Asus P4S8X-MX mini review

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
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Asus P4S8X-MX mini review

CLIFFNOTES VERSION:
Great value for a budget Asus board, AGP/PCI lock and 1MHz FSB increments is rare in a mATX board. Downsides are the lousy placement of the CPU fan header and the board not POSTing with a mobile Celeron.

OVERVIEW:

The point of this "mini review" is to give people an idea of what they can expect when purchasing one of these since most reviewers tend to ignore "bottom feeder" motherboards such as this one.

I got mine from ZipZoomFly for $51.99 shipped FedEx 2nd Day Air.

Newegg has it for a few bucks more shipped UPS 3 Day (but better pictures).

Asus product description.

Random picture of my "test bench" area with this board on the hot spot - OMG I need to clean up.

I ordered over the weekend and received it on the following Wednesday so it was reasonably quick. Good job ZipZoomFly! Excepting for lacking a decent vendor warranty, ZipZoomFly is like how Newegg used to be with lower prices, speedy service and FedEx 2nd Day Air. Also, they didn't try to pry an extra $3.99 out of me for shipping it out the first business day possible.

It arrived in good shape, but FedEx just left it on my doorstep for me to find when I got home from classes without even trying to re-deliver the next day (when I have no classes). This board can be the basis of a really basic and budget setup, probably costing under $100 for the motherboard with integrated graphics, a used mobile Celeron and a HSF. The budget Sempron deals from Fry's is better except the boards typically don't have integrated graphics. I know people frown upon IGP, but it is totally sufficient for typical end-user non-gaming tasks.

TEST PARTS USED:
Mobile Celeron 1.6GHz with low volt mod
P4 2.53GHz
Arctic Cooling 4TC
Zalman CNPS7000AlCu
GigaRAM 512MB PC3200 CAS 2.5
FSP Group FSP400-60GLN PSU
Toshiba 16X DVD

MOTHERBOARD FEATURES:
Socket 478 mATX
SiS 661GX/964
2 DIMM
3 PCI
1 AGP 8X
2 SATA (RAID capable)
onboard 5.1 audio, 10/100 NIC, etc.

The 661GX is a "budget" part meaning it only "officially" supports up to 533MHz FSB. However, it is pretty much like the 661FX chipset, probably just a binned part or one not "qualified" for the higher speed. Asus of course "officially" states this motherboard can support 800MHz FSB. Here are some excerpts:
800*/533MHz
*The motherboard runs at FSB800 when in overclock mode.

FSB frequency adjustable with 1MHz step (SFS)
AGP/PCI Asynchronous Mode with FSB
Looks like a good choice for mobile Celerons as long as it runs them as well as the other Asus SiS IGP chipset mATX boards, specifically the P4SP-MX and P4S800-MX.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

This board is typical of the "value" segment. Everything is pretty standard with the "normal" I/O ports and headers. Of note, there is a game port header though no header ports are included for anything. SPDIF header means you can use this for HTPC if you buy the header or make your own (easy for coaxial). Locations of everything is fairly standard - could be better but I've seen worse. Of note are the decent placements of the drive interfaces towards the edge nearest the drive bays in typical cases. FDD users rejoice because the port is in the "normal" spot versus the bottom edge of the board as seen in many recent board designs. The SATA ports are between the Southbridge and edge of board, right next to where the typical case puts HDDs. Only bad placements are the power connectors. The 20 pin ATX is between the IDE ports and edge of board where I feel it would be awkward to comfortably position and hide cables unless your PSU has a long enough cable to hide behind the drive bays. The other issue is the 4 pin 12v plug, which is between the Northbridge and rear USB ports meaning the cable may be running over the CPU. I had almost gotten used to that until my recent two boards, the ECS NFORCE4-A939 and Abit KN8 which both put this connector at the top edge of the board between the CPU and PS/2 ports - much nicer. The Northbridge is cooled by an anemic passive heatsink - these SiS chipsets don't get very hot, making it a nice option for a quiet or HTPC computer.

One layout issue I want to bring up is the placement of the DIMM sockets. Reviewers always complain that on some boards the video card needs to be removed to install or change memory. Yes, this board "suffers" from that problem, but I'm looking at it and thinking, "well, I really can't see where else they can go." One possibility is horizontally as in the DFI Nforce4 boards (as well as some others) but there just isn't enough room between the top of the PCB and the AGP slot, and that's the exact reason the AGP card interferes with teh RAM slots in the first place. In my gaming rig that I've had for two years I've changed the RAM a total of... ONE TIME. Oh, so in two years I've had to yank out the video card once for a RAM swap. [RANT]Cry me a fscking river you lazy twats![/RANT] I think that "issue" is a NON-issue because while reviewers may be changing parts around while they are testing a product, the typical end-user won't do that.

One possibly real problem with the layout is the location of the CPU fan header. It is between the socket and the RAM, with a capacitor vying for space nearby as well. The problem is that there is very little space and it is at the top edge of the board, right next to the corner of the heatsink retention bracket where heatsinks hook onto it. The only other fan header is near the bottom lower corner next to the front panel headers.

