Need an mATX board for E4300 overclocking

[Kaido]

I want to build a box to play around with overclocking. Temporary case will be an Antec NSK2400 with a 380W ATX12V v2.0 power supply. No special features needed. Also is 380w enough for overclocking along with a single HDD & DVD?

 

[Skott]

Conroe mATX and OCing? There isnt anything really. Best thing availble is the ABIT F-I90HD. It can OC to about 360ish. This mobo has problems though. Right now I'm hesitant to even reccomend it due to it having a tendency to die on people.

If you want to play around with Conroe OCing I'd suggest a cheap ATX version like the Gigabyte DS3. It has a potential of 500fsb or so. Or something similar to it in OCing performance.

Power supply will depend on what kind of components you have and how many. Video card alone can require some hefty juice if you want something like a G80.

 

[Kaido]

Hmm. Well, here's the plan:

E4300 1.8ghz DC
2GB Super Talent DDR2-667 PC5400
Maxtor 500GB 7200rpm SATA
Lite-on 20X SATA DVD burner
7900GT with Vmod

I'm not set on the case. I need an NSK2400 for another project and figured it'd be a good temporary solution, but probably not. So:

What PSU to buy?
What cooling to buy?

My goal is 3ghz, although I'll settle for 2.4ghz. Haven't OC'd since my 1.4ghz Tbird

 

[kmmatney]

You don't need a mobo with a super high FSB to overclock an E4300. In fact, you can just set the FSB to 266 MHz with ANY motherboard, and you have an instant overclock to 2.4 GHz. Even the cheapest board you can find should give you that, even if the BIOS doesn't have normal overclocking features.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: kmmatney
You don't need a mobo with a super high FSB to overclock an E4300. In fact, you can just set the FSB to 266 MHz with ANY motherboard, and you have an instant overclock to 2.4 GHz. Even the cheapest board you can find should give you that, even if the BIOS doesn't have normal overclocking features.

Not true. Most non-OC boards will ID the e4300 as a 200 FSB and not let you change the FSB to 266. That's why people start doing pin-mods on the e4300 to make it look to a cheap mobo as a 266 FSB cpu. But you're right, there are some cheap mobos with basic OC options that let you switch the FSB from 200 to 266 for an instant 2.4GHz OC on the e4300.

@Kaido:
For the PSU, a quality 350W or 400W from FSP or Sparkle for <$45 will do you fine. Don't listen to the people that say you need a 550W... anyway some of those 550W PSUs have less amps on the 12V than the Sparkle and FSP 400W models.

 

[hans007]

the reason that its hard to o/c with microatx is every core 2 board that is microatx has onboard igp. its hard to o/c those onboard igps especially the g965s.


i've got an intel branded i946gz board and yeah the pin mod is how you are gonna have to do it, but itll only get you to 2.4 ghz. if you havent bought a chip yet, i'd suggest you invest the extra $30 o so and get an e4400 instead if you wanna do it microatx.

 

[paydirt]

The case that I am partial to is the Rosewill R604-P Black 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower. I like to keep my graphics cards cool and this case has a vent right over the spot where the graphics card goes and holes to mount a 120mm fan. In the front, it has an adjustable grill and you can mount a 120mm fan there too if you like.