eVGA 131-K8-NF44-AX NF4 SLi mATX Mobo Thread

If anyone wants to buy one of these, PM me I have one that I found didn't fit my desires for a mobo so . Its barely used.
 
Hello. I have been looking on this thread for the past week as I started my project cube.
So far here is what I have:

EVGA Mobo (only sli mAtx unfortunately) ... come on dfi!!!
AMD X2 3800+
2x1G OCZ DDR400 Platinum (2.2.2.5 .. but we all know it doesn't matter lol)
2x Nvidia 7900GT's in SLI
Creative Audigy 2
Lite-On DVD-rw
Floppy/card reader
Zalman alcu
Ultra X-connect sli 550w ps
Black tri-windowed x-qpack, painted annonized blue inside
(more blue leds on their way)

Thanks to you all for the info that helped me to overclock!

Right now I am at 2.47Ghz FSB 166 1.52V
RAM at 3.4.4.8 2.83V and !!!! 1T !!!! don't know how...but it works
This leaves the ram running at 205.9 freq as noted on cpu-z

And, here is my highest 3dmark05 score so far. I am really wanting to continue tweaking this thing to get some more out of it! The heat seems to be fine, it is just the motherboard that is causing the issues, as we all know.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2011417


Well what do you all think?
I had a system that was in a gigabyte aurora case and the same cpu/ram, but two 7800gtx's and cpu+2 vga's were all watercooled with dangerden parts. It would get about 1000 more in 3dmark05. The cpu was oc'd to 2.9 and the gpu's were overclocked to 520mhz or so. So, I am actually really pleased to get this kind of performance out of a little 1 foot cube.

--k1tty
 
K1tty said:
Right now I am at 2.47Ghz FSB 166 1.52V
RAM at 3.4.4.8 2.83V and !!!! 1T !!!! don't know how...but it works
This leaves the ram running at 205.9 freq as noted on cpu-z
Click to expand...

K1tty,
Are you sure that you were able to change your Vcore to 1.52v. On my system, it will let me change the value in bios to whatever but when I check it in windows (cpu-z, sandra, everest, etc.) it will never go past 1.4v. I thought evga prevented Vcore changes above 1.4v as a way of nerfing the board and forcing people to get their bigger more expensive 16x SLI mobo. Anyone else notice this?

Nice build btw.

my specs: x-qpack, evga matx, AMD X2 3800+, 2xEvga6800gs(SLI), 2x1024 gskill value ram (2.5-3-3-6,1T 166divider), lite-on dvd burner, hitachi 7TK250 250gb hd (sata II), Hyper type-r 580w psu. 3dmark05: 10985 cpu-z: 257 fsb :cool:
 
Monarch has begun selling a BX revision to this board. Does anyone know of any differences (if any) between that and the AX version?
 
Sikes said:
Monarch has begun selling a BX revision to this board. Does anyone know of any differences (if any) between that and the AX version?
Click to expand...

I just ordered one, so we will see what the deal with it is in a week or so when I get it.
 
Finally! Evga has decided to acknowledge that this board even exists on their website and give it the support it deserves. Now if only we can see a bios update… :rolleyes:

EDIT: Newegg has also finally started selling the board! link
 
thats a good thing.

got the board yesterday. I hope to be able to do the build this weekend if it rains.
 
Well I found the CD that came with the board, it has the shipping bios on it NF44_E01.BIN. I thought mine WAS E02. Can those with this board tell me what bios you have?
Thanks!
 
when I get around to installing it I will check for you.

the shipping bios on my board is E02 dated 2-16-2006.
 
Thanks for checking for me! Any chance you could image that for me, I really need it :|
The hot flash I attempted with E01 didnt work, it didnt do anything actually..AWDFLASH didn't want to run on the other board I have with same type bios chip (I dunno why..), but I ordered one from biosman and they probably wont be able to find the current image either. So I told them to email me if they needed the image. If you could image that then PM, me I'll tell you where to upload it. I'd rather give them E02 then E01.
Let me know if you can help me out :)
Thanks!
 
