MOTHERBOARD
BUYING GUIDE
Socket 939
While AM2 has been released there are still some superb motherboards
out and about that can be snaffled up at slightly lower prices than
before.
non-SLI and non-Crossfire boards
I personally use a DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D. Known to clear the
300MHz FSB mark it is a rock solid stable board with a superlative BIOS
for enthusiast overclockers. Admittedly when I cranked to about 280Mhz
I did get slightly toasty mosfets on load, but that's when I used a
water cooling kit so the mosfet airflow wasn't overly great.
The Ultra-D is the best non SLI and Crossfire board about, and while it
can take 2 graphics cards they won't run in SLI mode. However older
versions of the board and older drivers could allow a user to remove
the chipset cooler, bridge some points with pencil and a SLI jumper
shift turned it into a SLI board. However it appears this is no longer
possible. Also being a DFI it can be fussy with RAM and getting it to
boot. I switched from 2x 512MB sticks of Geil single sided ram to 2x
1GB Corsair double sided ram and found that you needed to run the DIMMs
in a different configuration to get it too boot.
Despite this the DFI is my number one recommendation for those wishing
to run 1 graphics card.
The Asus A8N is another good board, and if you don't want the BIOS
depth or price of the DFI this should be your next option. It still
overclocks well, but there were issues on the Asus A8N series boards
with their chipset fans seizing up. However I am aware this is no
longer an issue, but Asus should cover it under warranty if it does
belly up.
SLI boards
Again my top recommended board is a DFI. With the SLI x16 chipset
its best to avoid the old SLI boards that only run SLI in 8x, 8x. So
while the DFI LanParty SLI-D is a good board (effectively the SLI
version of the Ultra-D) the best SLI board is the DFI SLI-DR Expert.
This board hit 512Mhz FSB with a 3500 Winchester on Anandtech and 400
with a 4000+ default CPU multiplier... so basically if you want to
overclock the nuts of your Athlon 64 (subject to CPU and RAM doing
well) then this DFI board is the one for SLI users.
My next recommendation is another Asus. The Asus A8N32 is Asus's
SLI x16 board and performs very well. I am sure this board didn't
suffer the chipset fan problems of its siblings, and again this is an
excellent board if you can't afford the DFI.
Crossfire boards
Wow this is getting boring huh? Again I got to go with a DFI as the
best enthusiast board. This time its the DFI LanParty UT CFX3200-DR
RD580. Ok, I will be honest here, this board has probably the most
complex BIOS ever. Check the Anandtech review here: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2752&p=9
if you really want to find out how complex. This is a good overclocking
board if you can handle the BIOS, as it can easily reach 315Mhz FSB.
My 2nd recommendation is the Asus A8R32-MVP which is a decent
overclocker itself with the ability to hit high FSBs over 300Mhz but
without the complexity of DFI's board, even though the stock BIOS needs
flashing to a newer version asap for stability. However in crossfire
performance the Asus either matches or is behind the DFI board, but
then it is cheaper and the loss won't be noticeable I hope.
Still to come
Socket 775 and AM2
Original Tutorial by Elsparrow
for TheTAZZone-TAZForum
Originally posted on July 7th, 2006 here
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