Thoughts on the Asus P2B-VT Mobo?

[Amused]

I'm thinking of buying this to throw an old slot 1 PII450 in. Is this a good Mobo?

I'm thinking of buying it from Centrix International for $72. Are they a good retailer?

Thanks

 

[bacillus]

can't vouch for that particular model but all the P2Bs that I've had in the past have worked flawlessly!

 

[Amused]

This board appears to be an OEM made for HP.

Is this a bad thing? Will it have propriatary power connectors?

Here's the specs listed at the retailer:

Original ASUS OEM Made for HP.
Genuine Intel 440BX Chipset
Support 66Mhz & 100Mhz bus speed
Support PII & PIII Up to 800Mhz. (Slot 1) "Tested"
Support Celeron Up to 466Mhz Tested. "Maby more"
Support (2) Ultra DMA/33 IDE, (1) Floppy
Bios update click here (link)
(3) Dimm SDram 100 or 66 Mhz Up to 384MB
Genuine Intel 440BX Chipset
(1) AGP, (4) PCI, (1) ISA Slots
(2) USB, (1) Serial (1) Printer. Ports
No video, No Sound
ATX From Factor, For Mini, Medium or Full Tower

 

[Amused]

Bump

 

[Joony]

dude, don't get that, no options for like CAS settings or anything remotely that can tweak your computer is not in the bios! its HP for god sakes!

 

[Amused]

<< dude, don't get that, no options for like CAS settings or anything remotely that can tweak your computer is not in the bios! its HP for god sakes! >>



This is a computer I'm throwing together for my girlfriend. It's to websurf and do office programs only. It's not going to be overclocked, or tweaked in any way beyond normal Windows tweaks.

Here's what I have laying around:

Old PII450
Old TNT card
Old sound card
256MB P100 Memory
Old 4.8x DVD drive
Old Mouse

I figured I'd buy a cheap mobo, case and floppy and throw all this stuff together rather than have it laying around gathering dust.

I've already bought an InWin S500 case, floppy drive and cables for $80

BTW, the BIOS in it is an Asus BIOS. The vender (Centrix-intl.com) even has up-to-date firmware upgrades for it.

 

[AndyHui]

This board is an OEM HP from ASUS.

ASUS will NOT provide any support whatsoever, so it may be a good thing that Centrix is providing BIOS updates for it, but normally they don't; usually they are several steps behind the retails BIOSes as well.

 

[Amused]

<< This board is an OEM HP from ASUS.

ASUS will NOT provide any support whatsoever, so it may be a good thing that Centrix is providing BIOS updates for it, but normally they don't; usually they are several steps behind the retails BIOSes as well. >>



My question is, how up to date do I need the BIOS to be, if I'm just building a basic PII system?

Centrix does say that "Mboard as the latest bios firmware."

Could I just use BIOS updates directly from Asus?

 

[AndyHui]

No, you CANNOT use the BIOS updates from ASUS.

ASUS retail boards don't even have a P2B-VT model.