Newegg doesn't have any of my friggin mbs in stock. Idiots. They knew this thing was inbound...yet they wouldn't hold onto one for me?!
I wouldn't hold one either. Nor expect Newegg or any other retailer to hold one for me. Frustrating? Of course! But I'm not so special. Are you?
The exception would be for a local retailer like Best Buy or Microcenter. If I called them up on the phone and said I would be there after lunch, then I would expect them to set one aside. But if, by the end of the day, I was still a no-show, I would expect it to go back on the shelf.
I am just saying, some policies may be idiotic. But holding on to merchandise when they don't know you, or when (or even if) your old board will arrive is not. But again, from a consumer viewpoint, that does not make it any less frustrating.
On some Gigabyte boards is when you Update the BIOS you have to remove and reinstall the battery and let it lose it's settings.
This is odd. We use Gigabyte boards almost exclusively here. All my personal builds have Gigabyte boards. And we have never had to reset the BIOS to flash the firmware. Never had to with other brand boards either. Since user changes to the BIOS are saved in a different chip, I don't see why that would be needed. But even so, removing the battery is a bit drastic. Every Gigabyte board I have seen has BIOS reset pins. Some even have reset button switches. And all let you reset from within the BIOS Setup Menu.
Now for sure, there are times when it is good practice to reset the BIOS before flashing. If you dinked with the voltages and clocked settings, failing to reset
may result in a failed flash. But not always.
The only precaution I recommend is to ALWAYS make sure the computer is on a good UPS with AVR before attempting a flash. A sudden extreme power anomaly in the middle of a flash can brick a motherboard. I learned this the hard way, many years ago. This is very rare, especially with newer boards. But why risk it?
It happened to me when a co-worker tripped over the power cable, yanking it out of the wall. Ironically, I thought I was safe from power outages because the entire facility was on a giant UPS.
If you had to do this with your board that had been sitting around for 3 years, I would suspect that CMOS battery had simply lost much of its charge keeping the RTC and CMOS settings "alive". This resulted lost and/or corrupt settings. Removing the battery ensured all settings were returned to the factory defaults. One anecdotal experience with one board does not establish a rule or standard.
All plastic and rubber standoffs.
FYI, motherboard mounting points are also motherboard ground points. While motherboards are grounded through their power connections, multiple ground points across the motherboard ensure a "common" ground to the multitude of circuits on the board. This is exactly why stand-offs are typically made of brass, and why they screw into the metal backplate of the case's chassis - which is also grounded through the power supply. Having a common ground, if nothing else, helps eliminate any possible EMI/RFI issues.
Just something to keep in mind next time bench testing a board.
Nothing wrong with the Tomahawk other than the single intel 226 nic, yeah. Hopefully I won't run into any issues.
