Best micro-ATX brd for Duron OC'ing ?

[Kenwood]

Looking to put a Duron to use in a micro-ATX box and was wondering which board is considered best for OC'ing? I was checking out a Gigabyte ga-7vmm that has a sofware util called EasyTuneIII to oc from within Windows but it looks like it will change only the fsb but I'd also like to play with the multiplier. And this doesn't appear to be changeable either via jumpers or with the util. Any experiences with micro-ATX boards ? TIA

 

[gaidin123]

The only micro-atx board I've used with a Duron that has good overclocking abilities is the Soltek 75-KIV I believe. I bought mine from soltekusa.safeshopper.com, the authorized US distributor for Soltek motherboards. It has jumpers for CPU clock multiplier and is based on the KT133A chipset. You can tweak the FSB in the BIOS and it was one of the early boards that has the "red storm overclocking" feature. You might as well just overclock the standard way as the red storm feature will put you at somewhere well below the stable limit (in my experience with this board). It works well though I haven't pushed the board much (it's running linux and just sits in an office most of the day ).

I checked the soltek usa site and they don't seem to have the board at the moment but as I recall they were fairly quick to respond via email. I know some vendors that list on pricewatch carry Soltek boards too.

Asus has a micro-atx kt133a board too I think...

Also if you can wait a little bit, Abit has their NV7M micro-atx nForce motherboard due out sometime this month. It looks like it'll make a great, high performing micro-atx board for an AMD CPU.

Let us know what you choose!
Gaidin

 

[Kenwood]

Thnkx for the response and info on the Soltek gaidin. I'll look into it tamorrow. I've been poking round some and FIC has an AE31 that has a NOVUS software util that will allow a cpu mult change. The FIC also has an ISA slot as the box I want to upgrade has an ISA hardware modem. I have a coupla sticks of Infineon PC100 so a DDR brd is out and i'd never find one with an ISA slot. Trying to keep the $$$ as low as possible. Voltage changing also seems like it aint happin'in on these types of brds either. Leaning towards the FIC at $69 shipped.

I also wonder how well a Duron,TBird or XP can run with an micro-atx brd as the PSU's i've seen for these boxes is are at 120-145 watts ?

 

[gaidin123]

Actually check out the asus a7v-133m, or vm I think it is. That board had voltage tweaks and does multiplier and FSB changes as I recall.

The power supplies can be a little confusing for micro-atx cases. There are micro-atx cases which take normal ATX power supplies like the In-Win V500. It may come bundled with a micro-atx PSU depending on where you buy it but you can stick in a full sized ATX PSU. I got a generic micro-atx case from www.directron.com which holds a standard 250watt ATX PSU for my micro system. I'd think that the standard 120-150 watt micro-atx PSUs would definitely be underpowered for a duron system (though it probably won't hurt to try ).

If you need a micro-atx board with an ISA slot I've got no clue. That FIC one sounds good for the price. I remember my soltek one was over $100. I can't see an Asus or the Abit nForce board being <$100 either. I'll go take a look at that FIC board. I hadn't heard of it until now.

Gaidin