Best mATX conroe capable board for sensible money

prism · 11 Nov 2006 at 23:54

Rooster said:
Hi just to add my 2 penny, Very interested in this thread. My pb5-vm when switched on after two sec restarts then ok any idia's.

e6300, Kingston value 1gb 667mhz, pb5-vm flashed to 0404 seasonic s12 430,
was in Aspire xq pack but now in Antec nine hundred.

I had that too. Not sure what the reason was anymore.

Tute · 12 Nov 2006 at 00:19

My Xmas List:

A Conroe mATX board with sick overclocking, based off the 975X chipset, and sporting 2 PCIe 16x slots :cool:

prism · 12 Nov 2006 at 02:06

Tute said:
My Xmas List:

A Conroe mATX board with sick overclocking, based off the 975X chipset, and sporting 2 PCIe 16x slots

More like a "dream on buddy" list

Tute · 12 Nov 2006 at 02:13

prism said:
More like a "dream on buddy" list

At this point, Crossfire is a bit of a waste (with R600 so close) but it would be damn fun as a kind of "***** and giggles" project, trying to shoehorn two X1900s or X1950s in there!

WJA96 · 12 Nov 2006 at 08:53

Rooster said:
Hi just to add my 2 penny, Very interested in this thread. My pb5-vm when switched on after two sec restarts then ok any idea's.

Send it back? It's a very expensive, fairly ordinary motherboard. And it isn't even very stable for an Intel chipset board. The ASRocks are half the price, faster, and run 100% stable.

Rooster said:
e6300, Kingston value 1gb 667mhz, pb5-vm flashed to 0404 seasonic s12 430,
was in Aspire xq pack but now in Antec nine hundred.

There is nothing there that should cause any instability but there are a huge number of disappointed posts here and on other forums about the P5B-VM and based on that I would honestly recommend sending it back and getting an ASRock 945G-DVI.

Rooster · 12 Nov 2006 at 23:00

BOARD RESTARTS

Your comments noted and thanks.
G :mad:

etting a bit fed up with matx trying to squeeze temps noise etc into sff.
I just love the look of my new Antec nine hundred mind it is a little large but under desk looks good with temps 40c max in far cry could be full atx next !
in new year may be, If I rma it I expect it would be a replacement board not refund.
so stuck for now with the start up problem.

WJA96 · 12 Nov 2006 at 23:33

Rooster said:
Your comments noted and thanks.
G etting a bit fed up with matx trying to squeeze temps noise etc into sff.
I just love the look of my new Antec nine hundred mind it is a little large but under desk looks good with temps 40c max in far cry could be full atx next !
in new year may be, If I rma it I expect it would be a replacement board not refund.
so stuck for now with the start up problem.

Well, I think a lot of the original contributors to this thread have gone full ATX - Rick_Barnes, Confusion, Prism, Massive Attack and I have all gone the way of the big case, but I'm very willing to spend if the right board comes along. I lost £14 on the ASUS I tested (Easyrider has it now) and I reckon that was worth every penny to find out it wasn't as good as I'd hoped

I have high hopes for the LG-95 assuming Abit ever launch it and I'm looking at a Biostar on import at the moment, but it's still very early days in terms of motherboard development for Core2Duo.

Tute · 13 Nov 2006 at 00:46

WJA96 said:
Well, I think a lot of the original contributors to this thread have gone full ATX - Rick_Barnes, Confusion, Prism, Massive Attack and I have all gone the way of the big case, but I'm very willing to spend if the right board comes along. I lost £14 on the ASUS I tested (Easyrider has it now) and I reckon that was worth every penny to find out it wasn't as good as I'd hoped

I have high hopes for the LG-95 assuming Abit ever launch it and I'm looking at a Biostar on import at the moment, but it's still very early days in terms of motherboard development for Core2Duo.

I just grabbed the Asrock for mine, i'll sell it and upgrade when/if the right board comes along.

For now though, an E6600 at stock isn't too shabby - it can still SuperPi 1MB at around 20 seconds.

Gommsta · 13 Nov 2006 at 01:41

I went Asrock for mine too. Great little board. Just waiting for the next thing like Tute and the others.

Tute · 13 Nov 2006 at 01:47

I heard a rumour that Intel tried to prohibit overclocking on their 965G and 945G chipsets, and that they put pressure on the vendors to make the boards impossible to overclock - like the PCI lock on the P5B-VM, or the Vcore options on the Asrock.

If that's true, then it's going to be down to either nVidia or ATi to give us a chipset that can be put into an mATX board, which will hopefully give some overclocking muscle.

Tute · 4 Dec 2006 at 03:43

Anandtech said:
The Foxconn G9657MA motherboard is a full featured product that is based on the Intel G965 and ICH8 chipsets. The board features a single x16 PCI Express slot, one x1 PCI-Express slot, and two PCI slots. There are four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, a single ATA133 IDE connector, and one e-SATA 3Gb/s port via a J-Micron chipset. HD Audio is provided courtesy of the Realtek ALC883, and Gigabit Ethernet supplied by the Marvell 88E8056 chipset. So far, just about all of the G965 motherboards perform the same and we are awaiting a major video driver update from Intel before publishing results. The current X3000 video performance is on par with the GMA-950 engine used in the 945G chipsets, but this should change for the better with the next driver release.

Looks like the 965G boards are imminent.

WJA96 · 4 Dec 2006 at 08:22

I can't see that this one will be any better than any of the other G965 boards out there. The ASUS and Gigabyte ones are spectacularly poor clockers. If Intel specifically didn't implement PCI locks on the board then it won't clock well.

Abit still haven't launched their 'super-clocking' IL-95 board, but at least the situation cannot get any worse :rolleyes:

Rick_Barnes · 8 Dec 2006 at 20:55

still gutted theres nothing on this

Massive Attack · 9 Dec 2006 at 12:09

glad i switched back to ATX a while back as i was also not having any luck finding a good mATX board

Tute · 9 Dec 2006 at 14:35

Massive Attack said:
glad i switched back to ATX a while back as i was also not having any luck finding a good mATX board

I could never go back to ATX. I love my Sugo far too much. I can make do with the Asrock board now, it's a superb little mobo. The overclocking boards will come, it may take time, but i'm sure they will eventually arrive.

Massive Attack · 10 Dec 2006 at 10:16

Tute said:
I could never go back to ATX. I love my Sugo far too much. I can make do with the Asrock board now, it's a superb little mobo. The overclocking boards will come, it may take time, but i'm sure they will eventually arrive.

yeah matx was pretty good i have to admit, was considering getting a shuttle but they are pretty expensive and id have to sell my board and lian li case which i dont want to do as i have a good clocking board and id loose to much money on them.

Rick_Barnes · 12 Dec 2006 at 17:49

i had a shuttle sb65g2, it was gorgeous.

new shuttles are nice but not so keen on the plasticy fronts.

theyre getting bigger and bigger though.

would be happy with a mATX conroe board that could manage 400 FSB ish, neednt be a monster

WJA96 · 12 Dec 2006 at 17:54

Rick_Barnes said:
would be happy with a mATX conroe board that could manage 400 FSB ish, neednt be a monster

No, we're not greedy - 2.8/3.2/3.6GHz is plenty for an mATX box!

Kezmo · 13 Dec 2006 at 18:16

Whats the best board available now ? Looking to order a e6600 and a matx mobo tonight.

Its gotta be stable and if i can get a mild o/c on the chip that'll be a bonus.

WJA96 · 13 Dec 2006 at 18:47

ASRock 945G-DVI will get you to 2.7GHz with an E6600. IT's dirt cheap and rock solid stable. I can't recommend it highly enough.