help! shopping for new, O/C motherboard...

[MatthewF01]

OK. Almost a year ago, when my mobo and PSU broke down, I went to the local computer repair shop (which was a big mistake- no help to me whatsoever. they know nothing i dont), and they gave me the ECS K7S5a. Originally, it had no OC functionality, but I loved it just the same! It was a nice motherboard, no problems! Then someone released the hacked BIOSes, and I had a little fun with the FSB.

I have used the K7S5a in every computer I have built for friends, even the one in my fathers pc I built. But I need more, as a power-hungry individual, who is slowly growing more comfortable with frying his pc parts...

So, I am now going to begin shopping for a replacement board. I would like the following features, but I can work with any of them.

-USB (most have this. 2.0 would be NICE, but DEFINITELY NOT a MUST)
-Decent OCing functions. Maybe voltage, multiplier, FSB. Whatever is best, and not just FSB.
-Support for DDR333. I have 266 now, but wont 333 help in my OCing?
-On-board LAN. It simplifies the confusion when its on the board. great feature. But if the best board for my needs DOESNT have it, thats fine too.


What would be the reccommended board?
My current processor is the XP 1800+. My K7S5A manages to get it up to 1.6 (1900+). Pretty pathetic. I had my old 1.2 tbird at 1.4 which I was pretty happy with. How high could I get my AGOGA 1800 on a nicer board? And how about if I bought a 2200+ tbred???


Thanks, hope someone can take the time to help me out, I really appreciate it!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

The 8K5A2+ fits the bill nicely and has 1/5 divider so your PCI/AGP are in spec@166FSB, RAID, and support for the XP's on die thermal diode as well. EDIT: It has every feature you specified too

 

[MatthewF01]

wow im gonna have to check that one out.

by the way, what exactly is the function of the 5:1 PCI divider? I hear so much about it, and I know it has something to do with keeping the PCI devices running more at normal speeds when you up the FSB.... but, details?

Also, RAID? I see lots of boards are having RAID on it. Is it kinda like IDE and SCSI? Thats my guess, eh?



Hehe, thanks. Still learning. Im gonna look at that board you mentioned. Any good reviews?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Review for 8K5A2+ tThe 1/5 divider means that you can run your CPU at 166mhzFSB and the PCI and AGP will be at their stock speeds so that your vid card and any PCI cards you use don't have to be stressed by running at high mhz and flake out which often is the limiting factor in FSB overclocking on boards without a PCI/AGP locking feature. The RAID is indeed the IDE interface and here is a guide for you to read up on RAID, there are probably better guides around but I'm too lazy to search so feel free to google it

 

[TheRebel]

well.. if u on a budget.. i'd go with the epox 8k3a+. i picked 1 at newegg.com refurb for like 67 bucks, but they already sold out. fry's is having a special on them for 89.95, or maybe they just lowered the price on that board. if u look on kt333 round ups it did great.. usually number 1 for ocing and its still strong compared to the 8k5a3+ (too confusing now). www.googlegear.com has xp2000+ for 99 bucks flat and free 2nd day fedex air (no tax if outside cali). well.. i duno your money situation but i hope this helps if ur bummed for cash.



EDIT:

no onboard LAN
best O/C board out there with a 1/5 divider

 

[MatthewF01]

ah ok so i kind of had the right idea with the PCI divider, and RAID, good good...


Budget really isnt a problem at all for me, but if my dad found out i was spending more money on top of the $200 for a GF4, and the $600 on a guitar amp he doesnt know about yet, hed flip. So id like for the BOARD to be at/around/under $100.

Whatever seems a reasonable board, that I will get good overclocking from.


And what would be the best approach to OCing my xp1800 after I got *said board*? Unlocking, then dropping multiplier and raising FSB?
Or something else....?

 

[KingofFah]

Get the 8K3A or 8K3A+(Raid). Cheap at CNETPC.COM or Z-Buy, I have ordered from these companies tons of times before, great service and free 3-day.

Anyway, I would just the 8K3A and an XP1600 for overclocking. I'd also get some PC2700 Ram or stick of PC2100 that will overclock well. I would also get a good HSF. Cheap one is HHC-001, but it rocks.

XP1800 question, yeah you want to drop it to 10.5 or 10 to get 166 FSB out of the Chip.

Do you know what the stepping is on the CPU?

Raid is also a SCSI , but the one on those boards mentioned here is IDE.

 

[MatthewF01]

KingofFah, what an awesome reply! Thanks so much!

To start off with, here are the specs on my CPU fan Im using currently:

Cooler Master CPU COOLER
Heat Pipe
all copper
Athlon XP up to 2400+ and higher
6800rpm
36.11cfm

I really do believe that that screaming bitch could handle whatever OC i can give it.

The stepping on my 1800 is indeed AGOGA. What do you think I could get out of it?


