I have two questions that I have not been able to figure out with this motherboard despite weeks of digging through forums and spec sheets:
 
1. This motherboard was gifted to me and has a Q6600 in it, but the previous owner said that it has issues supporting aftermarket HSFs that say they're LGA775 compatible, which i am interested in purchasing. So my question is Does this mobo support HSFs besides the one that comes with the Q6600?
 
2. I am currently using a GTX 550 ti with the mobo, but was gifted an MSI R9 270 Gaming Series GPU and I can't get the mobo to pass POST with it, is this a mobo compatibility issues or a CPU issue? Any advise on how to trouble shoot this? The friend that gave it to me tested it prior and it worked on his. I put it in a PC I had on hand and the computer passed POST but never output display even though the computer got to the login screen.
 
Any help on either of these would be much appreciated.
 
Thank You
  -Esric Godbear

bob16314
Welcome to the forums.
 
1. Yes, any Socket 775 CPU cooler should do.
 
2. Searched just a little on that and it appears that an MSI R9 270 likely needs a legacy VBIOS to work in your mobo..Found one for it with the ATIFlash tool and instructions in the MSI Forums, but flashing it is totally at your own risk..Need to put it in a mobo that'll boot with it to flash it..Putting it in a PC that passes POST but shows no video doesn't sound very good though, like the card may be bad.

1. I will move ahead with my purchase then. :)
 
2. Thank you for the link and the research, I should have access to the computer it originally worked in, so with any luck I'll be able to give this a shot in the next week and get back to you.