**** Official J&W P45D2-ULTRA and -EXTREME Thread ****

WJA96

WJA96

WJA96

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Joined
13 Jul 2005
Posts
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Location
Norfolk, South Scotland
As the UK's No. 1 J&W Fanboy I'm sure many of you will know that I like J&W Motherboards, so when I discovered a new one was available in the UK I ordered one.

It arrived this morning!

As usual for J&W it came in a nice black box.

JWBox1.jpg


The bundle is a bit uninspiring, but then this is the budget P45 from J&W, the Extreme being the top end model (not currently sold in Europe).

JWBox2.jpg


The board itself is J&W's usual high standard of build quality.

JWBox3.jpg


The SilentCool heatsink is taller than many, but it sits well back from the socket and even bigger coolers like the TRUE and Scythe Mugen don't foul the chipset cooling.

JWBox4.jpg


The SilentCool is a real heatpipe cooler (not just a copper coloured tube) and it's very efficient in initial testing. Note also the DFI style PCIe slot.

JWBox5.jpg


The back panel has everything most folks would want, including optical and phono style digital audio, 6 USB ports and the all-important BIOS reset switch. This is an overclockers board!

JWBox6.jpg
 
I haven't had very long to have a play with this board in terms of overclocking, but it went straight in at 3.6GHz on my Q6600 just by setting the Strap to 400MHz and turning up the CPU Core Voltage.

Speedstep is disabled by default on J&W performance boards. I'm not claiming this is stable yet as I've not had it 8 hours to run Prime, but I will update this image when it is.

JWBox7.jpg
 
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very nice indeed. I'm not sure whether I'll be moving to P2 in the next couple of weeks but if I stay with my currebt Q9450 then this is probably the board I'll get to replace my faulty one :)
 
Hades said:
very nice indeed. I'm not sure whether I'll be moving to P2 in the next couple of weeks but if I stay with my currebt Q9450 then this is probably the board I'll get to replace my faulty one :)
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If you hang on a couple of weeks, then it could be this board.;)

I've just bought an E8600 from TomO as I currently don't have a dual-core to play with and this early Q6600, while it's fine up to about 3.8GHz, it's not going to stress the FSB limits on this.

I've got a Q8200 in one of the machines here, and several Q9450's, but itwould mean splitting down my test suite machines and I can't do that for a little while.
 
Looks like a good board! By the thread title are you planning on getting the extreme version? :D
 
Happy said:
Looks like a good board! By the thread title are you planning on getting the extreme version? :D
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Not really - if one becomes available then I'll think about it, but it does become quite an expensive pastime. The only differences between the Ultra and the Extreme is a second network port, Dual Crash-proof BIOS chips, Firewire and a boot LED.

There is also a P45-D2Pro Fusion with is a combo DDR2/DDR3 board, but I'm really only interested in the Performance series boards.
 
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First impressions are pretty good. There is no vDroop at all, the chipset cooler really does what it says on the tin (silent and cool) and, as usual with J&W boards, it works best when left on AUTO for most of the settings.

In terms of little annoyances;

All my work so far has been done with the board naked on the bench but I've just started looking at installing it in a case and the backplate isn't cut to allow air out past the big SilenCool VRM heatsink. Now, I have no idea how that will affect the overclock but given that DFI boards ship with a slotted backplate, it would seem sensible to me to get the J&W ones to ship with one too.

The speaker beep is a very odd strangled noise, and it insists on playing a little beep sequence after it has booted up which isn't mentioned in the manual.

The 8-pin connector is buried under the VRM heatsink, which isn't a biggie, bit I've seen several boards ship with a double-height 8-pin connector to get around this problem.

And possibly most petty of all - it boots too fast. There is almost no time at all to press the DEL key to get into the BIOS. Maybe there could be a BIOS option to lengthen this period?

The rest of it really is a joy to work with.
 
Looks like a nice board, very well laid out and the cooling looks good, 8 pin atx placement does look a bit tight, i have the same issue with my p5q deluxe, im using a TRUE which makes removing/installing the 8 pin connector a bit of a fiddle, particularly as i have to remove the psu in my eclipse 62 to get at it, so i can then slide out the mobo tray. Im considering adding an 8 pin atx extension cable to overcome this.
 
WJA96 said:
First impressions are pretty good. There is no vDroop at all, the chipset cooler really does what it says on the tin (silent and cool) and, as usual with J&W boards, it works best when left on AUTO for most of the settings.

In terms of little annoyances;

All my work so far has been done with the board naked on the bench but I've just started looking at installing it in a case and the backplate isn't cut to allow air out past the big SilenCool VRM heatsink. Now, I have no idea how that will affect the overclock but given that DFI boards ship with a slotted backplate, it would seem sensible to me to get the J&W ones to ship with one too.

The speaker beep is a very odd strangled noise, and it insists on playing a little beep sequence after it has booted up which isn't mentioned in the manual.

The 8-pin connector is buried under the VRM heatsink, which isn't a biggie, bit I've seen several boards ship with a double-height 8-pin connector to get around this problem.

And possibly most petty of all - it boots too fast. There is almost no time at all to press the DEL key to get into the BIOS. Maybe there could be a BIOS option to lengthen this period?

The rest of it really is a joy to work with.
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Is there any way to silence the bootup beep?
 
I think that's just the angle of the photograph. There is plenty of space to fit a screwdriver over the head of the screw.

And I'm sorry, but the chipset cooling is sooooo good, I'll forgive that heatpipe almost anything. It's truly phenomenal. In almost 24 hours straight running at FSBs in excess of 400 at the highest strap and using anything up to 1.4V on the Northbridge, the chipset and motherboard/power temperatures have never exceeded 30C. My X48 and X58 boards all need need water cooling of the chipset to maintain that kind of loading 24/7.

Good to see people are looking closely at the board though.
 
does look like a very nice board for the money.
btw wja96, the cooling is very good, but don't forget that the p45 chipset is 65nm vs the 90nm of the x48. So when comparing temps more needs to be taken into account than just the cooling (although it does look quite good).

I wish this board were available sooner, J&W make great boards at an affordable price, but they always seem to show up much too late.
 
gurusan said:
does look like a very nice board for the money.
btw wja96, the cooling is very good, but don't forget that the p45 chipset is 65nm vs the 90nm of the x48. So when comparing temps more needs to be taken into account than just the cooling (although it does look quite good).
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That is a very good point.

gurusan said:
I wish this board were available sooner, J&W make great boards at an affordable price, but they always seem to show up much too late.
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Couldn't agree more.
 
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