Biostar Tpower I45 or?

Yeah the products were very similarly described. The only way I could guarantee not to mix them up was to search their site for "I45", which gives only one result. Funny thing is (and this bit REALLY winds me up), their site showed 3 boards in stock when I ordered. As I paid, the stock went UP to 4, and then immediately to "out of stock" when I got told there were no boards to send out.

Last weekend (bank holiday weekend, mind you) the site showed 18 in stock(?!) and still has stock on show. This is despite an email from them telling me their stock is stuck in Amtrack (now in liquidation) and they haven't any to send out. Shoddy, tbh.

If this gets resolved, I'll count my blessings and never order from them again. If it isn't resolved by Monday afternoon (a cold, hard tracking reference in my inbox) then I'm charging back to them. They suck!
 
In fairness and balance, I have to report that I've just received an email. That's right, at 2.10*AM*. It seems this company (albeit being Ltd) are a family affair. The email was from my contact's home address and she says:

Apologetic person said:
OK (Rainmaker) thank you VERY much for your patience. It was a terrible end to a terrible week today - I won't bore you with the sob story but it involves a broken down courier van , parcels being stuck on the M6 and missing the onward connection delivery vans .....!

Anyway, the supplier is clearly not to be relied on - if we ship it from here then at least we can keep an eye on the tracker. Which is what we're going to do on Monday - because to be honest I don't even know where the I45 is at the moment (courier depot, M6, or Mars!!).

So we have prioritised it, have a new batch of I45s here in our warehouse and this WILL be dispatched from here on Monday.

And yes, I will send you full tracking details when the courier has collected !

I can only apologise again - I feel very embarrassed about the whole situation and as I mentioned before you have the patience if a saint!!

Is this ok?
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All's well that ends well? Tune in next week to find out!...:o:D
 
Sorry to hear it, i guess i must have got lucky with them.

I've still not used mine yet, planning on getting it up and running on tuesday or wednesday i think, just ordering my 150 velociraptor now.
 
khemist said:
Sorry to hear it, i guess i must have got lucky with them.

I've still not used mine yet, planning on getting it up and running on tuesday or wednesday i think, just ordering my 150 velociraptor now.
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I just could'nt have new kit sitting around in boxes like that. It's been what, 2 weeks since you got yours now? I doubt if i would have lasted 2 hours. :D It would have been a case of taking it out of the box and drooling over it then putting it back in. Then doing the same again 30 mins later. Then it would be, bugger it, must build new rig.

Hope your's turns up this week Rainmaker. You have been more patient with them than i would have.
 
pastymuncher said:
Hope your's turns up this week Rainmaker. You have been more patient with them than i would have.
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Thanks :) If it was anything else I'd have had a refund a week and a half ago. But seeing as these are about the only people selling this board (and it IS this board = winrar), I'm pretending to be Job lol

I just hope it's worth the wait. I'm still hoping E0 will be confirmed on the Q9550 in the meantime tbh, if not I'll grab an E8600 and pray for a week 22.
 
Rainmaker said:
I just hope it's worth the wait. I'm still hoping E0 will be confirmed on the Q9550 in the meantime tbh, if not I'll grab an E8600 and pray for a week 22.
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TBH i am not that impressed with the E8600's from what i have seen on here so far. Certainly not worth the extra over the E8500 especially as people have been getting E0 stepping E8500's from OCUK. A lot of people are using a lot of volts, 1.5v+, just to get 4.3Ghz. That's too much voltage for a not very impressive clock.
 
Shaolin_K said:
imramb

you mentioned that the supplier of the I45 sent you the TP45 HP - may I ask whether they listed BOTH motherboards showing pictures of and labelled as "TPower", but key difference being I45 of the two?
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Actually the board that I ordered said I45 in the description but the picture was for the TP45. Theoretically speaking I could have given them a hard time and refused to pay more but I really wanted this board.

It seems that I have two of these boards coming tomorrow, send me a PM/trust as I don't need two of these :)
 
Thread revival time :D As promised, my initial impressions and a pic.

This board rocks! It's easy to work with, though feels a little more flimsy in places compared to my older MSI and Intel boards. For example the CPU socket lever and RAM (once seated) feel a little "wobblier". That said it went together like a dream and held up to some pretty tough abuse tbh, as it was my first home build and at times I wasn't exactly graceful or gentle with it LOL :o Getting the OCZ Vendetta 2 to attach was..."fun"... All my fault, but the board didn't complain.

The onboard power and reset buttons are a nice touch, and feel solid. Also the onboard LCD display showing the CPU temp in real time is handy at a glance, though my IDE cable (DVD RW) obstructs it a bit. The only real drawback I had was getting the SATA cable plugged in, as my hdd bays are directly facing the angled SATA ports. Once the hdd is installed, it's basically overhanging the SATA ports and needed some creative wiring to attach.

A better case would solve that though, and overall I'm super happy. Clocking's going well and the BIOS is nicely done. See my posts in the E8600 clocking thread (CPU section) for details and screenshots. Vista x64 FLIES on this thing!

