PCI-E Motherboard with passive northbridge

CH3 · 11 Jun 2006 at 16:10

Hi,

Just putting an order together and I'm changing to PCI-E. I like the Abit KN8's but fan cooled chipsets I don't like. Looking at the Gigabyte K8N boards (SLI but will only be using a single X1800 board) but can't see the difference between the MB-038 and MB-040 except for firewire. Any idea of other differences or other PCI-E/passively cooled motherboards?

collisster · 11 Jun 2006 at 16:26

Asus A8n Sli premium that do you?

squiffy · 11 Jun 2006 at 17:34

ATI chipsets also, 480 and 580 based. A few of the Asus Nforces are passive based (Premium and Deluxe) and Gigabyte MATX, but they run REALLY hot so you still need airflow over the heatsink

See sig.

CH3 · 11 Jun 2006 at 18:25

Interesting...I'm wondering whether to stick with nforce3...which (I think) is essentially nforce 4 without SLI or the latest SATA. I'm just going to use the gigabit networking, sound and plug in an x1800 of some flavour with a 4000+ and 1GB of RAM. Doesn't 3 run cooler than 4?

Ooops.. and PCI-E!!