XipeTotec said:
Thanks for checking for me! Any chance you could image that for me, I really need it :|
The hot flash I attempted with E01 didnt work, it didnt do anything actually..AWDFLASH didn't want to run on the other board I have with same type bios chip (I dunno why..), but I ordered one from biosman and they probably wont be able to find the current image either. So I told them to email me if they needed the image. If you could image that then PM, me I'll tell you where to upload it. I'd rather give them E02 then E01.
Let me know if you can help me out :)
Thanks!
Click to expand...

how would I go about imaging the bios? I have never done that. I will give it a shot if you PM me instructions.

also, have you tried to contact evga tech support, they are usually pretty on the ball.
 
Any luck with the Bios???

Well even after reading this whole board many times, I still had to buy one of these motherboards. Here is my build so far.

Q-pack blue tri-window
Evga matx Sli
Opteron 165
1x 7900 Gt EVGA KO superclocked
2x 1 GB Kingston Hyper X (2-3-2-6)
Lite-on dvd burner
200 GB Maxtor Sata 2 HD
Ultra x-2 550 Watt PSU-Blue

What setting should I try to overclock this thing?
 
I love the small compact size of this board for SLi... But I have run into some problems...

First is the issue with 1T timings... for some reason, this board doesn't like em... I've had to reinstall several times and bump my RAM voltage up, as well as manually set the timings to avoid corrupting the boot sector of my drive (one of the most frustrating problems I've faced to date).

So with laxed timings in 2T, I've also found that this board is not that great of an overclocker... Due to its compact size and the SLi cards being right overtop the chipset, the chipset heats up to sometimes 50*C temps. The max OC I've hit is 235FSB without any hiccups in benchmarks and games. (CPU temp isnt a factor as Sandra reports me idling aroudn 30*C and loading in the high 30's). I think I am gonna turn the fan thats above the back of the video cards around so it is an intake fan blowing right onto the chipset and PWM heatsinks of the cards rather than being an exhaust fan. This might drop the temp on the chipset a little and allow me to get a little better overclock.

Word to the wise, the bios temperature reading is bugged... Its a known flaw, even on the evga boards. Its a safe bet to follow the -10*C rule when observing your temperatures. Just take the bios temp and subtract 10*C from it.

Temps -

Chipset: 30*C idle, Upper 40's load
CPU: 30*C idle, Upper 30's load (MCX6400 cooler with TT Smartfan II @ 75cfms, as are the other 3 fans in the case)
GPU1: 43*C Idle, load in high 60's/low 70's (fan mod to reference style aluminum heatsink, 80mm slimfan and different PWM heatsink)
GPU2: 43*C idle, load in low 70's (stock cooling, the BFG all copper cooler with blue LEDs)
 
BLiTzKRiEG said:
First is the issue with 1T timings...
Click to expand...
BLiTzKRiEG, I had the same problems getting my ram to run with 1T timings as you. Did your try putting your ram in the blue (outer) slots, running a divider, and if necessary decreasing the HTT to 4x. After doing that, I had no problems getting the 1T on my ram and keeping the SPD timings of 2.5-3-3-6 all without raising the vdimm. Consequently, I was able to raise my FSB to 250 stably without running into thermal or stability issue which negated the performance hit from running a divider. I know my X2 3800+ can do more but I am unable (bios bug?) to put more than 1.4v on the core to help stabilize it. Hope that helps...
 
PClark99 said:
I just ordered one, so we will see what the deal with it is in a week or so when I get it.
Click to expand...
anything new with the -BX revision?
 
codeflux said:
i got this board too. SLI in a micro-atx package is awesome. trying to fit 2 7800gtx with Arctic Cooling NV5rev3 was a big challenge. doable, though. :D
Click to expand...
Yea, I've been following your thread. Nice! ...drools... I've got my 2 6800gs's w/zalman vf-900 in there with a similar fixed problem. The screws on the first card kept rubbing up on the fan on the second card and creating a racket. I had to grind them down but it fits...barely. Can't really blame evga for putting the slots so close to each other since it is after all a uATX board. Can't complain. For those looking into aftermarket cooling for their video cards better have a dremel tool handy. :eek:
 
