Best mATX conroe capable board for sensible money

Gommsta · 8 Sep 2006 at 19:29

Yeah. I reckon i'll get the Asrock conrore 945 for now and then change boards in the future when they actually bring out a good one! It's not dear and you ca always sell it on for 20-25 quid.

Tute · 8 Sep 2006 at 20:17

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20060905A1004.html

Seems we're not going to see much with the new chipset until next month.

Gary Key said:
Over the course of the next three weeks you can expect several Core 2 Duo mATX boards based on G965 and 945G to be in the retail channel. At the end of the month we will have a mATX roundup geared towards SFF and HTPC usage with Core 2 Duo and AM2 boards.

This should be worth waiting for, hopefully the article will answer a lot of people's questions.

Massive Attack · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:04

FFS

Gommsta · 9 Sep 2006 at 00:20

LOL my thoughts exactly!

Tute · 9 Sep 2006 at 00:29

I'm starting to lose faith in there ever being a good mATX Conroe board. The Asrock has poor Vcore options, and no Vmem options. The P5B-VM has no PCI lock. And today I found out that both the new mATX Gogabyte and Intel boards based around the 965 chipset have extremely limited overclocking options (can't post source as it would be a competitor).

FirebarUK · 9 Sep 2006 at 14:58

Just wait for the Abit IB95

Hopefully it'll follow in the LG81's mould.

Tute · 10 Sep 2006 at 00:45

FirebarUK said:
Just wait for the Abit IB95 Hopefully it'll follow in the LG81's mould.

Speaking of which, the LG-81 isn't a bad board at all!

The Inquirer said:
BIOS setup-wise, LG-81 has decent overclocking flexibility, both on the FSB and voltage side. Unfortunately, changing the multiplier on the 3.73 GHz Intel Pentium 4 EE didn't really work, so it was assuming all Intel CPUs inserted had a fixed multiplier. We tried it with 2.8 GHz dual-core Pentium D as well at 800 MHz FSB. Unlike the Intel 945G boards, the Abit entry did not support DDR2-800 memory in the BIOS. Using the the old Corsair HydroCool 200, we pushed the Pentium D to 3.04 GHz and FSB866 to run - reliably over quite a few nights, rendering 3D.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=26795

Massive Attack · 10 Sep 2006 at 10:53

am i reading this right a massive 240mhz overclock and no DDR2 support, WOW

WJA96 · 10 Sep 2006 at 13:28

No, you're not reading it right. The LG-81 is probably the best pre-core 2 duo overclocking mATX motherboard, and it is DDR2, but it suffers from overheating on the voltage regulators, especially with dual-core CPUs.

Massive Attack · 10 Sep 2006 at 16:23

WJA96 said:
No, you're not reading it right. The LG-81 is probably the best pre-core 2 duo overclocking mATX motherboard, and it is DDR2, but it suffers from overheating on the voltage regulators, especially with dual-core CPUs.

not very good then is it

Gommsta · 10 Sep 2006 at 17:19

lol

Dunno whether to laugh or cry at this.

WJA96 · 10 Sep 2006 at 18:28

Massive Attack said:
not very good then is it

I think pretty much every pre-Core 2 Duo LGA775 chipset suffered from overheating of the voltage regulators. That's why the Core 2 Duo boards have significantly beefed up voltage regulators. I had active cooling on my LG-81 and I had 3.8GHz out of a P4 805 and 4.2GHz on a P4 940. In both cases the issue was not cooling the processor, it was cooling the voltage regulators that was the problem.

It was th ebest of a bad lot then eh?

WJA96 · 10 Sep 2006 at 18:39

Gommsta said:
lol

Dunno whether to laugh or cry at this.

The problem is that mATX boards are largely aimed at home users who want a compact machine. They also tend to want a quiet machine, so they're not designed to be the building block of a powerhouse machine. Look at the sales of the 1 SLi compatible mATX motherboard - #@!? all. Not exactly encouragement to the manufacturers to bring out high performance boards.

We've already established that many users think they should get a top overclocking mATX motherboard with loads of features for a fraction of the price of the equivalent ATX board. We've also pretty much established that's not going to happen any time soon. The difference in the cost of the glass fibre for the PCB doesn't actually save that much.

As well as wanting the motherboard for sweetie money they also want to be able to massively overclock their processor. Again - the chips don't run that cool that you can do this in an mATX case. I have an E6600 that is overclocked to 3.15GHz and it runs at 55C at 100% CPU utilization. That's not that much cooler than a Prescott. It's massively more powerful, but not much cooler.

So instead of laughing or crying, why not be realistic and buy a cheap board and a relatively expensive processor and enjoy not having to overclock it too much to get oodles of oomph.

just my 2p worth.

Gommsta · 10 Sep 2006 at 22:28

No, I want it all

On a serious note, the decent motherboards will come i'm sure. In my case though I'm just putting myself under a time pressure. I will be buying the asrock it looks like and then swapping it in for a new proven board.

Everyone wants something for nothing

Tute · 10 Sep 2006 at 22:56

Gommsta said:
No, I want it all

On a serious note, the decent motherboards will come i'm sure. In my case though I'm just putting myself under a time pressure. I will be buying the asrock it looks like and then swapping it in for a new proven board.

Everyone wants something for nothing

I agree with you tbh.

Anybody looking to build a performance system in a mATX case, pick yourself up a Conroe and the Asrock board. Even at stock, the Conroe's destroy most other processors, so you'll still have a blindingly fast system. And when the boards follow, you'll only have spent £50 on the Asrock, some of which you may be able to regain through the MM, and upgrade.

prism · 15 Sep 2006 at 10:03

Was reading this thread, and thought I'd have a check on the asus site on it's current BIOS.
It seems that yesterday a new release has come out. 307.

Version 0307 2006/09/14 update
Description P5B-VM BIOS 0307
Fix HCT 11.2 test unreport memory issue
Fixe System may hang up sometimes when press Esc key to exit from EZ Flash2
Update DVMT to version 4.0
Correct some CPU information in DMI.
Add options of Max FSB from 400MHz to 500MHz
Fix some TWINMOS memory unstable issue
Revise warning message if there is no memory module in DIMM_A1 and DIMM_A2

Max 500MHz now

Now that makes this board better. Now to fix the PCI lock...

Massive Attack · 15 Sep 2006 at 12:58

prism said:
Was reading this thread, and thought I'd have a check on the asus site on it's current BIOS.
It seems that yesterday a new release has come out. 307.

Max 500MHz now

Now that makes this board better. Now to fix the PCI lock...

YES

, common asus now the pci lock, i have just bought this board but it has been delayed and was going to cancel but i think i may keep it now

Paramount · 15 Sep 2006 at 13:20

Surely the PCI lock would be more important than increasing fsb from an already quite high 400 (which it can't reach anyway) to 500.

Gommsta · 15 Sep 2006 at 23:24

lol yeah. Its like they're teasing us even more now. Here's a Ferrari for you to drive but you can only use first gear.

Tute · 16 Sep 2006 at 01:59

Gommsta said:
lol yeah. Its like they're teasing us even more now. Here's a Ferrari for you to drive but you can only use first gear.

The big question is whether to risk the money on the board in the hope that Asus will fix the PCI lock. Otherwise it's no better than the Asrock, which is £30 cheaper.