The BIOS could be better, but not much, and Biostar are generally good at working on their BIOS updates according to online reports. The Windows based TPower software is, again, handy but a bit flaky - I preferred the BIOS for clocking. I'm currently at 4.2Ghz, 1.32 volts. Temps are around 32 idle and 45 to 50 load on average after 15 mins of 100% stress testing.

I'll sort out a blow-by-blow for my site, but the above should give some initial impressions. I'm definitely glad I waited for this model, and it's been an angel after failed overclocks. It just boots right back to your previous successful clock (rather than default non-clocked settings like some boards) :D

If there's ONE thing I'd 100% change, it's the position of the CPU socket. Compared to most 775 boards it's very high up on the mobo and that means my 120mm cooler interferes with the top-mounted PSU in my case. Because of this I've had to change the CPU cooler orientation to "bottom-to-top" rather than "front-to-back". Luckily that still fits my airflow schematics and overall the CPU surroundings (MOFSETS, chipset heatsinks/heatpipe) are very well spaced. I had no problem at all getting the huge Vendetta 2 installed over them.

Anyway until I write a more cogent review with step-by-step pics of the build, here's a piccie to whet your appetites.

biostar-i45-building.jpg
 
That's very interesting info Rainmaker thanks! :)

I did see some nice results from this board and I have to admit I'm not very familiar with the BIOSTAR brand? :o

I've used quite a few chipsets in my time but never found myself using a BIOSTAR?

Can anyone shed a little light on this BRAND for us please? :confused:

I'm pretty sure they haven't got any boards in the All-Time-Hall-Of-Motherboard-Fame (i.e ABIT NF7-S, ASUS A8N-SLI Premium etc etc)

Anyways all I heard about them is positive which is a good sign and I've witness a few of their recent boards clock up very high indeed! :eek:

I'm totally loving ASUS boards at the moment but having used them exclusively for the past 3-5 years I fear I have become brand-locked and need to check out some other BRANDS, at the very least the comparison to an ASUS product would be worth it lol! ;)
 
Big.Wayne said:
That's very interesting info Rainmaker thanks! :)
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You're very welcome :D

Can anyone shed a little light on this BRAND for us please? :confused:
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There's some basic info in Wikipedia. IIRC they poached a bunch of Abit staff not that long ago, which could help to explain the resounding success of the I45 so early on?

I'm pretty sure they haven't got any boards in the All-Time-Hall-Of-Motherboard-Fame (i.e ABIT NF7-S, ASUS A8N-SLI Premium etc etc)
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*cough* This one! *cough* It's already smashed world records, and out of the top 10 world record overclocks (highest clock, highest FSB) the Biostar TPower I45 owns SIX (or is it eight?!) of them! :eek: This board's going down in history and it's barely a month old!

I'm totally loving ASUS boards at the moment but having used them exclusively for the past 3-5 years I fear I have become brand-locked and need to check out some other BRANDS, at the very least the comparison to an ASUS product would be worth it lol! ;)
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Good attitude imho :) I was SO close to bagging an Asus P5Q Deluxe (or a Gigabyte EP45-DS3R), but the Biostar pipped it for me. I doubt I'd have been disappointed either way, but as you say it's always good to keep your options open.
 
Very nice Rainmaker. 4.2Ghz for 1.32v is pretty good. Being on water i forget how big heatsinks are these days. Biostar are very good at bios releases. In fact there are very few faults on even the first release bios versions compared to the likes of Asus. The boards are vey well featured too. Even my bargain basement £35 P35 Biostar board has onboard power and reset buttons. Clocks very well too.
 
Finally got my board up and running and didnt even to a clean install going from p35 to 45 :), seems the e8500 was better than i thought all this time and the board was holding it back.

Just a quick play around, temps at 60.
One problem i did have with this is the small 60mm fan got in the way of the waterblock so i had to mount it vertical.. dunno if this will make a difference to temps.

Even with 1.5v before it would fail almost instantly at that clock before, it's set to just over 1.4v in the pic... bit hard to make out the numbers in the pic - taken a better one now.

Will leave it running for a while before bed.
 
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The Biostar Tpower I45 is a great motherboard and will be classed as one of THE classic motherboards. :)

Great price, good bios and layout, extreme overclocking, nice package with six sata cables for six sata ports (Asus :o) and rock solid stable.

In my opinion the best motherboard out at the moment (obviously not tried them all, but read plenty of reviews and forums).




P.S. I think ocuk are missing out by not stocking Biostar motherboards.
 
Does anyone know if this supports P4's i no its old tech but i really want one of these n could do with waiting alittle longer b4 buying a new cpu
 
qwerty321 said:
What are the little red thingys between the pci slots?
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Jumpers, to change from single PCI-e gfx card (16x) to crossfire mode (two 8x). Most other P45 boards do this auto-magically using some kind of digital switch, but Biostar apparently skimped on that and spent the money elsewhere (and it shows) ;)
 
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