I'm new but have been following the thread for a few weeks. During that time I have been playing around with my board. Here's what I got going:

eVGA mATX SLI MoBo
Venice 3000+ 1.8 ghz oc'd to 2.34 ghz
(292 * 8 multiplier, 1.5v according to BIOS but 1.4 actual, and 600 HTT)
2gb Patriot RAM
(2-3-2-5 @ 1T and 133mhz running at approx 380 instead of 400)
2- BFG 7600GT OC in SLI
WD 250gb SATA w/16mb cache
Silverstone case
3dmark05- 9720 or so

I've been very happy with this board and setup. It took a while to play around with but I've kept the 1T (even though at 133) with the recommended 2-3-2-5 timings. The Venice 3000+ overclocked VERY nicely for a $100 cpu. I've had no problems running most games with all the highest settings, and can run Oblivion very well with mid-high settings at widescreen 1440x900.

I do think I got one of the newer revisions of the board. I'm not sure if I got lucky with a cherry cpu, cherry RAM and cherry board, but it seems to work great once I brought the cpu multiplier down and the mem down to 133. Performance increased significantly and I was able to jump from a previous 234 fsb to 292!!! I was at 300 (2.4 ghz) and it worked fine for most things, but would cause strange visuals in Dreamfall and Oblivion when the graphics got real intense, so I backed it down a couple of times and ended up at 292, where I havnt had a problem in over a week.

I was aiming for a 10,000 score in 3dmark05 but if I cant get that last bit, I am still happy with how actual performance and game-play is. Anyone have any suggestions to get over that?

Anyone else have any good fortunes with this board as myself?
 
mcj1 said:
I'm new but have been following the thread for a few weeks. During that time I have been playing around with my board. Here's what I got going:

eVGA mATX SLI MoBo
Venice 3000+ 1.8 ghz oc'd to 2.34 ghz
(292 * 8 multiplier, 1.5v according to BIOS but 1.4 actual, and 600 HTT)
2gb Patriot RAM
(2-3-2-5 @ 1T and 133mhz running at approx 380 instead of 400)
2- BFG 7600GT OC in SLI
WD 250gb SATA w/16mb cache
Silverstone case
3dmark05- 9720 or so

I've been very happy with this board and setup. It took a while to play around with but I've kept the 1T (even though at 133) with the recommended 2-3-2-5 timings. The Venice 3000+ overclocked VERY nicely for a $100 cpu. I've had no problems running most games with all the highest settings, and can run Oblivion very well with mid-high settings at widescreen 1440x900.

I do think I got one of the newer revisions of the board. I'm not sure if I got lucky with a cherry cpu, cherry RAM and cherry board, but it seems to work great once I brought the cpu multiplier down and the mem down to 133. Performance increased significantly and I was able to jump from a previous 234 fsb to 292!!! I was at 300 (2.4 ghz) and it worked fine for most things, but would cause strange visuals in Dreamfall and Oblivion when the graphics got real intense, so I backed it down a couple of times and ended up at 292, where I havnt had a problem in over a week.

I was aiming for a 10,000 score in 3dmark05 but if I cant get that last bit, I am still happy with how actual performance and game-play is. Anyone have any suggestions to get over that?

Anyone else have any good fortunes with this board as myself?
Click to expand...
mcj1, your ram is too good to be running that slow and is likely bottlenecking your system. Most review sites (ex.) claim that ram will go to 255 (DDR510) at loosened timings of [email protected]. Try raising your divider back to 166 with the loosened timings and shoot for a the highest HTT/FSB your can get. You might not get 292 but the extra memory bandwidth might make up for it. Bench again to verify. Still, 9720 isn't too shabby for your 3000+ venice.
 
Speaking about eVGA's NF4 SLi mATX Mobo... I'm using a Zalman CU7700 CPUcooler... conected to the mobo CPU pin..... But is it possible to control the fan? Try'ed to find the option in the BIOS but no luck.... maybe it needs a BIOS update?
 
[QUOTE='99]Speaking about eVGA's NF4 SLi mATX Mobo... I'm using a Zalman CU7700 CPUcooler... conected to the mobo CPU pin..... But is it possible to control the fan? Try'ed to find the option in the BIOS but no luck.... maybe it needs a BIOS update?[/QUOTE]
yeah, i kind-a miss that feature too. if you have a quiet HSF it's fine - my Zalman is fairly quiet. but otherwise you can always use the Zalman's fan controller.
 
