NEED HELP PICKING INTEL 845PE MOTHERBOARD

[Prodigy3682]

I just got a new intel pentium 4 2.66GHz 512 chip for free and now am looking for the most extreme motherboard that overclocks very very well. I'm looking for a board with the chipset intel i845PE and if possible with raid and serialATA. I've considered the following boards: epox 4PEA+, asus P4PE, abit IT7-Max2 v2.0. I am really considering the epox 4PEA+ but it's sold out in every online store and even the manufacturer stated it's sold out. I'm not really sure if my choices are the most extremes in overclocking...please help me here and suggest some motherboards. The top settings I've found so far is from epox 4PEA+ fsb up to 200, vcore 1.85, vdimm 3.2, vagp 2.2. Please help me choice a nice overclocking i845PE motherboard...thanks.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

my friend has asus p4pe, got his 1.6a to 2.6

dont go over 1.7vcore actual (as reported by monitoring program of some sort)


ifyou truely want a hardcore ocing board, id go for eiter asus p4b533 or abit it7max

some p4pe boards have some cold boot issues...)

 

[Duvie]

I did a bit of studing this late last week...

1) Abit IT7 Max2 V2....can be very expensive cause it is loaded with bells and whistles....

2) Albatron Px845PEV Pro (1 or 2) very inexpensive, more so with the non 2 version as it doesn't have the raid controller and a few other onboard devices....Very high fsbs reported and the bios goes over 200 to about 243 if I remmeber correctly...I got this one and likley will be giving a review come tuesday....

3) Asus P4pe...some have reboot issues others do not...Does overvolt like all asus p4 mobos....Asus likes to play the game of jacking everything a bit including base mhz and fsb to win all those head to head benchmarks in the mobo shootouts....kinda lame if you ask me!!!


lets call this the wildcard...ABIT's BH7....due out this next week....inexpensive w/ SATA and rumored to be 4 phase power and capable of running 800mhz fsb chips soon to be released....

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

cant wait to see stuff about the BH7

 

[oldfart]

The EPoX 4PEA+ is really nice. It is the only PE board with 2 parallel ATA RAID ports. Yes, it is very hard to find. My next choice would be the Albatron. The Abit BH7 looks good, but its not quite out yet. I hate how Asus locks all the cas timings to slowest values when you run a high FSB. You have to hack it if you want good timings. I wish they'd change that.

I checked Pricewatch. Axiontech shows 4PEA+ in stock.

 

[Prodigy3682]

Yeah the epox will state it's in stock online, but when you call, every company that says they sell the mobo, customer service will say it's sold out. Does anyone have a clue of the stats for ABIT BH7, like voltage, etc?

 

[LouPoir]

Asus P4PE of Abit IT Max2 ver2. For low cost, go with the Albatron.

May want to consider an SIS655 motherboard, has 8x AGP, DDR400 support and most important - dual channel DDR. I have the Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 and it is a sweet board. I have the Asus P4PE and have owned the Abit board. Cant go wrong with any of these.

Lou

 

[Bad Dude]

How about the Gigabyte GA_8PE677 Ultra 2 which has both parallel RAID and SATA RAID? It's a great board. I got the ultra not the ultra 2 since I don't want SATA RAID. You can get it at essencompu.com for a decent price and the shipping is reasonable too. Love the board. To unlock all RAM settings, hit delete to get into the BIOS then hold the Ctrl button down then hit F1 and now you can adjust the RAM settings, SMART for the drives, and other stuffs.
Hope this helps.