Zap's Mini Reviews: Biostar G31D-M7

[Zap]

Hey, it's time for another mini review of a budget motherboard! I just got the board and thought I would drum up some excitement - well, as much excitement as a $40 motherboard can give. I've reserved the second spot for the actual review text when I'm done checking it out, but I will start with some pictures to liven things up. Yes, after years of reviewing budget motherboards on Anandtech Forums without pictures of my boards (IIRC) I now have pictures!

Cavalcade of G31 chipset motherboards
The latest addition is the Biostar G31D-M7. Also present is the Asus P5KPL-AM/PS (review here) and the Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L (review here). Not present are the TUL TG31-M2 (review here) and the ECS G31T-M (review here). I have sold off the TUL and ECS boards, but still have in my possession the Asus and Gigabyte boards.

Here are three pictures comparing the Biostar G31D-M7 to the Foxconn G45M-S.
pic 1
pic 2
pic 3
This is just to give y'all an indication of how small the Biostar board is. I thought the TUL board was small, but this Biostar board is officially FlexATX sized. Wikipedia has a nice color chart of motherboard sizes, so you can see Flex ATX indicated by a pinkish colored rectangle overlaying micro ATX indicated by a mangoish colored rectangle. Flex ATX is just a hair larger than mini ITX, so this board might be a decent choice for some cheap small case modding as the only other widely available small board with a PCIe x16 slot is the mini ITX Zotac board that costs 3X more, and the Flex ATX size is literally only around 1½" larger in one dimension.

BTW I will also review the Foxconn board as well, since it is "budget" for a G45 chipset board. If it works out, the Foxconn board will end up in my primary LAN gaming box.

Newegg link for Biostar G31D-M7
I purchased mine last week for $39.99 with free shipping. I see it is now $44.99 without free shipping, so it is no longer such a hot deal.

For my test system I will be using the following parts:
2GB DDR2-1066 Corsair Dominator RAM 5-5-5-15 2.1v ver.5.1
Corsair TX650 power supply
HIS Radeon x1550 PCIe video card
Thermalright Ultra 90A heatsink
Thermalright 92mm 4-pin PWM fan
Zalman 92mm 3-pin fan
(fans to test capability of motherboard fan control)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 CPU
(point of two CPUs is different FSB affecting memory multipliers and overclocking)

Look forward to my review in the next day or two. If anyone has any requests that they would like me to try on this board, LMK and I'll oblige if I am able to.

1. Sticky'ed for a week (or until Zap breaks something)
   
   AnandTech Moderator
   lopri

Edited to flesh out test parts list.

 

[Zap]

Zap's Mini Review: Biostar G31D-M7

(Purchased from Newegg for $39.99 with free shipping)

The Biostar G31D-M7 is a budget motherboard for socket LGA 775 based on the Intel G31 chipset for all Core 2 Duo class processors.

SPECIFICATIONS

Biostar G31D-M7 motherboard
Intel G31 chipset with ICH7
Supports socket LGA 775 Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual Core, Celeron
Supports FSB 800/1066/1333
Two DDR2 slots for dual channel operation, 4GB max
one PCI Express x16, one PCI slot
Two SATA 3Gb/s and one EIDE (two drives), plus one FDD
Realtek ALC662 HD audio with 6 channels
Realtek RTL8102EL 10/100 ethernet
Intel GMA 3100 onboard video with VGA output
Flex ATX form factor (works fine with micro ATX cases)

BIOS

AMI BIOS G31GMB25 BF 11/25/08
Smart Fan
CPU Voltage Auto/+5%/+10%/+15%
FSB Voltage Auto/+0.1v/+0.2v/+0.3v
Memory Voltage Auto/+0.1v/+0.2v/+0.3v
FSB 100-800MHz
PCIe Auto/100-150MHz

Available memory multipliers vary with installed CPU's FSB
200MHz FSB = auto/533*/667/800MHz
266MHz FSB = auto/533*/667/800MHz
333MHz FSB (untested)

IMPRESSIONS

This is a tiny and cheap Flex ATX sized motherboard. Flex ATX is between mini ITX and micro ATX in size, and should fit any micro ATX or ATX case. It is only 1½? longer than a mini ITX motherboard and about 1/3 the price of one with PCIe x16.