And regarding RAID. I read the link DAPUNISHER provided, but I still am not quite at a point of understanding. You can hook up an IDE device to it, and it will be faster? What? Pleease explain!


Also, I just read an article on unlocking the XP, im no newbie, I know how everyone is doing it, and that there are a million ways on these boards, but I read in the article that they used silicone thermal paste (I guess the kind for a proc. core) to fill the gaps! Should I give this a try?!

 

[MatthewF01]

Hmm hows this board?

CHAINTECH 7VJL AMD Motherboard KT333 ATX RETAIL
Specifications:
Socket: Socket A/462 AMD Duron/Athlon/XP+
Chipset: KT-333/VIA VT8235
Frontside Bus: 200/266
Memory: 3x DDR333 184pin up to 3GB
EIDE: Ultra-ATA 133/100/66/33
IO:1 Parallel, 1 Serial, 1 KB 1 PS2 Mouse, 6 USB 2.0
Ports:AGP 4X, 6 PCI
Onboard LAN VIA VT6103 10/100
Onboard Sound CMedia 8738 Does not come with Optional 6Channel bracket

check out newegg

 

[KingofFah]

hehe, the HSF you described is the HHC-001.
You have AGOGA? You hit it good then, that one will overclock well.
The board looks good. Retail version comes with 2 66/100/133 round IDE cables and round floppy cable, very nice. The board supports asynchronous and synchronous RAM/CPU clocks. Aside from that, the BIOS looks like it has a lot of features for overclocking.

The Performance of the board looks great, almost identical to 8K3A. It is only slightly slower, so it looks like it is a good board. There is one problem that I see. Your HSF might not be able to fit with its heatpipes. They may hit your heatsink on your chipset, and they may hit the capacitors next to the CPU socket. You should check this out. My heatpipes come real close to my heatsink on my 8k3a, and if I put a fan on it I do not think it would fit.

I am a little annoyed, hehe. I may have wanted to get this board instead of my 8K3A They perform really close, but the 7VJL looks cool in yellow.

The price difference is significant, though. The 8K3A for 77 at cnetpc.com and the 7VJL 121 at newegg.com, so you have to decide on that. You could just say they both perform the same (VR-Zone's Review), and then compare what each comes with and the prices to decide.

You should really have someone answer your RAID question who has more experience with it than I. I have never run RAID and my knowledge of it is only from reading. This is my opinion on your getting RAID, but you should have someone confirm this for you.

If I were you, the only RAID I would be considering is RAID 0. You would need at least two drives, and to be fast I would put one on each IDE channel. Of course, if you did this you would not be able to hook up other devices like optical drives, since your HDD's would be running at 100 or 133 and most CD/DVD devices use 33 (you could still buy an IDE PCI card for 2 more channels). What is it you are going to be doing on this computer? I assume it would be gaming and daily activities. RAID is for protecting your data, so that if one of them has an error and data is lost, the other has it. RAID 0 does not allow data being copied on both drives, so I really do not see the point. RAID has higher throughput and bandwidth for 2+ drives than you would normally have have 2 drives, but if you only have one drive I think it performs just as well as a RAID 0 being run on 2 drives (I would like to get that confirmed by someone who knows about it). Here is a good site for all the RAID levels and info on each of them, maybe it will explain it to you better than I just tried.

Unlocking is fairly simple, if you need a good article on it there's one here that should help.

 

[KingofFah]

I forgot to mention that the 7VJL is KT333CE, so it does have a 1/5 divider. Just if you were wondering and for your reference later on, all KT333CE chipsets have 1/5 dividers.

 

[MatthewF01]

ah hah! there IS NO fan on the chipset! It is in fact PASSIVE, that thing on top that LOOKS like a fan in pictures, is actually supposed to be the 'Apogee' symbol. It can be pulled off, its attached with a bit of glue.

***"Somethng you may notice on this board is it's cool looking design on the chipset's heatsink. This little symbol represnts the "Apogee" series. If you don't like it you can carefully take it off since it has only been stuck on with a bit of glue. It's too bad there isn't a fan on the chipset. I wonder if this passive heatsink will limit the FSB overclocking capabilites."

***"ChainTech failed to apply ANY thermal grease between the north bridge and its heatsink. KT-333 generates a significant amount of heat when overclocked past 166MHz. This could lead to system instability in prolonged usage. The heatsink used is one of the biggest that I've seen. The golden ChainTech grill prohibits the installation of fans."

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/chaintech/7vjl/Picture_1057_copy.jpg


Regarding RAID and the usage of my computer, I do a lot of stuff, and a lot of stuff at once. Gaming, multimedia, imaging, everyday stuff. I have a 40GB hard drive, and as a secondary, a teeny tiny 6GB drive I ripped out of an old computer someone gave me to trash. I really dont need RAID, so its not something I should worry about.