I'm still looking to get a meaningful overclock using an Athlon X2 4400 CPU. The best stable solution I can manage is paltry 100MHz increase.

Has any one managed to get a decent speed from this board? If so, please let me know the settings you tried!
 
I just got one of these mobo's and thought I'd chime in on my experience. Great packaging, well protected in box. Manual is weak, cables and accesories are ok. I am still waiting for my V300B, so I installed it into an Antec P150 for now. I installed my X2-3800, and two sticks of 512mb plats rev2 3200. Went into bios, saw my drives, set the time and date, left everything on auto for now. Booted into Windows no problem. Driver load ok. system is totally stable, its a rock. played FEAR for two hours on my Signature series 7900GT, its all good. So far I'm playing the stock market if you know what I mean. I really like this board. I hesitated when I started to read this thread, but I really wanted an m-ATX mobo without onboard video. Sorry to hear other people have have problems. Maybe I have the latest one. I doubt it, with all the problems EVGA is having with the 7900's(I'm on my third!), they would not have any time yet to support other products, lol.
 
[QUOTE='99]Speaking about eVGA's NF4 SLi mATX Mobo... I'm using a Zalman CU7700 CPUcooler... conected to the mobo CPU pin..... But is it possible to control the fan? Try'ed to find the option in the BIOS but no luck.... maybe it needs a BIOS update?[/QUOTE]

I am controlling my CPU fan speed successfully on my NF-44 based on temps using Speedfan
 
What is the latest BIOS version for the NF44? And what nForce driver version are you using?
 
I've been trying to diagnose what is wrong with my eVGA SLI system. Has anyone had a system where the fans spin up but no video and then it shuts off after a minute or two. I cleared the CMOS and tried running it with just the bare minimum. It has a FX-60 and a Enermax Liberty. I also tried a Seasonic Powersupply and still the same outcome.
 
I would definedly try to remount the CPU Cooler, looks lige that you don't have enough paste between the two. Use Arctic Silver... works everytime, they have a guide on how to apply paste.... good luck!
 
I recently put on a Zalman 7700 to replace the Silverstone NG03 - since then I'm getting artefacts appearing on-screen at the slightest sign of CPU effort. I also had a slight overclock to 210MHz FSB, but I've since put this back down to stock.

The NG03 generally seemed to blow air out of the side of the case whereas the 7700 blows it onto the base of the PSU. Not good when there's no fan there.

I'm thinking...

a) get an Enermax Liberty PSU, and
b) get a replacement GPU cooler for my 7800GT - any recommendations?

However, I am wondering if it's my 7800GT that's knackered as temps look reasonable - 50 degrees CPU under load, 60 degrees GPU.
 
[QUOTE='99]I would definedly try to remount the CPU Cooler, looks lige that you don't have enough paste between the two. Use Arctic Silver... works everytime, they have a guide on how to apply paste.... good luck![/QUOTE]

I'll give that a try. I had a similar problem with a Pentium 4 system and it was the motherboard. I will try remounting the CPU Cooler, which is a Zalman 7000CU. Outside of that it was a great computer.
 
Any news on this Motherboard? I hate to dig up an old thread. but I just got another 7800gtx used for cheap and wondering if it is still a decent board to go with.
 
It is a great board. I only have a few minor issues, but those are tiny. I wish that when not using SLI, the top and bottom PCIE (well at least the top) would be PCIE 1x slots instead of being off. I only have 1 video card and I have to have SLI mode active and have my card in an 8x slot just so I can use my PCIe TV Tuner. Also it was kind of retarded to only implement 8 USB poarts when the chipset supports 10, I guess they saved $.05, but believe me I would have paid that extra $.05 to have the extra USB ports (esp since I do use all of my 8 ones). It does overclock alright for me, but I do think the bios settings are somewhat limited (there never has been a bios update yet for it). I'd still recommend it.