Looking straight down on it as the board is laying flat on the test bench, the CPU fan header is neatly hidden by the clamping mechanism of the HSF. I'd imagine that even the retail box HSF would cover at least half of it. Even with the board outside the case, with the HSF installed I had to struggle to connect the fan to the header - what is normally a 2 second job took about 15 seconds - which can turn into minutes inside a crowded mATX case. Inside the case, you potentially have a case brace or optical drive right above the motherboard, and the header is covered up by the corner of the heatsink (about 4mm above the connector when installed), and there is 2mm space between it and the side of the retention bracket on its left side, and right below it are some capacitors about 2mm away, and your RAM is about 7mm away from the right side... best bet is to connect the fan to the header before installing the heatsink and have that all installed before installing the motherboard in the case. It's even worse with the Zalman HSF installed because the end of the aluminum arm that the unit bolts onto overlaps the fan header by a single mm or so, and it is just above it so with the fan plugged in there's only about 3mm space above it. Plugging in or unplugging the fan will make you have to force the connector and header to bend a bit since there is absolutely not enough room to plug it in without forcing it.

Picture looking straight down on the fan header. Where is it? Apologies for the flash reflection, bad lighting in the room so w/o flash stuff is too dark.

Here's where the little ah heck was hiding. See how close it is to the CPU, capacitor and RAM? There's also another, smaller capacitor right behind it. Also, see how the CPU clamping mechanism completely overlaps it? Now imagine this board installed in a mATX case...

Time to try the board... and it won't POST with either mobile Celeron (standard and volt modded which normally makes it "more" compatible with desktop boards). It lights up right away with my normal P4 CPU. I'm not happy. Typically Asus boards can be counted upon to work well with mobile socket 478 CPUs but this one is a total failure. I purchased it with the intent of using it with the mobile Celeron so now I'm stuck with a board that is of no use to me.

BIOS:
AMI BIOS
BIOS rev 0702
Asus JumperFree Configuration menu
AT Overclock Tuner Standard or Overclock by 5%/10%/20%/30% or Manual
FSB from 100-200MHz in 1MHz increments
AGP/PCI Frequency Auto or fixed options of 66/75/85 (with PCI being 1/2)
DRAM Frequency of 266/333/400/Auto

There are no voltage controls of any kind and 200MHz is the maximum FSB available (already an overclock on the chipset). This is kind of disappointing since I've tested (using a mobile P4 with 12x desktop multiplier) the Asus P4S800-MX up to the maximum 250MHz FSB that it offers. The BIOS is AMI instead of Phoenix/Award and I've heard from Karaktu that the AMI BIOS versions of the P4S800-MX (typically found in the Asus Vintage barebones kit) is not very good nor very mobile CPU friendly.

OVERCLOCKING RESULTS:

My CPU got pretty much as high speed on this board without vcore boost as it does on my MSI board with a bit of vcore. This board does pretty much what it is supposed to do, which is run a 533MHz rated chipset at 800MHz (quad pumped). Beyond that it isn't a very exciting overclocker unless you have a 400-533MHz CPU that can overclock well without vcore.

My 2.53GHz P4 POSTed at 3.42GHz on this board at 180MHz FSB. Not gonna bother testing stability since Asus rates the board at up to 200MHz and I'd be basically testing this CPU's abilities on default vcore.

CONCLUSION:

My heart sank as soon as I saw it not POST with my volt modded mobile Celeron since that was the CPU I really intended to find a home on this motherboard. Why, Asus, why???

At this point with CPUs that default to a high FSB or mobile P4 chips that default to a low multiplier (if they work in the board at all, and I'm not going to shut off my server/router box to find out) the board would not be able to do much, but with a desktop CPU that runs on a 400/533MHz FSB and perhaps using the "wire trick" voltage mod, this board's AGP/PCI lock has potential.

Overall not bad to see a budget ~$50 Asus board with SATA and an AGP/PCI lock, but not for people hoping to use a mobile Celeron.

NOTE: Just as I was getting ready to post this message, I realized that I didn't try this board with a mobile Celeron WITHOUT the bent-pin vcore mod. Now, usually Asus boards work with them either way and boards that don't work without the mod sometimes will work with the mod. However, there exists the possibility that this board is opposite in working without the mod and not working with the mod. I've already packed up the board and put my unmodded CPU back in my HTPC, and being almost 1AM I'm not gonna do it tonight, but hopefully tomorrow I'll get a chance to try the unmodded CPU in the off chance it works. If it does work, I'm keeping the board. If it doesn't work, I'm returning the board for a 15% hit plus return shipping.
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
2
81
UPDATE: I've now tried it with an unmodded mobile Celeron and it works, with one problem:

POST screenshot

No matter what, it POSTs with this message:
Intel CPU uCode loading error
Press F1 to Resume
Besides always having to press F1 at POST, it works just fine with the unmodded mobile Celeron. I think I'll live with it like that for now (just an annoyance) but my recommendations stay... good budget board with overclock potential for 400/533MHz FSB CPUs, not good for mobile Celerons.

I've also tried updating to the newest 0808 BIOS, but same results.

BTW, fixing one error in the original review... the first mobile Celeron I tried also had the BSEL mod besides the voltage mod.