Seeking Intel-chipset-based P4 mobo to undervolt...

[EddNog]

I'm looking to undervolt and underclock a P4 2.6C that someone gave me as a gift, and building a silent rig out of it as a project. Can anyone recommend to me a motherboard that's not too expensive (preferably under $100, but definitely under $125) and supports hyperthreading?

-Ed

 

[oldfart]

I would edit the title to be more specific like

Seeking Intel 865/875 mobo with undervolting capabilities.

I would also put up a post at ABXzone.com. I had a gigabyte S370 board that could undervolt. It was one of the very few that could. I dont know if that is a typical Gigabyte feature or not.

 

[EddNog]

Thanx, point taken.

-Ed

 

[o1die]

Stick with the stock Intel heatsink, and you won't have too much noise. The Intel fan runs at about 2300 rpm, but adjusts automatically to the cpu temp. Concentrate on finding the quietest power supply you can afford. On my rig, the video card fan is the noisiest item. I would choose a card without a fan, such as the ati 7000 or the 9000-9200. I would not undervolt expecting the cpu to run cool enough to get by without a fan. I beleive the abit is7 should have undervolt settings, but again, I don't recommend it, because of possible stability issues. For the power supply, I use an enlight single fan 360 watt, and it runs at 1400-1600 rpm. It adjusts itself according to the inside temp. It has a 3 pin plug that fits a fan header on the mobo, and the reading appears in my mobo hardware monitor. I found it refurbished at newegg for only $19 shipped.

 

[RalfHutter]

Albatron 865PE Pro II (note the "II") undervolts but it's probably priced a little out of your range. There's an AOpen 865 mobo that may undervolt, . There's a guy at OC fourms runnning a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-L undervolts to 1.1V but that particular board has a fan-cooled NB heatsink on it which kind on negates the "silent" aspect of this method. There's an unsubstantiated report that the Tyan Trinity i875 (S5101) board allows undervolting too.

We keep a list of unddervoltable mobos at SilentPCReview.com and you'll see next to no 865 boards on it. There are very few undervoltable S478 boards and near no undervoltable 865 boards around. There's also a thread at SPCR forums that talks about undervoltable mobos and my have a little more up to date info in it.

All that said, I would reconsider undervolting your 2.6C in order to have a silent PC. I've done it rather easily with a 2.4C running at default voltage. I did it as an experiment, not expecting to get useable results ( the details are posted in this thread) compared to my standard "silent PC" built around an undervolted PIII-S 1.4. Suprisingly, it turned out that it's quite a workable solution. The most important factors are 1) Having a case with very good airflow (this allows you to quietly remove the 66+W of heat generated by these P4s), and 2) using a very high performance heatsink so you can run the cooling fan very slow and yet still cool the CPU.

The 2.4C rig that I talk about in that thread is so quiet that you literally can not hear it in a dead quiet room from over 1 meter away. Look in my "Ralfs Rigs" at the quiet PC. That's it's current configuration.

I've also built a 3.0C rig to use for gaming that's about 90% as quiet as my P4 rig. The only difference between the 2 is that I have to run the heatsink fan about 150rpm more in order to cool the hotter running 3.0C processor so it does generate a small amount of extra noise. That rig is also shown on my System Rigs page.