Good MicroATX motherbords.

[Rock Hydra]

I'm tired of having a Full size ATX case and it's time to upgrade.
I've been looking at MicroATX cases, though most sites review ATX motherboards. I was wondering if there are any good MicroATX motherboards.

I'm interested in either a decent AM2 board, or a motherboard that can support a Core2 Duo. I'm not worried about OCing, though I might do some marginal OCing in the future.

I found a few, any comments recommendations about these?
Intel G965 Express Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
IGABYTE GA-945GM-S2 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 945G Micro ATX
ECS RS485M-M (V1.0) Socket AM2 ATI Radeon XPRESS 1100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Thanks!

 

[Aquapussy]

This is what I used for reference

Best mATX boards list

I just bought the Asus P5b-VM because out of all the current mATX Conroe boads it seemed to have the most features. However it has 2 major issues, there is no PCI lock and the mem voltage only goes up to 1.95v.
I have hopes they will fix this with BIOS updates.

I have had 0 luck finding any stock of mATX boards that look decent :-/

 

[Zap]

If you are not overclocking, you can choose just about any board that suits your needs by shopping for features such as onboard Firewire, component video out (some onboard video has it), SPDIF out...

If you ARE overclocking, your choices just got narrowed down quite a bit.

Ongoing and updated HardForum thread on overclockable mATX boards.

For Core 2 Duo I don't think there's any mATX overclockable motherboard to speak of. For socket AM2, the EPoX MGF6100-M followed by the Biostar Tforce6100-AM2. They can both get into the low 300s - my Biostar gets to 330MHz HTT. However, the Biostar limits you to maximum vDIMM of 2.0v while the EPoX supposedly allows 2.5v, a huge difference.

 

[Zap]

DOH. I usually open up a bunch of windows of threads I want to read, then go back to them. I got trumped by a forum noob!!! Welcome to the forums, Aquapussy.

 

[Aquapussy]

haha
Thanks

It seems like the companies are just getting the mATX boards out.. and theres barely any selection yet. ASUS is all thats decent and available, but it seems they put it out too early before they got the settings right.. they must plan to have the board overclockable, why else give a BIOS upgrade giving 500mhz FSB.

Wishful thinking?

 

[Zap]

Perhaps they're just saying that their e-peen is longer than any other mobo company? Dunno, but I've seen many motherboards with FSB/HTT limits WAY above anything remotely useful.

:beer: Here's to hoping for more overclockable mATX boards of any kind.

 

[R3MF]

http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/forums/viewthread/91660/