Micro atx or Not? want to overclock opteron 165

[taco1435]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813138264
This is the micro atx motherboard I plan to use to over clock a opteron 165. Will I be able to get about the same results with this board as I would with the leading full size overclocking boards like the DFI? I'm deciding whether or not the micro atx is worth using. I plan to use this board in an aspire x-qpack case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811144109 with eVGA Geforce 7800GT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814130256 and an enermax 400 watt psu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817194002
this heatsink fan http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16835118119 this gpu cooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16835186133 and this ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820231021. Do you think that I will have much better results with a full size board and case, or will I be able to overclock my 165 opteron fine given these specs? What would you do?

 

[Zap]

Your Opteron will clock just fine up to a certain point. People are saying that the DFI boards are needed to reliably hit over 300MHz HTT - you may not even be aiming that high or your CPU may not be able to do it. How about using the $50 saved by not buying the DFI board and putting that towards an Opteron 170? The higher multiplier should take the HTT out of the equation for overclocking. Also, no need for the Zalman CPU HSF unless you want it for the looks because the retail box dual core Opterons come with a nice quad heatpipe HSF.

 

[aiya24]

that mobo will do just fine. i have one and love it, also have the opty 165. bios is really feature rich. mine does 2.6ghz @ 1.4vcore, it can reach 2.7ghz but needs 1.55v and we all know that dual cores get hot pretty fast under full load so the extra 100mhz wasn't worth the extra heat in my situation.

 

[Madwand1]

I can't give you anything definitive, but from a couple of reports, I believe that the 6100/6150 chipsets are not designed and/or typically configured to be overclockable -- they're meant for a different market, HTPC, small boxes, cheap boxes, etc., where overclocking is not done or not advisable (e.g. small boxes tend to have worse cooling).

I'd wait for three posts to say "I overclocked X board with a 6100/6150 chipset with great results" before I tried to overclock a mATX board. mATX boards may be great for everything but overclocking though.

E.g. Asus K8N-VM CSM. Asus's "flagship" mATX board has no user-configurable voltage settings. This is not a board to buy for overclocking.

E.g. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=963584

But if some have had luck, it would be good to hear.

Edit: Not contradicting aiya24... posted before seeing his. His experience is probably more valid here.

 

[aiya24]

i've read that and i'll correct myself. there are some out there that are picky when it comes to ram, bios version, etc. i've also heard some have the ethernet go out on them or have very low connection speeds. but lately with some tweaking and patients, one can get one to be very oc friendly and stable at high htt speeds.

i, too had problems with is mobo but the guys over in the SFF forum on Hardforum helped a lot.

and to Madwand1: i'm not offended in anyway, i posted in the thread you linked above a couple of times when i need help.