754 mobo for Overclocking

mr.sly · 24 Aug 2006 at 18:52

Hi,

I am currently planning some upgrades to my system, as cheaply as possible, in the hopes that it will tide me over until DirectX 10 hardware matures. My current plan is to overclock my current CPU with a Freezer 64 Pro cooler and to upgrade my motherboard so that it will accept a Radeon X1800XT graphics card, so what I need now is a motherboard that will support Socket 754 and PCI-Express simultaneously, and offer me good overclockability.

I have been looking around at some Socket 754 motherboards with nForce4 chipsets, and so far there are three that have caught my interest: -

Asus K8N4-E SE (Socket 754 + PCI-Express)
Asus K8N-VM (Socket 754 + PCI-Express)
Gigabyte GA-K8NE (Socket 754 + PCI-Express + Onboard Geforce 6100)

Thanks in advance for any help, and I am open to other suggestions in regards to motherboards.

Cheers,
Sly.

Darkwave · 24 Aug 2006 at 18:56

You already know this, but I got my Athlon64 3400+ to 3900+ speeds on my old Gigabyte GA-K8NE so I think that one is a good contender. Asus boards overclock better in-general though, and onboard video is useful to have (especially if you blow up graphics cards like I do.)

m3csl2004 · 24 Aug 2006 at 20:26

deffinatly the biostar tforce 754 - awesome board - i have 1 hehe, ask anything you like

mr.sly · 24 Aug 2006 at 20:41

m3csl2004 said:
deffinatly the biostar tforce 754 - awesome board - i have 1 hehe, ask anything you like

Thanks for the reply.

Seems like a nice board and similar price to the ones I was looking at as well. For someone who hasn't overclocked before, will if give me a good selection of options for overclocking and be simple to follow? I wouldn't say I'm n00b so I should be able to work it out, but it's always nice if there's a feature that will do some of the work for me.

br83taylor · 25 Aug 2006 at 08:45

I'm running an Asrock K8SLI-eSATA2. Which although they don't sell here, can be easily found and cheap as chips. Overclocking is a bit limited but didn't stop me getting an old newcastle 3000 up to 2.4gig (or 3400 speed). also run a X1800XT in mine so you'll have no probs with that. Plus you have the option of getting an upgrade card to go to either 939 or AM2 in the future.

mr.sly · 25 Aug 2006 at 14:34

br83taylor said:
I'm running an Asrock K8SLI-eSATA2. Which although they don't sell here, can be easily found and cheap as chips. Overclocking is a bit limited but didn't stop me getting an old newcastle 3000 up to 2.4gig (or 3400 speed). also run a X1800XT in mine so you'll have no probs with that. Plus you have the option of getting an upgrade card to go to either 939 or AM2 in the future.

Thanks for the reply, looks like a decent board. But I'm only really keeping this till I got Conroe closer towards Christmas. And AM2 is just way too expensive for what it can do.