mATX Motherboards

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Nightfall84

Gawd
Joined
Jul 19, 2004
Messages
568
I was wondering if anybody has had any good/bad experiences with any of the current crop of K8T800 or K8M800 micro ATX motherboards. I am purchasing an Aria and motherboard in the next few days (which is why I need help ASAP) and wanted some input. Thanks in advance :D
 
ive heard some poeple say that the nforce board is way faster even without overclocking. i think aope sells a board
 
Well, in m-ATX, I've owned two boards. The first one was an MSI K8TM-ILSR which was a steaming pile of crap. First, XP wouldn't install (kept crashing saying it couldn't read from the XP Media) until I removed one memory module. Then, I couldn't run at 400Mhz FSB on the memory and had to retard my settings back to 3-3-3-8 at 166Mhz. Finally, I bought some Corsair XMSPRO memory and it worked for about a day before giving up the ghost.

I swapped it with my current Gigabyte board which has been rock solid right out of the box. I had planned on buying this board first, but the MSI board had FireWire on it which the Gigabyte board does not. Well, turns out with all the problems with MSI that the Gigabyte was the better board, and it cost roughly $20 less. :) That and it has an Award BIOS vs. AMI. For some reason I prefer Award's BIOS based on past experience. Seems that it held true when the MSI took a dirt nap.

-E
 
I also agree with the person above, my gigabyte mATX board has been rock solid.
 
WEll when I was having MoBo troubles Bigshot recomended the Asus P4P800-VM and I remember you MrE recomending the Abit IS-10 MoBo. I am liking the Asus board alot only complaint I can really say I have with it is a lack of 1394 head on the board. Hope my .0000002 pesso input help out some.
 
I just bought an Epox EP-8RGM3I for a new system after reccomendation from a couple people in the AMD Motherboards section. It should be here in a couple days, so I'm psyched.
 
I'm only looking for recommendations for socket 754 micro ATX boards... and thanks for all the input. There are only a few boards to choose from and no reviews online for any of them. Nobody reviews micro ATX boards :(
 
I believe you are on the right path with sticking with the VIA solution as the Nforce chipset on an m-ATX form factor seems to be only the Nforce150 and no 250's being produced. When I was shopping for an m-ATX to stick in an Aria, only a couple of board manufacturers were producing Nforce based board, and the VIA boards were a bit more abundant.

I'd recommend the Gigabyte board just because the good luck I had when replacing the MSI board. I know ECS and A-Open have their boards, but the Gigabyte seemed well built.

And yes, no one likes to review micro atx motherboards. Its damn near impossible to find a review out there on any of these boards listed.

Good Luck,

-E
 
I have to agree with MrE the Nforce boards are just not cutting the custard so the VIA looks to be the best option for you and that Gigabyte board looks good.
 
Does the gigabyte mATX K8T800 have options in the BIOS for changing the voltage to the memory? (VDIMM) I was reading the online manual for the board and didn't see anything on it.
 
Alas, there aren't voltage controls for the VDIMM in the BIOS. What's wierd is that there aren't any settings to adjust the memory for RAS or CAS settings either. When I plugged in my Corsair modules, it auto set the timings 2.5-3-3-6 which is correct for this platform. On other boards I had to raise the VDIMM to 2.80v in order to get it to run. The Gigabyte was smart enough to set this. If you are into overclocking, this isn't the board for you. If you are looking for stability though this board is hard to beat.

Regards,

E
 
Well let me be the first to say that my MSI K8MM-ilsr board was fine. I'm using it right now and it works fine. I'm just running a little warm in my ARIA so I think I will have to get a Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu.
Check my sig for complete system.
 
Good to hear yours is ok. Like I said, mine was spastic out of the box with regards to the memory controller. Swapping the Mushkin for Corsair and it gave up the battle. It was funny too that I sent the board back for RMA to NewEgg and instead of sending me a replacement board, they refunded my money back. :) I had already bought the Gigabyte to replace the MSI so no big deal, but if I had waited for the replacement I would have been SOL.

-E
 
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