This board is looking very nice, it is very tempting. I may order one when I begin to order parts for my friends computer I am building him. You think I should hold onto my 1800+ to overclock, unlocking first? And you said to drop the multiplier to 10 or 10.5. You think I could get it to 11 at 166?

And when I wind up getting this board, someones gonna have to help me with all the BIOS settings like AGP voltage regulators and all those crazy goodies...



Thanks for your help man, I really appreciate it.

 

[MatthewF01]

and then i find this: can someone explain to me...

The KT333CE northbridge supports a 1/5th PCI divider, though its application on the Apogee is fairly worthless. The board uses a jumper to switch between 100 (1/3), 133 (1/4), and 166 (1/5). The problem lies in the fairly high multipliers that current Athlon XP's are using. When setting the jumper to 166MHz, the system just won't boot. Even with an unlocked processor, the multiplier defaults to the manufacturer's specification and one can never get into the BIOS. Perhaps with the much lower clocked Thunderbirds, a boot could be successful, though not many will post at the default clock multiplier at 166MHz FSB. If somebody was very serious about accessing the 1/5th divider on this board, it might be possible to connect the appropriate bridges to lock the multiplier on their older processor at a lower setting. For example, if you were using a locked 1.4GHz Thunderbird, it may be possible to lock the multiplier at around 8.0x for a successful boot. Using this method seems like quite a lot of work, considering it may not even be successful. For those of you who feel the need for such an option, there are other boards available that would be much more suitable.


http://www.viahardware.com/kt333apogee_1.shtm

 

[KingofFah]

Hmmmm, not exactly sure what they mean when they say its a jumper, then say it will not move to 166. If it is a jumper then it should go to 166 by simply connecting the correct pins on that jumper. Notice how I never said HSF when regarding your board, only heatsink. I knew it did not have a fan, but I was saying that it is a little close and is a tall one. There is a good chance it might hit that.

166X11, unlocked you might get that, but you have a better chance running 171x10.5 (xp2200 speed).

I just read the last message you put in, I think the guy who was doing that was talking about very high multipliers. He mentioned the 'fairly high multipliers that current AMD XP's are using'. This would lead me to believe he's trying to run 166 at 12 12.5 13 13.5 which is basically insanity. You should be OK trying to get 11X166 and 166X10.5. Just keep upping it by a few until you get closer, then go one by one. I am taking a guess on this and saying that, at most, you will have to put the vcore up to 1.85. If this is your first overclock you will probably fiddle around with it for a bit. I think everyone does this their first time, hehe. Anyway, you definitely wanna take a good look at the pictures of the mobo and look at you heatsink at the same time.

 

[MatthewF01]

Well, i saw an image of that jumper, and i think its to select if you have a 200 or 266 bus Athlon, like the older models and such... thats my guess.

and what did they mean about the divider? At the end of the review i saw that at, the cons list showed something along the lines of 1:5 PCI divider nonfunctional...

and dont the heatpipes come off the side on the HSF?? they arent on the clip sides, which is where the capacitors and heatsink is at, correct?

Hehe and my prior overclocking experience is when I had my good ol' 1.2 Ghz Tbird, which I had the FSB up to 150, and had a nice 1.4 overclock. I didnt unlock because it was pointless, my board didnt support it.
Then with my XP1800 I can only bring the FSB up to 138, not 143. Im using the same memory as before, 256mb (x2) Samsung PC2100 ddr. Ive upgraded from GF2mx to GF4Ti and SB Audigy, while disabling onboard sound. Still using LAN though on board.

So what might be some smart configurations to start off playing with? And in what order do I mess with everything? I would think this:

-first unlock, then lower mult. to then trying 166
-if 166 is no-go, drop mult. until 166 hits.
- raise voltage
- raise multiplier
-find my peak...


by the way, do you have AIM or anything?

oh and thats right! I forget i can actually go over 166 fsb. How does that work??

 

[KingofFah]

Well, no, they said the jumper is for your divider (1/3, 1/4, 1/5) not the FSB jumper.

You are right about the heat pipes, they will not get in the way.

The EPoX and Chaintech both support FSB settings of 200+, of course you will not hit this with a higher multiplier. You can keep upping the FSB past 166 if you like. After you find a program to run overnight after your overclock. The program should be very intense for the CPU, so you can see how it will run under load for extended periods of time. If it is still going in the morning, then your system is stable at that FSB.

The order seems fine for fiddling around to get the FSB you want.

If you are unsure about the Chaintech, then get the EPoX 8k3a. The heatpipes do come close to the heatsink, and there is basically no way to put a HSF combo on it. I still believe the Chaintech would work, though. The chipset is KT333CE, which has a 1/5 divider. You definitely want to research this before you buy.

If you have an IRC client program and know how to use it, then tell me and i will give you the info through your email (the one in your profile).

 

[MatthewF01]

hmm IRC, nope.

but yea, thats my email address, the one listed...

but no IRC