Best mATX conroe capable board for sensible money

Mobo turned up today (ASRock 945G-DVI) :D just stuck it in my sugo, posted first time. nice looking board tho the ide and power connecter positioning is a pain :p

Bought a socket 775 clip and stuck a Zalman CNPS7000B-CU on to cool the chip

Ill format c, whack xp on and cable tidy 2moz
 
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Are there any better matx boards coming out in the next month or so?
I'll need to build myself a new HTPC in Feb and will go with a Conroe, although I'm not sure if it will be a 6300 or 6600 yet. If I buy a 6600 I'll probably put it in my "work" pc anyway so it will most likely be a 6300 either way.

If there's nothing new due to be released, are there any current mobo's with an optical out, or coaxial SPDIF?
I want to be able to hook the pc up to my Pioneer 360 speakers without having to fill a pci slot with an extra sound card. I'd also like to overclock a little as it seems a waste not to with the conroe cpu's, but I'll be keeping things as quiet as possible so no massive clocks.
 
i read about those a while ago, theres 3 different versions i think, the others were pretty crap and i was unsure about that 1 due to onboard graphics being present, thought it was more of a little crap matx pc motherboard, as who really wants an overclocking motherboard with graphics onboard =/
Never know though :) anyone?
 
peetee said:
i read about those a while ago, theres 3 different versions i think, the others were pretty crap and i was unsure about that 1 due to onboard graphics being present, thought it was more of a little crap matx pc motherboard, as who really wants an overclocking motherboard with graphics onboard =/
Never know though :) anyone?
doubt its going to be crap tbh why else would gigabyte load it up with raid capacity and solid caps?
 
Massive Attack said:
doubt its going to be crap tbh why else would gigabyte load it up with raid capacity and solid caps?

It's not decent RAID though - it's Gigabyte's own RAID and it's only supported on 2 of the 6 SATA ports. It's the same ICH8 disk subsystem all the other 965G chipset boards use. And none of those clock. As for solid capacitors - they're a sales gimmick.
 
Kingy said:
Hi,

Have you got a link to this please?

No - just personal experience. On the Core2Duo's they're not stiopped from overclocking by the lack of FSB - most mATX boards will go to 450FSB on the BIOS - the ASRocks will go to 350+ on the the BIOS, it's the lack of a PCI lock that makes them fall over.
 
WJA96 said:
No - just personal experience. On the Core2Duo's they're not stopped from overclocking by the lack of FSB - most mATX boards will go to 450FSB on the BIOS - the ASRocks will go to 350+ on the the BIOS, it's the lack of a PCI lock that makes them fall over.

Thanks for replying :)

Surely though if the board is stable running a E6300 at stock 266FSB without PCI lock issues, then you could run a E4300 at that same 266FSB and there'd be no issues?

Does the PCI based instability occur if the PCI slots are unused?

I understand that things are only as strong as the weakest link, but if both chip and board will run at 300FSB separately, then why can't they do it together?

Can you take a look at my thread in GH please?

If the E4300 would only clock to 225FSB with the Asrock Conroe945G-DVI, the there's no point in me getting that chip, I might just as well pay the extra tenner and get a E6300 and have the VT support and faster native FSBs
 
Kingy said:
Surely though if the board is stable running a E6300 at stock 266FSB without PCI lock issues, then you could run a E4300 at that same 266FSB and there'd be no issues?

OK - Every CPU has an identifier in the BIOS and some microcodes associated with it that tell the BIOS what to set itself to.

E4300 - 9x Multi, 200MHz FSB, 33MHz PCI, 100MHz PCIe
E6300 - 7x Multi, 266MHz FSB, 33MHz PCI, 100MHz PCIe

So when you increase the FSB by 1 on the E6300 you go to;

E6300 - 7x Multi, 267MHz FSB, 34MHz PCI, 101MHz PCIe

Increase it by 34 and you have;

E6300 - 7x Multi, 300MHz FSB, 67MHz PCI, 134MHz PCIe and the computer fails to boot. because the graphics, SATA, PATA, memory controller are all so massively overclocked they just fall over. Basically no PCI lock, carp overclocking.

The same goes for the E4300 - overclock it by 34 FSB and what do you get?

E4300 - 9x Multi, 234MHz FSB, 67MHz PCI, 134MHz PCIe and it falls over.

Hence you can't overclock without a PCI lock and a PCIe lock.

The ASUS P5L-VM 1394 has a PCIe lock, but no PCI lock so you can overclock a bit harder, but not much (350FSB with an E6300).


Kingy said:
Does the PCI based instability occur if the PCI slots are unused?

I'm afraid so as the SATA and PATA interfaces take their timings from the PCI and PCIe clocks, as does the graphics card (obviously) and the network card (less obviously).


Kingy said:
I understand that things are only as strong as the weakest link, but if both chip and board will run at 300FSB separately, then why can't they do it together?

See above - you have an uncontrolled overclock in a major system timer and it just falls over.

Kingy said:
If the E4300 would only clock to 225FSB with the Asrock Conroe945G-DVI, the there's no point in me getting that chip, I might just as well pay the extra tenner and get a E6300 and have the VT support and faster native FSBs

I think the difference is significantly less than that at some stores - some places have them £3 different at the moment. And yes, I would advise you to look at the E6300 as a better long-term bet as the E4300's are proving to be a bit hit and miss as overclockers.
 
Nice post WJA96, often wondered what difference a "PCIe lock" makes to overclocking, and why it happens like that.

How hard is it to lock the frequencies from a manufacturing point of view? Is it done as a costcutting measure? Or are the motherboard makers just plain lazy and don't want you to be able to overclock?
 
Tute said:
How hard is it to lock the frequencies from a manufacturing point of view? Is it done as a costcutting measure? Or are the motherboard makers just plain lazy and don't want you to be able to overclock?

I think about 10 pages back I made some semi-paranoic post about Intel giving motherboard manufacturers a big discount on chipsets that don't clock. As far as I know it costs nothing to implement a chipset lock, but I really don't know. It only seems to be a problem on mATX boards as the ATX ones all seem to come with PCI and PCI locks as standard.
 
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