Gigabyte GA-5AA (Rev 3.2)

I've recently upgraded my old 386 computer, and I was looking for the cheapest but best options (if you see what I mean). When it came to the motherboard, I chose Gigabyte's GA-5AA board. For any newbies that don't know, the motherboard is the main part of your computer that everything (well, nearly everything) plugs into. It's got the slot or socket for the CPU (the chip that does all the work), sockets for disk drives, printer and mouse ports and some others, and slots for adding things like sound and graphics cards. And now it gets really technical...! I chose the 5AA mainly because it was AT-form, so I could still keep some ...  Read the complete review

The Gigabyte GA-5AA is one of a pair of motherboards that spearhead Gigabytes attack on the Socket 7 market, along with the 5AA's brother the GA-5AX. The GA-5AA is the AT version and the GA-5AX is the ATX version although each ones specs vary slightly. Socket 7 isn't dead yet and the Cyrix MII and AMD K6-2 continue to battle out in this market. You will still find these systems brand new in the budget sector and it isn't a market that is completely finished yet despite what a lot of people may say. A lot of people may only want to spend a small amount to upgrade their old pentium systems for a quicker machine and hence may stick with Socket 7. ...  Read the complete review

I was in a hurry, and bought a GA5-AA, AT form. I'm using a K6-2 500MHz; at present an ATI rage fury 128 pro 32Mb(AGP), and prior to that, a MATROX G200 AGP; 192Mb RAM (recently upgraded from 64). The manual is 'ok', but the info on the bios settings is a joke. (maybe on the website, check before buying). I ALWAYS get a blue screen crash after loading any driver (but I just push reset, and everything has seemed OK after). This is very worrying at the time, but I really do think the driver installation is OK afterwards. Getting the right bios settings, and motherboard drivers took me a considerable amount of time trawling the web for information, ...  Read the complete review

I have an old Pentium 166 MMX that my brother kindly donated to me when he moved out to buy his flat. I was never really into computers much before that. Still, I have learnt a lot through his tuition and now count myself as competant at pc upgrades and maintenance. I can therefore tell you about my motherboard. The Pentium Chip is the main processor. It does all of the calculations for your computer and is the real brains. The motherboard is where the chip sits and how it connects and interacts with the other components in the case. Like most of the early Pentium chips, Socket 7 technology was how the chip sat in the motherboard. ...  Read the complete review

I had a an Pentium MMX PC and wanted to upgrade the motherboard and CPU and keep everything else. I also required the motherboard to be in AT format, otherwise it won't fit in my casing. This was the best choice. So far, the motherboard has worked flawlessly. If you do get the board, I advise you to download the latest AGP drivers... otherwise, your AGP card might not work too well. The manual which comes with the motherboard could be better but it has all the information you'll need to install it. It has two USB ports but note that you need to buy a seperate connector to use the ports. It is not expensive though (~£10). I have used this motherboard with modern ...  Read the complete review