dfsf said:
Looking at Intel Socket 775 boards with the following features:
DDR2 or DDR3 ram dual channel ram
I need Firewire (400 for sure but maybe 800 so I'll need a PCI/PCI-E
card for that)
eSata (better to get a PCI-E card for that as a lot of motherboards
don't have it?)
I want to run this computer 24/7 but have it consume a minimum of
electricity. The only time I need lots of umph is when watching HD
videos so most of the time it could be run underclocked.
These manufacturers seem to have good reputations (Asus, Abit, EVGA,
Gigabyte, MSI) and I was looking for recommendations for models that
could do the above. I'm not considering i5 stuff because of the
additional cost. I don't need that kind of horsepower. I guess I'm
looking for efficient control.
I recommend to you, that you select a motherboard that has the features
you want first. Rather than working the problem purely from a power
perspective. It is too hard to satisfy all requirements at the same
time otherwise. Motherboards are not typically designed with power
saving in mind, which is why we find ourselves in a situation now,
where an idling computer can use twice as much power for the chipset
at idle, as is being used by the processor. Low power motherboards
are an accident, and not too common. And the odd ones produced
with mobile chipsets, might not have the slot mix or interfaces you
want.
*******
I have one motherboard to suggest to you, for low power, but it doesn't
support the interfaces you want. And because the BIOS is badly broken,
compared to other well thought out BIOS designs, it is not a candidate
for easy overclocking and underclocking.
The only thing it has going for it, is the Northbridge and Southbridge
use very little power. Combined with an E7600 3GHz Core2 Duo, it would
make a fine low power computer. But the slots don't match your
requirements. To get Firewire, you'd need to plug a card into it.
It has many legacy interfaces on it though, so it still did things
I can't do with my current motherboard. It has two SATA connectors,
and they run correctly at SATA II rates.
It is the ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0 LGA 775. It is limited to two sticks
of DDR2 memory (2x1GB). I tested 2x2GB but could not get it to run error free.
With 2x1GB it runs error free in all my testing. It is practically limited
to FSB1066 processors. One person (somehow) managed to get the board to
clock high enough to run FSB1333 on an overclock, but that is some kind
of miracle. The board also lacks "boost" settings for VCore, and Vcore
values are bounded by the range check in the CPU control register. I had
to do a "volt-mod" to the regulator, to add an extra 0.1V for my processor,
and try an overclocking experiment (33% higher). Volt modding this board
is relatively easy, and involves just one resistor. (The regulator chip
looks like it was designed for boosting
Not as an afterthought like
earlier regulators.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157115&Tpk=4coredual-sata2 r2.0
Now, you'll notice in the pictures, the Southbridge has no heatsink at
all on it, and the Northbridge heatsink is good for about 5 to 10 watts or
so. No fancy heatpipes, 40mm fans or the like. And that is my suggestion
for a criterion in your search. There simply are not enough public datasheets
with power numbers listed, to do this selection with any precision. By
looking for "small" heatsinks, you may actually be buying a
motherboard that is easy on power.
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-157-115-S03?$S640W$
To get the most from that board, I used a pctreiber.net hacked BIOS. That
enabled EIST, which helps save a little power, With EIST, you won't need
to tweak the board, as it will underclock itself when there is no CPU load
present. Now, the problem here, is it looks like the downloads have
been removed from the pctrieber site. I'd probably need to be able to
read German, to find out what happened to them.
http://www.pctreiber.net/filebase.php?fileid=2992&lim=20
So while the motherboard has some positives, the negatives far outweigh them.
It makes much more sense, to just find a motherboard that has a good slot
mix, good reviews, an actual fully-working BIOS (no need to go looking for
modded BIOS to get working EIST) and so on.
The heatsink on this one, is a bit larger. But this motherboard doesn't
have enough expansion slots to be useful. And the reviews are pretty bad.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500018
There are smaller form factor boards, such as mini-ITX, but they're
too limited on interfaces as well.
Something like this looks expandable. GA-EP45T-USB3P.
Lots of connectors.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128433
LGA775 looks to be on the way out, and that is why the selection
is getting narrower with each day. The pricing on Newegg for LGA775
looks suspiciously like "clearout".
Paul