Looking at the board it is obvious that there was a lot of cost cutting as it looks really small and barren. There are only two expansion slots (PCIe x16 and PCI) and two SATA ports. The networking is only 100Mbit and the sound 6 channel. Still, this should be enough for a basic computer.

The CPU area has a handful of solid capacitors and normal capacitors are used elsewhere. The CPU area is also really empty looking for those who are more accustomed to enthusiast motherboards. This is because this motherboard is limited to 65W CPUs.

There is only one fan header on this motherboard. It is for the CPU and is a 4-pin PWM style. It is unable to control 3-pin fans so those will always run at full speed. One interesting BIOS feature is that it has calibration for PWM fans which will run through an exercise and tell you what to set the PWM settings to. Why it can?t just set them for you, I don?t know, but you have to write them down and enter in the numbers. You can also leave it on Auto, but the control may not be as fine.

Aside from the motherboard itself, Biostar?s warranty service is really lacking. A visit to their support site shows that they are stuck in the 90?s with no end-user warranty. Their warranty goes through resellers, and the sad fact is that many resellers only offer a 30 day warranty, after which they will refer you to the manufacturer. With Biostar, they will refer you BACK to the reseller. Take Fry?s Electronics for instance. They do nothing beyond their 14 day return period, so that?s how long of a warranty you have with a Biostar motherboard purchased through them. I guess Biostar was the logical replacement for ECS as the preferred loss leader motherboard at Fry?s.

For those who don?t know, there was some embezzlement going on at Fry?s last year. The VP was taking kickbacks from manufacturers/vendors to the tune of $65.6 million! One such manufacturer was ECS, and their payments to this guy basically guaranteed that Fry?s would sell as many ECS motherboards as possible.

OVERCLOCKING

The BIOS has a lot of options for such a basic board, including overclocking. Voltage settings are a bit weak, but is just enough to give a minor overclock. The FSB settings are a bit strange because it allows up to 800MHz, which is just plain unachievable on any board, let alone this one. I?m wondering if Biostar just used some reference BIOS with the most minor of customizations because there are settings which just didn?t work properly. For instance, setting the RAM to the 533MHz multiplier caused a no POST issue on both 200MHz and 266MHz FSB CPUs (I did not have a 333MHz FSB CPU handy). Also, PCIe clock speed didn?t seem too useful as sometimes manually setting to 100MHz caused no POST while setting to Auto allowed it to POST. This leaves me wondering if the PCIe bus is only partially locked, similar to the 945G family of chipsets.

I tested overclocking by increasing all voltages to the maximum allowed and setting RAM to the lowest multiplier that worked and the most relaxed timings. The board did not allow for CPU multiplier adjustments, so I had to leave the CPU at maximum multiplier. I worked my way up in 5-10MHz increments.

On my E5200 CPU up to 235MHz FSB was fine, but above that the board behaved oddly. On saving/exiting out of BIOS it would double-POST and then give a ?Warning ! Over clock fail? message. However, it would be just fine after that, until the next time I exited BIOS. Somewhere around 275MHz FSB it would have issues such as locking on POST.

On my E7200 CPU I was able to hit a much higher FSB, up to around 360MHz. Above that the keyboard stopped working, plus at these higher speeds the PCIe bus set manually to 100MHz would cause no POST issues while leaving it on Auto would allow a POST.

CONCLUSION

I see two uses for this board. One is if someone just absolutely needs to have the cheapest motherboard possible, and this board fits that bill. The other use is if someone needs a cheap board that is the smallest possible while still having a PCIe x16 slot. This board is almost as small as a mini ITX board and the cheapest one of those with a PCIe x16 slot is the Zotac at 3x the price. This makes for some interesting possibilities such as modding a briefcase into a LAN box or some other such SFF case mod.

Other than low price, this board does not have much to set it apart from any other $40-50 motherboard.

 

[happy medium]

Just purchased a G31m7-TE with a e5400 cpu brand new for 100$ shipped ofF a member here. I'm looking forward to this review.
I still need to purchase memory,cpu cooler, and psu.

