Asrock P43Twins1600

[Mr Vain]

Is this the best bang for the buck P43 motherboard out at the moment?

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overv...asp?Model=P43Twins1600

It certainly has a lot of features in its price range compared to its nearest price rivals according to my favourite price search engine.

Newegg has a good choice of P43 boards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...43&bop=And&Pagesize=50

One of our fellow Anand forum members (aussieburger) has his Asrock P43Twins1600 @ 420FSB with ease.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...AR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

Quote (aussieburger)
Ok so I found out the overclocking problem I was having with this board. There is a FSB jumper that should be set to the maximum (1600 FSB) and then there is really no limit to this board! Overclocked straight to 420 FSB no worries ... didn't need to tweak anything. And I feel it could easily go much higher but my RAM max is only around 430 (so 860mhz) when overclocked, so I can't go any higher at the moment until I get better RAM and/or a high multi cpu. Highly recommend this board for anyone wanting a big overclock, lots of features for not much money!

What do you guy?s reckon?

 

[Mr Vain]

Bought this board and have my E2180@330Fsb for 3300Mhz so far.
The overclock utility is great and makes it simple to overclock.

I had this board at 390FSB with my E2180 using the 6x Multiplier.

 

[igotyofire]

wait i just ordered the asrock p45r2000 .....i feel like this board woulda saved me 50.00 .....no plans for crossfire

 

[PUN]

if you bought the p45r2000-wifi then it's worth the extra $40. No wifi is only $20 more
Both p43 p45 supports upto 500fsb unofficially, according to asrock.

I love my p45r2000-wifi as it is stable, overclocks and comes with everything any board could offer.

NOTE: new bios 1.30 makes the DUAL lan hardware to disappear upon booting, so restart is always needed

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: PUN
if you bought the p45r2000-wifi then it's worth the extra $40. No wifi is only $20 more
Both p43 p45 supports upto 500fsb unofficially, according to asrock.

I love my p45r2000-wifi as it is stable, overclocks and comes with everything any board could offer.

NOTE: new bios 1.30 makes the DUAL lan hardware to disappear upon booting, so restart is always needed

I installed the 1.6 bios yesterday and it gave me more system stability.

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: igotyofire
wait i just ordered the asrock p45r2000 .....i feel like this board woulda saved me 50.00 .....no plans for crossfire

Same here not intending to use crossfire anytime soon.
The SPDIF output, good bios options, DDR2 & DDR3, PCI-e2, Asrock OC tuner, price etc made this motherboard a must buy for me.

 

[will889]

I thought I might CF since I may be getting a 24" LCD - great board.

 

[igotyofire]

i got my p45r2000 ......but i cant seem to get the thing to show anything on the monitor. the screen stays blank, my power LED on case stays lit for some reason....i tested the Q6600 in my other asrock board, booted fine. the video card also worked on other rig(open box ati 4850), only thing connected is CPU,ram,vid card and pwr switches. ...some reason the allendale didn't boot up in this new board. im thinking its the ram tho, its corsair 533mhz ddr2. one person in newegg reviews said board needs ddr3 ram to post? any ideas here? i set jmpr to clear bios....didn't post like that either (not sure if it should on that setting)

 

[igotyofire]

Asrock website says..."- Supports DDR2 1066/800/667 non-ECC, un-buffered memory" 533mhz is not listed, could this be my problem, if so ill pick up some ddr2 tomorrow, but i find it strange that ram would not let the monitor show anything but i can still hear the computer trying to boot when the drives were connected

Later i will try using 24 pin connecter instead of 20, and 8pin instead of 4 for motherboard power.

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: igotyofire
Asrock website says..."- Supports DDR2 1066/800/667 non-ECC, un-buffered memory" 533mhz is not listed, could this be my problem, if so ill pick up some ddr2 tomorrow, but i find it strange that ram would not let the monitor show anything but i can still hear the computer trying to boot when the drives were connected

Later i will try using 24 pin connecter instead of 20, and 8pin instead of 4 for motherboard power.

I'm using the E2180 and DDR2667 Ram with a 20 Pin and 4 Pin connector; I had endless reboots when I first fired up with no graphics. I removed all PCI cards Drives etc that were not needed left only one stick of ram in the slots, done a few more reboots, switched power to PC off for a few minutes, cleared CMOS and fired up into bios. I had to set my SATA2 HDD to Compatibility mode first up to get into windows. I polished the settings in the bios a few times now my E2180 is at 335FSB=3350Mhz.
Set your ram jumper pins to 1600 to lower the load on your ram and get the latest bios as that helped my system.
So far I?m Happy with this Board.

 

[PUN]

You do not need DDR3 to run this board. I am running Corsair DDR2 800 2x2GB
I am thinking PS issue.

