HDMI and HD15 video interfaces
 - Firewire
 - Supports AM2+ and AM3 CPUs (for future upgrades)

And, the Opteron 1210 is specificly cited on the CPU compatibility
chart (it is the only Opteron that IS, oddly enough):

http://www.gigabyte.us/Support/Motherboard/CPUSupport_Model.aspx?ProductID=2997

The questions - Has anyone ever used this MB before? Anyone have any
feedback on Gigabyte MBs? and finally, any suggestions on a reasonable
cooling solutions for this CPU/MB combo? (I would likely run
everything stock clock, so no OC needs for exceptional cooling.)
Thanks,

Lionel

-- 
Lionel Peterson
lionel4287 at gmail.com