I also purchased an Antec 1200 for 125$ shipped. When I took this board out of the box I started laughing at it's size compared to the case.
Smallest board I ever seen.

The 8800gt I got (for 55$ shipped) is half the size of this entire board.I found a gtx 260 (192sp) for 115$, but I want to make sure this board will take my e5400 (13.5 multy) to at least 3.5 first.

I'm trying to make the cheapest gaming rig possible.


Looking forward to seeing how this cheapo overclocks.
Thanks and hurry.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: happy medium
Smallest board I ever seen.

Believe it or not the G31D-M7 that I have is a hair smaller than your G31-M7 TE. It is smaller in both dimensions by about 1/4"-3/8" or so. Also, looks as if your board adds another CPU power phase and supports quad cores and Pentium D/4, up to 95W TDP.

YMMV for overclocking. Since your board has a beefier power section it might do better than mine.

 

[Skott]

I like your reviews, Zap. Thanks for the info.

 

[happy medium]

So you highest stable overclock was? My cpu's has a 13.5 multy. Yours is a 12.5 correct?(e5200).

Was there any fsb holes?
Any northbridge voltage settings?
Should I buy any old ddr2 ram.
I was gonna try this stuff because I believe you need only 1.8v ram.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820211188

Thanks Zap this review was perfect timing.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: happy medium
So you highest stable overclock was? My cpu's has a 13.5 multy. Yours is a 12.5 correct?(e5200).

Was there any fsb holes?
Any northbridge voltage settings?
Should I buy any old ddr2 ram.

Probably any DDR2-800 will work fine.

It has "FSB Voltage" which might mean NorthBridge.

I did not encounter any FSB holes, but I couldn't reduce multiplier so I did not get very far.

Highest without any funky BIOS issues was around 2.93GHz which is pretty paltry. Not sure about Prime-stable.

Board will be shipped out tomorrow as part of a cheap build for my aunt. Her machine just died during a power fluctuation. Thus I won't be able to test anything else on it.

 

[lopri]

I didn't know there was such a thing as "FlexATX". Learn something new every day.. Thank you!

The board does look barren.. Does the box/manual mention 65W max TDP? I didn't see it on the Egg's spec sheet.

 

[Zap]

I found that information on the manufacturer's web site product page. The information is in the first paragraph highlighted in RED. "CPU TDP over 65W is not available."

I think I first encountered Flex ATX boards in some mass market mini desktop computers (maybe Packard Bell or something). They're pretty rare beasts... and calling them "beasts" is probably a misnomer.

 

[lopri]

How well does GMA 3100 handle Aero? (if it does)

I remember there was a noise regarding 'Vista Certified" or 'Vista Ready' (or was it 'Vista Capable'?) and its exact specs.

Oh and another question that is probably off-topic: Is there a way to count the number of PCB layers of a motherboard?

 

[Zap]

IDK about Aero. AFAIK it runs, but don't know about how well. I personally have not tried it.

I don't know about counting the PCB layers, but most likely cheap mobos are 4 layer, better ones 6 layer. I don't know if any top end motherboard is made using 8 layer, but perhaps.

 

[Andrew001]

I wish I found this review earlier...

Can a NVidia GForce GTX295 work on this Motherboard?

If there are any modifications or updates that will make it work, can someone help me?

I have this motherboard and I cant get the graphics card working even though my old GForce7600 works without any issues. I would prefer not to have to buy a new motherboard. I have a 700W Power Supply, 2Gig DDR2 and 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo so i'm sure the issue is with the motherboard?

Thanks.

 

[Zap]

I don't see why it won't, but I've never tried it. Since you've tried another card on this board, have you tried the GTX 295 on another board to verify nothing is wrong with the card? What 700W PSU do you have?

 

[Andrew001]

No I have not yet had another board to try the GTX 295 on. I will try to get a friend's board to test the card on.

The power supply is a Huntkey 80 Master 700Watt.

 

[Bhavinmpatel007]

Hey friends !

Never buy this Biostar G31D-M7 motherboard

This is the worst motherboard i have ever seen.

And never change the DRAM FREQUENCY in the bios

otherwise your ram slots will be dead.

It is true

now i have to buy new motherboard.