Good C2D Motherboard choice?

[The Jackal]

Almost forgot the pending release of bearlake P35 chipsets

And so it might be worthwhile getting a p5k next week when its released :

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...?cid=6&id=2253

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=142841

This should future proof you so that at least you can upgrade to penryn cpus when they come out without the hastle of buying a new board too.

Information is light on the ground as to how well the P5k will overclock but at least it carries the excellent intel CH sata controller

but then your left with a cpu on its own. I often find it easier to shift bundles. My plan for later this year is a Penryn on a Bearlake or similar ddrIII supporting chipset with either a single R600 based xtx or 2 xt's. That will leave me a full bundle to move on a lot easier than single parts

---------- Post added at 14:39 ---------- Previous post was at 14:36 ----------

The problem with those Asus boards are they are either or memory controllers where the P35 supports both II and III and memory costs may well decide my route

[The Jackal]

I guess your right but I tend to do it this way as by the time I have that spare CPU I'll be able to get hold of a cheap mobo(depreaciated from 2days prices) to marry it with

I had read about the Bearlakes earlier on this week but im surprised to see Asus boards coming without dual memory capability seeing as the P35 does support both making a restriced board seems strange

[keithwalton]

From the XS preview they hit a fsb of 575MHz (yes it was with an engineering sample cpu) but still thats an insane fsb! the i975x flakes out around 450MHz the i965 (what this chipset replaces) can do 500MHz at a push.

575 as most of the people in that thread are in awe is just that amazing

Originally Posted by keithwalton

From the XS preview they hit a fsb of 575MHz (yes it was with an engineering sample cpu) but still thats an insane fsb! the i975x flakes out around 450MHz the i965 (what this chipset replaces) can do 500MHz at a push.

575 as most of the people in that thread are in awe is just that amazing

Do you have a forward plan or do you play it by ear? if you have a plan what is it

Originally Posted by CrC-3rr0r

As per usual I'm sure you can get it cheaper

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=57&subcat=821

got one of these coming monday big job to install it,its a tataol strip down the whole thing weighs in at 740 g

[The Jackal]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

got one of these coming monday big job to install it,its a tataol strip down the whole thing weighs in at 740 g

You will enjoy it - trust me

[Mauldor]

New system is not happy, let me tell you of the long story so far:

Parts arrived and I put this together in a bog standard case I had lying around, it has a Side fan and a top fan already fitted, side Fan Blowing in and Top fan sucking out. Now I fitted the whole lot and the HSF was so big that it overlapped the HS on the motherboard but it ran anyhow and the Temp's were 30c rising upto 35 and on load something in the region of 40+ type thing.

Now the system was Very noisey indeed and it was at this stage I had to find out what the problem was, after much investigation, the 7600GTFan was on all the time and making most of the noise, with that out of the system for example it was almost silent (and if you removed the 2 case fans).

What I did in the end (and this might be wrong) was have to top fan blowing down into the case (stream of cold Air for the Fan on the CPU) and the side fan replaced with a no-connected one. I placed 2 x Fans on the back blowing out of the case , top one still blowing down into the case and a front one sucking air in.

Anyhow, system ran fine for days on end and tonight for example I fired up a game of BF2, had done this many times through the week and no problems came about - half way through a 2nd
match my system rebooted and I was met with one long Beep, pause beep again and so forth. Looking this up on another system says its a RAM Fault. I replaced the ram from my Other machine (only DDR533) and the system worked. I tried the ram one stick at a time in the other machine and it was then one of the stick were dead.

I asked myself at this time, was the fans in the case the wrong way and enough heat built up and thus fried the ram? They are Patriot and have heat spreaders on and by god they were hot as well. Surely the Air coming from the top down was enough to cool these? I Put my hand (without touching anything) and could feel the Air no problems next to the ram chips.

Now the annoying part, I have to RMA both of them (thus system is out of action) and post them via Royal Mail - I am not sure if the cost is given back to you. I know from SCAN for example they sent a new part and swapped my broken part at the door, all next day. Thus the perils I guess of Buying online.

[The Jackal]

Hope you had not been a nawty boy and dabbled in a bit of overclocking ?

Were all the BIOS settings @ default ?

How high were your temps ?

[Mauldor]

No OverClocking has taken place, I was wanting to make sure everything ran fine @ Stock Values. As for Temp's, on Idle the CPU was 32c and on full Load (say a game) it hit about 40c which was not high I am sure. The Case Temp was 38c Idle and went as high as 45c on full load.

Now some might say the Top Fan there was the problem, should have been sucking air out of the case, with this set as such - the temp went up actually, 37 idle and so forth.

Every single time I had taken the side of (to see what the noise was about before) and checking by hand the Temps of things, the ram was never hot - this time it was, very hot...

EDIT:
I have the 3 Sticks of Ram in there at the moment, the system the same setup, ran a game for ages and shut the machine down. I Checked the Temp of the Ram by hand, cool as I was expecting - maybe a dodgy slab?

[The Jackal]

Originally Posted by Mauldor

The Case Temp was 38c Idle and went as high as 45c on full load.

You mean motherboard temperature right ?

Again normal.

Maybe you have just been unlucky mate