WLTM Motherboard for 4x DIMMs

eddiew

eddiew

eddiew

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Joined
26 Jan 2007
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Hi all,

Well my previously-faithful, 14-month-old Gigabyte P965-DS3 appears to be succumbing to age. When it was new, it had 2x1GB of memory, and threw my E4300 to 2.4GHz without any voltage increases. Then came 2 more DIMMs, 2 additional USB devices, and suddenly every voltage needed hiking up a couple of notches. Few months on and it won't boot with 4 DIMMs and OC unless all but 1 USB device is removed.

Time for a replacement, methinks. What I'm specifically looking for is something that can:

A) handle an FSB of 400 and up (planning on a wolfdale in 6 months or so, would like some OC headroom on it)
B) handle 4 sticks of DDR2 (Ballistix 5300) without issue

I'm not worried about SLI or RAID, and I have no PATA, serial, PS/2 or parallel devices, just 2x SATA drives and USB peripherals.

I'm currently thinking along the lines of a P5K-E WiFi, and would be grateful if anyone can confirm that this board would be fine with 4 DIMMs, as well as any other recommendations for things I haven't thought about :)

On a slightly different note, I'm planning on a Zalman CNPS9500A cooler, which is not going to blow down onto the motherboard components, but sideways/upwards (straight out of the case). Is that going to cause problems for the P5K-E, or is it going to be ok with the general case cooling (2x 120mm fans + PSU fan)? Wouldn't want to fry the voltage regs in the cause of better cooling for the CPU :S

Thanks for any advice!
 
Should have mentioned, don't really want to go above £110-120. Cheaper is better, unless it compromises stability :)

Cheers
 
don't run an Asus P5K but the abit IP35 series will so I guess that the P5K should too.
 
BUFF said:
don't run an Asus P5K but the abit IP35 series will so I guess that the P5K should too.
Click to expand...

That's good to hear. Which Abit are you running, may I ask? I'd rather pick one that's been verified by an OCUK forumer than one that 'should' work :)
 
Nice - I think I remember a Tom's Hardware review of Vista with 8GB concluding that it was a very good thing indeed :)
 
eddiew said:
Nice - I think I remember a Tom's Hardware review of Vista with 8GB concluding that it was a very good thing indeed :)
Click to expand...

Dont be taken in by that review. Did you actually read any qualitative information on what speeds increases were seen? Any graphs?

No, neither did I.
 
Arthalen said:
Dont be taken in by that review. Did you actually read any qualitative information on what speeds increases were seen? Any graphs?

No, neither did I.
Click to expand...

I guess that's a point... and it's true that 4 (3.2) GB under XP has so far not needed a swap file...

Back on track a little, anything else than the IP35 that's invariably happy with 4 DIMMs, or is that the flavour of the month? :)
 
Hi eddiew,

I'm with Buff on this one, Ive recently put together a new rig with an Abit IP35 Pro and 4x1gb Crucial Ballistix Tracers at PC2-8500. The ram and cpu are at stock voltages and only upped the MCH voltage one notch. Not a single problem so far :)

[edit: forget to mention the cpu is a quad Q6600 o/c'd to 3ghz on stock voltages]
 
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Cheers D.M, good to know. I'd lament the lack of WiFi, but much rather a stable board and a PCI WiFi card than an unstable board with no PCI card :)

Pity it's so ugly :/
 
D.M said:
?you talking about the Abit IP35 Pro? The pics dont do it any justice, its much better looking in the flesh :)
Click to expand...

It's the whole blue/black thing they've got going. With the copper heatpipe it looks kinda like a veiny bruise :(

That said, my case is windowless, what do I care once it's inside? :)
 
Is it better than the average PCI WiFi card? The one I have gets ~36 mbit, medium-low, while the laptop next to it gets 54 max strength...

Unfortunately it's a rented house and there's just no way to lay some Cat5 without wrecking the floor/walls :(
 
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