I bought a DFI ICFX3200 RD600 - Good move?

[Mul]

Hi,

Well, today I was looking through clearance in hope to find any new bargain motherboards for my move to Core 2 Duo. I'd noticed the DFI ICFX3200 RD600 in there for a few days but today there was only one left in stock. At £76, I thought what the heck I'll buy it.

So here we go. £86 (inc postage) poorer and a DFI ICFX3200 RD600 heading my way.

My question is, was it a good move? A quick google shows a mixed opinion on this board, some saying it's poorly made and others saying that people are getting bad results simply due to the complexity of the BIOS.

I plan on coupling this board with:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 "Stepping 29B" - On it's way to me right now
GeIL PC2-6400C4 Ultra 1GB memory - On it's way to me right now
Scythe Ninja Rev B Cooler - Sat in my existing pc and have a LGA775 mount sat around somewhere.

I'm hoping to be hitting anywhere between 3.0GHz and 3.3GHz, which is anywhere between 430 and 475FSB.

I've decided that I'm not interested in P35, so here's my question. Considering similar boards available around the £80 mark, was this a good move or should I cancel it and grab a DS3P or P5N-E instead?

Your thoughts, most welcome

Cheers,

Mul

 

[Servo]

There's very mixed reviews of the DFI, I would cancel and buy the DS3P, I've had no problems with them. (ds3 first, and still going).

 

[Mekrel]

RD600 itself uses a dual bus design, which is why you get completely async memory from the FSB, and not like 680i where it is just more complex dividers.

The downside to this is the chipset is a slow number cruncher, but it doesn't seem to hamper it in 3d mode.

The board seems to take too much voltage to get as high FSB as all the other chipsets (680, 965, 975 etc) and it doesn't like Sync mode - you're better off clocking async.

I have the board, but it's borked (as it was from day I bought it) with a broken dimm (which is one of the orange dimms which give more stable clocking than yellow) and voltages do not follow bios at all which I measured with a DMM.

The northbridge cooler is a problem, it isn't enough for a very hot running chipset and the other problem is it uses hooks - so trying to get a secure and stable fit is hard.

It's a nice board to play with though, fastest point in 464FSB, so you want at least a 9* multi processor. Make sure you clear CMOS after every bad overclock even if it appears to have reset itself, because it can sometimes throw a wobbly.

Problem is here, is that the bios' out when I was last using the board never fixed the fact that CMOS reloaded didn't work and this meant manually setting up the bios every time.

So in summary, clock in a sync mode, get an after party NB cooler and have fun.

 

[Mul]

thanks for the detailed reply. You mentioned the async memory controller. this was partly why i bought this board as I dont want my GeIL Ultra to hold back the boards max FSB. You say the northbridge cooler uses hooks. does this mean I have limited choices of coolers? I was considering the thermalright HR05 or the noctua.

 

[Mul]

One question. The CPU Socket looks mighty close to the edge of the PCB. I'm going to be using a Scythe Ninja Plus cooler and I'm using a case which has about 18mm clearance between the edge of the board and the PSU. Am I going to have problems?

http://www.wirtualmedia.pl/galeria/uploaded/dfird600.jpg

If so, what do you reckon? Cancel board for one with a lower socket or grab a new cpu cooler?

Cheers,

Mul

 

[WJA96]

That looks pretty normal to me. I don't think that is exceptionally close to the edge at all.

I've been offered 1st refusal on one of these and I'm looking forward to a bit of a challenge

 

[Mul]

Thanks for your opinion. Right now, I pulled out the LGA775 adapter for this heatsink and I didn't realise how big it was. Now that I've seen how big the adapter is and considering proportionally how big the Scythe is to it, I don't think I'll have much of a problem.

It does indeed seem like clocking this board isn't a piece of cake. But like you said, nothing wrong with a challenge ay?

This will probably be the most complicated board i've handled ever, but having gone through a DFI board or two, I don't think the learning curve will be that steep.

I have to say, what I like about this board is how clean the area is around the socket. Not a single line of capacitors round the socket.

I'll be buying a Thermalright HR05 for it, eventually. I'm picking things up, bit by bit as I don't plan on carrying out the upgrade until I've finished all my AS Modules.

Mul