Jason
 
I need some memory recommendations to use with this board. Believe it or not I can get to 280 FSB when using my corsair Value select RAM VS256MB400C3. The problem is that I only have 2 of them and I want to run at least a gig. I have 2 x256 Kingston KVR266 that I can get to 260 FSB but no more. I have some Corsair Platinum 2 x 512 that won't do much of anything as well as some OCZ 2 x 256 that gives the same results.

Can anyone tell me why the el cheapo corsair memory works better than the rest? Is it because they are only 256 MB sticks?

Gowking
 
Alright I've got a few questions and I don't want to piss anybody off by being retorical but I've been looking on here for a few days to find the answers and haven't had much luck. Here's what's up. I've built a couple of computers and I am getting into PC gaming now were before I was only console but here's my thing. I want to stay around a grand and this seems like the board to me but I want to know if it would be better to go w/ dual 7600GT's and a 4600 AMD chip or dual 7600GS's and a 4800 AMD Chip. Also has anybody used the Ultra Micro Fly case w/ Dual cards and am I going to have any issues cooling. I don't want to over clock anything nor do I want to water cool. I don't know if you guys have seen the price drops in the AMD chips today or not but they cut in half so I went from getting the 3800 or 4200 to the 4600 and the 4800 at the same price. My other question is how can you use the the DDR 500 when the board is built for the DDR 400 it just doesn't make much sence to me. Please excuse my ignorance and help me out!
 
1) What is the difference between a 4600 and 4800? If its 200mhz like I think it is then you will not notice a difference between the two in most cases. Unless you are super hardcore and want to shave that extra 2sec off of a divx encode or something. So my vote is get the one that lets you spend the most on your videocard.
2)I've never ownt a microfly but I have ownt a QPack and they are virtually the same case (people might argue otherwise, but they are obviously blind). The Psu sits above the cards and will exhaust any heat the cards might put out. Also nvidia chips by nature have a pretty low heat output. Espesially when you are not in the highest performance bracket. Colling wont be a problem.
3) People buy ddr 500 so that they have headroom in overclocking. People for some reason are madly worried about running a 1:1 ratio on AMD's. Honestly it matters vary little because of the onboard memory controller. Running a ratio on ram has negligible performance impact on an AMD based system. So if you can get some decent ddr400 for a good price go for it. Also, don't buy "budget" ram for an aftermarket board, sometimes the system just wont boot with it.

*4) http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/326/20
As you can see from this link, the differences between a 7600GT SLI setup and a single 7900GT are nill. A few games show some difference but the newer games in those benchmarks dont. I also just checked newegg and the cheapest 7600GT they have is $130 plus shipping per card. The cheapest 7900GT the currently have is going for $230 plus shipping for only one card. So basically by buying a 7900GT you will be saving ~$35 and will still have a spot open for another one in the future when they are cheaper and you need that little boost for the newest games to feed your hunger.

my $.02

Brian
 
Thanks for the advice that is awesome. I'm planning on going w/ a 7600 GT that is cranked up a little. XFX PV-T73G-UDF3 Geforce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 and it goes on www.newegg.com for 175. I don't see how two of those would only match one 7900! As for the rest of the build I am looking at the mother board in this forum an Ultra X2 550w ps a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA NCQ 3Gb/s S OCZ Titanium 2GB ram I would also like to put a heatsink on the Proc but I'm not sure which one will fit in this case. I was thinking of going w/ the Zalma 7700 but I'm not sure. Thanks again for your help
 
Be careful with the length of the power supply. You can fit some full length powersupplies in the qpack but not many. Do more research on the video cards. I also recommend steping up to the 7900 GT. Much better bang for the buck.
 
I was thinking last night about that and I'm going to go w/ the 7900 and spend about 350 on it and after a couple of months I'll buy another 7900 one of the advantages of the Micro Fly is that you can use a full size power supply here is a good review on it http://www.modders-inc.com/reviews-story--56.html . They say that it also has a better handle and cooling as opposed to the Q-pack's. That's again for your advice guys & gals!
 
Cooling is a big issue to me and I've seen that operaman had one of his cards running at 92c which is freaking crazy anyway what cooler did you use to drop that thing down from almost 200f. I doubt that just any old cooler will work in such a small space! Thanks again for your advise!
 
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