 

[igotyofire]

i bought some crucial ddr2 800mhz and it booted right away...im going to say its safe to assume 533mhz may not be supported.....whats interesting though is it again started booting without showing anything on the screen....i took everything out of the computer, setup mb,cpu,ram,vid card outside on a box,....and it started working again. i transported in case and was able to setup raid and install xp. with the Artic cooler 7 it was idling at 49...52c to my surprise my oem c2d cooler is no better. im going to work out cooling issues hopefully later & start putting this setup to use.

 

[Mr Vain]

New 1.7 bios up with Modify setting for Overclock.
I'm using this new bios with no issues.
:thumbsup:

 

[PUN]

what is new under the modify overclocking?
I do not see any difference between this and 1.40 bios.

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: PUN
what is new under the modify overclocking?
I do not see any difference between this and 1.40 bios.

I don?t know, I guess that it must be some bios internal tuning.

 

[INCTRL]

Does overclock works better now with the 1.70 bios for Asrock P43Twins1600?
Does anyone know if i can get a Q6600 CPU above 3 GHZ with this mobo?
Does anyone know if Kingston Mem is compatible with this mobo?

Thanks in advance.

Gerard

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: INCTRL
Does overclock works better now with the 1.70 bios for Asrock P43Twins1600?
Does anyone know if i can get a Q6600 CPU above 3 GHZ with this mobo?
Does anyone know if Kingston Mem is compatible with this mobo?

Thanks in advance.

Gerard

The new bios 1.7 has made my overclock more stable.

I believe that a Q6600 should do above 3Ghz as this board will do above 400FSB

 

[igotyofire]

whats interesting about this board is the Internet connection Will drop randomly sometimes after 10mins of booting......or a few hours .....or a the next day. The lan network connection it self will never disconnect but the TCP/IP functions seem to come to a hault as nothing internet related will work until i restart the machine and its back to normal. I know im just running the Lan drivers off the CD that came with this. Is there an updated LAN driver for the gigabit chipset i should try installing before purchasing a pci network card?

 

[INCTRL]

Originally posted by: igotyofire
whats interesting about this board is the Internet connection Will drop randomly sometimes after 10mins of booting......or a few hours .....or a the next day. The lan network connection it self will never disconnect but the TCP/IP functions seem to come to a hault as nothing internet related will work until i restart the machine and its back to normal. I know im just running the Lan drivers off the CD that came with this. Is there an updated LAN driver for the gigabit chipset i should try installing before purchasing a pci network card?

I think this must have something to do with your inet provider.

 

[INCTRL]

Originally posted by: Mr Vain

Originally posted by: INCTRL
Does overclock works better now with the 1.70 bios for Asrock P43Twins1600?
Does anyone know if i can get a Q6600 CPU above 3 GHZ with this mobo?
Does anyone know if Kingston Mem is compatible with this mobo?

Thanks in advance.

Gerard

The new bios 1.7 has made my overclock more stable.

I believe that a Q6600 should do above 3Ghz as this board will do above 400FSB

Thanks mate, iam gonna buy this mobo next week for 60 euro.

 

[igotyofire]

Originally posted by: INCTRL

Originally posted by: igotyofire
whats interesting about this board is the Internet connection Will drop randomly sometimes after 10mins of booting......or a few hours .....or a the next day. The lan network connection it self will never disconnect but the TCP/IP functions seem to come to a hault as nothing internet related will work until i restart the machine and its back to normal. I know im just running the Lan drivers off the CD that came with this. Is there an updated LAN driver for the gigabit chipset i should try installing before purchasing a pci network card?

I think this must have something to do with your inet provider.

nope, my old computer never did this. and when i seem to loose tcp/ip functions the rest of my family is still online. Pretty sure it is an issue with this current build. I will try a new driver i guess, just not sure which driver i should try for the onboard lan

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: igotyofire

Originally posted by: INCTRL

Originally posted by: igotyofire
whats interesting about this board is the Internet connection Will drop randomly sometimes after 10mins of booting......or a few hours .....or a the next day. The lan network connection it self will never disconnect but the TCP/IP functions seem to come to a hault as nothing internet related will work until i restart the machine and its back to normal. I know im just running the Lan drivers off the CD that came with this. Is there an updated LAN driver for the gigabit chipset i should try installing before purchasing a pci network card?

I think this must have something to do with your inet provider.

nope, my old computer never did this. and when i seem to loose tcp/ip functions the rest of my family is still online. Pretty sure it is an issue with this current build. I will try a new driver i guess, just not sure which driver i should try for the onboard lan

I think that the Gigabit lan driver ver:5686 is the latest driver for the P45R2000 motherboard using windows XP and ver:6203 for Vista OS.

Download from below link.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/downl...p?Model=P45R2000&s=775

 

[Mr Vain]

Latest 1.8 Bios is out with support for faster memory.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/downl...del=P43Twins1600&s=775

 

[Mr Vain]

Positive User Reviews For This Motherboard In Below Link.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813157130