Warm? Maybe?

[konakona]

We all know this is not the best time to build a new system around LGA775 processors, seeing how i5/P55 is going so cheap at the moment (or even PII'/790GXs for that matter). But let's say you go through some kind of a disaster like I did and need a drop-in replacement just for the mobo, I still believe P35 is the cheapest, OC'able option with 4 ram slots.

I checked newegg, ZZF, Geeks and none of them had anything within the $50 range.

Ewiz has this for $52 FS. Use 5OFF20 for the promo code to get $5 off, Bing CB gets you another $2.6 (5% of $52) back, bringing the total down to $44.39 shipped. The board is supposed to be a solid performer among its P35 peers. Served me well for a while before something terrible happened (not the board's fault).

It sucks to deal with broken hardware, hopefully this would help you mitigate the pain

EDIT: coupon is dead as of 9/14 (thanks, E4300), bringing the total back up $5 more at $49.39

 

[Replay]

I like it. Thanks.

 

[Arglebargle]

Thanks! Just so happened I needed a replacement 775 board, and this was a good one for the money.

 

[filibusterman]

FS is always a plus or you end up adding 15-20% for shipping which is irking. Nice find!

 

[hansmuff]

That's a great find. Usually in this price class you end up only 1 PCI-Express 16x, some PCI slots, 2 memory slots, 2 SATA.
This is nicely loaded. Probably in for one. Thank you OP.

 

[E4300]

Coupon is dead as of 9/14. I miss the day of IP35-E for $50-$60. Still a good board even if you have a Q9550. Be sure to use the BETA 18 BIOS.

 

[VirtualLarry]

CPU support list is dreadfully short of newer CPUs. It doesn't even have the Q6600 G0 stepping.
Latest BIOS on site is 2008-09-03.
Only "Three-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry" according to link
"Here everything is fine, but when I got to the page with hard disk drive settings, I couldn?t find any options for SATA modes."
"The Serial ATA hard disk drives are by default set compatible with IDE on most contemporary mainboards, i.e. the OS sees it as a regular Parallel ATA disk drive supporting standard set of commands. It hardly affects the performance, however, if you want to take advantage of some SATA?s unique features, such as plug-n-play connection, for instance, they should be switched to extended AHCI mode. Biostar TP35D2-A7 doesn?t allow it, because there is no corresponding item in the BIOS, so the hard disk drives will always work in compatibility mode."
Moreover, Biostar TP35D2-A7 BIOS also allows running the built-in MemTest86+ benchmark.
I have to admit that this is one of the least stable mainboards I have ever come across in our lab so far.


I've read enough. I'd rather spend $54 on a Gigabyte G31 ES2L board than this one.

 

[Nimbo]

My Asus P5N-D just died and this will replace it until I can get better deals on i7 platform. I understand complains in that review, but SATA modes don't matter to me, CPU Support is short but the Q9550 was there, so I hope it works with my Q9450. Stability issues are my only concern, but they refereed only when overclocking. Stability is a hit or miss, for this price I will take my chances. Of course you get better quality with a Gigabyte board, but in this price rage you give so much in features when compared with that uATX board you mention. Feature comparable boards are price the double than this. So I still consider this a deal. Just compare it to the same board at newegg. They only have it open box for $16 more + shipping.

 

[konakona]

I tend to put more trust into xbitlab reviews above all, one of my favorite sites. At first I considered going G31 as you suggested, but that would mean 2 out of my 4 ram sticks are gonna be sitting out cold. Personally, I would take 4gb ram over a bit better stability when overclocked. Thanks for your input though, gotta be a reason why these are so cheap, buyer beware!

 

[Arglebargle]

That cautionary review is from sometime in mid 2007, iirc. And as was pointed out, the latest bios is well past that. Reading up on that version, it did support 45nm processors. Still, it is a risk...

 

[filibusterman]

With mobos as cheep as they are these days you can almost expect no bios updates if there the bios is already 1.5-2 years old. This is sad with the rate at which new cpus are coming out now but you get what you pay for I suppose.