Lack of decent micro ATX motherboards

[mudboy]

Originally posted by: Plester
trying to make small, fully overclockable/powerful pc's adds a whole new dimension. have fun.

I couldn't agree more
Pete

 

[Zap]

Well, I've started building the system. I've documented some of this with pics and text:

Micro ATX computer (690K worth of pics)

Y'all check it out and let me know what you think. I agree with Plester and mudboy on SFF (Small Form Factor) adding a whole new dimension to building a system. Thank y'all for your support. Jhhnn, I've re-thought my position on excluding motherboards that have both integrated video and AGP slots. In fact, a buddy of mine saw my progress on my GF's computer and was so impressed that he wanted me to build him something similar, but using an Athlon. I couldn't find any regular KT266a or KT333 mATX boards, so I went with a KM266 board (also was the Chaintech SiS 735 board, but I choose the VIA chipset). His part list is:

AthlonXP 1900+ retail boxed (not going to overclock)
Gigabyte GA-7VKML (mATX, KM266 chipset)
512MB Original Samsung PC2700 DDR
Inwin IW-V523P.180B mATX case (just like the one in the linked pics above)
Western Digital 120GB "Special Edition" HDD
Toshiba 16x DVD
Sony FDD
eVGA Geforce4 Ti4400

My friend wants his system pimped out a bit, so I'm going to do a clear side, have a black light and maybe some EL wire. The HSF will be a Thermaltake Volcano 7. Yeah yeah, the CPU won't be overclocked and I plan to replace the fan with one from SVC (link) that has a thermistor, is clear and has some blue LEDs. I already have the non-thermistor version and put one on a Volcano 7, and the LEDs look great shining through the "Tt" in the middle of the finger guard. The parts will be here next week and I'll try to take pics of my results.

BTW, mudboy, how's the database coming along?

 

[mudboy]

Database is coming along, I should have data entry screens ready early next week and I will have login and component review functionality done a little bit after that. I need to work on a design too but that's pretty secondary. I would be further along but my wife was on call all week and I had to do a lot of daddy duty.

Pete

 

[ChrisADuffy]

Y'all check it out and let me know what you think

Great system to say the least. Any mod plans?

 

[Zap]

No mods planned for the case beyond cleaning up the cabling and perhaps shoehorning a regular ATX power supply in there - which I may do soon. Yesterday, after I posted the photos, I installed Windows and used the machine. First problem... with only the motherboard hooked up the machine turns on all the time. With the drives hooked up, sometimes I get no POST. I'm thinking that the 180W power supply is indeed not powerful enough. Once the machine POSTs, it runs fine for the most part. I experienced one lockup after about 6 hours of continuous use, which included installing Windows Me with all drivers, benchmarking using PCMark 2002 (somewhere around 5100/5000/1200), 3DMark 2001SE (somewhere just over 5000, probably the Radeon slowing it down) and Quake 3 Demo (lowest settings, gets 300.0 FPS in demo 2). Then, I played a few hours of Jedi Knight II multiplayer. I was the server/host, and had up to around 6 people playing on it (including me) on our LAN. We played for about 3 hours, then the machine locked. T'was late, so I gave up for the night. I hope a better power supply (if I can indeed get one to fit) will solve the no POST and locking problems.

 

[ChrisADuffy]

Still looking for a good overclocking micro atx 845G mobo, any reviews or first hand impressions?

 

[Damascus]

On the matter of mATX boards, what about the Asus TUSL2-M? These don't seem
to exist outside of Asia and Europe...