Yorkfield mini-ITX overclocker

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Blahman

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 8, 2005
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Are there any mini-ITX boards that can run a Q9550 AND overclock? Looking to replace my SP35P2 Pro. Don't mind buying new RAM so either DDR2/DDR3 is fine. Needs a x16 PCI-Express slot.
 
There are some boards that are borderline to what you are looking for. None of them has the power capabilities to push a quad far, however.

You might be better off selling the CPU (some 775 quads fetch decent amounts) and going Sandy Bridge once the Gigabyte P67 ITX board comes out.
 
You are probably right, but which boards are you talking about? I know Zotac had a couple GF9300 boards and a G43 board, but information regarding overclocking seems scarce. Not looking for anything crazy but 3.2-3.6 GHz would be nice.
 
Your best bet is the Zotac 9300, you'd need to disable the IGP and use a discrete GPU and add some proper chipset cooling. The board will handle it to a point and then reboot if pushed too far. I had an e8400 @ 3.6Ghz just fine but a quad is totally different
 
the ONLY quad core capable OC'ing board that I can even think of right now in mini-ITX is the one that I just got rid of, the DFI MI P55-T36 and that's not even in S775 (it's 1156). Actually, it's the only S1156 Quad OC'ing mini-ITX with RAID (which is why I had it). On S775 though, I can't think of one.


....and yeah, I just had to order an H67 board because there's no P67's in mini-ITX yet. Fingers crossed that board makers don't assume anyone doing mini-ITX is going to want an H67 board, and they actually give is SFF freaks something GOOD to play with.
 
Well, the H55N-USB3 if you add MOSFET coolers, but yeah.... that's not LGA775, either. The Zotac board uses a nForce chipset, which have been known to be rather crap for OC vs any Intel chipset, however, the Zotac boards' power delivary is much better and suited for OC... sadly so, :(
 
Well....crap?

I've got a 750i ftw running for 4 years now at 4.5Ghz without additional chipset cooling.

The limitation is power delivery on a mini-itx motherboard not the chipset itself.
 
fr500 said:
Well....crap?

I've got a 750i ftw running for 4 years now at 4.5Ghz without additional chipset cooling.

The limitation is power delivery on a mini-itx motherboard not the chipset itself.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I've owned a 750i SLI FTW board from eVGA before (B-Stock), and it could not get the same 3.4GHz OC (E7200) my ASrock G31M-S could. I gave up and sold both to downsize to a Zotac (another buggy piece of crap) mITX board.
 
Overclocking milleage will most likely vary, depends on your chip, your mobo, your cooling and most of all your experience. Anyways, if he wants to keep socket 775 9300-ITX and a mild oc is the only choice
 
I have tried a few variations of the Zotac 9300 board with my Q9650, and the best I got was about 3.3 Ghz with one board, and about 3.15GHz with another one (The OCed board, even running at a lower clock speed or with the GPU disabled).
Even with water cooling the mobo just couldn't handle the FSB speeds you needed to OC these CPUs.

I would sell that and get a i5 2500k, 8 GB dual channel DDR3, and get a good P67 mini ITX.
Zotac advertised that their board could handle 130 CPU OC, which could be pretty good, however their current mobo is H67 (no CPU OCing). Maybe you should wait for a P67 version of their board, or a similar competitor board.
 
Thanks Bill, first hand experience is the best.

I will most likely go Sandy Bridge instead, but I'm not sure I want the hassle of dealing with the early adopter glitches. Reading the threads on the ASUS P8P67 Pro (full size ATX board) and all of its problems doesn't exactly make me want to jump on the bandwagon.

Instead of mini-ITX I am now looking at mATX and an HTPC case such as the Silverstone GD05 (there is also a GD06 coming out soon that has more 3.5" bays).
 
So yeah -- despite what I said I got bit by the upgrade bug all of a sudden and put in orders for the following:

New stuff:
Silverstone Grandia GD05B - http://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-A...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1296383248&sr=1-1
Intel Core i5-2500K - http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i5-2500K-Processor-Socket-LGA1155/dp/B004EBUXHQ
Asus P8P67-M PRO - http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearc...-M PRO Core i7/i5/i3 LGA1155 P67 DDR3 PCI Exp
Mushkin 996770 Enhanced Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) - http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearc...6770 Enhanced Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pi
Scythe Big Shuriken SCBSK-1000 120mm CPU Cooler - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185129&Tpk=scythe big shuriken

Will be reusing:
BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB (will be looking to replace this soon)
OCZ Vertex 120GB
Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB
Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB
LG GGW-H20L
Corsair HX520W Modular PSU

What do you guys think? Hopefully no glaring mistakes. I'll let you know how it turns out.
 
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I have decided to get the ASRock Extreme 4 mobo if I were to build a Sandy Bridge machine right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157217

You could fit 2 GPUs in SLI and have a either a fast RAID card or a 3rd GPU installed in slot 7 for CUDA/Physx.
You could also install a PCI-E 1x card and a PCI card in addition to the 3 dual slot GPUs.
Since I'm feeling kinda cheap right now, I have selected this case.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119227
And I should be able to install this water cooling system on the top side of the chassis.
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/1...Water_Cooling_Kit_Hot_Item.html?tl=g30c83s137

That mobo has been shown to work at 5+ GHz with a good cooling system.
Here is a video where someone managed to boot it up at 5.5 GHz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmMJFQOFKus
 
Sounds beastly! Overkill for me though, I don't need RAID or a 3rd GPU, although I did get an SLI compatible board so that option is there. The GD05 is still small enough to fit on a shelf for me so I still consider it SFF even though its an HTPC case.

As for watercooling, the GD05 has a space for a 2x80mm radiator right above the backplane, so I might look into that if the Big Shuriken doesn't work as well as I'd like.
 
I will probably get a Sandy bridge ITX in the future with a good P67 or Z68 board. Something like that Zotac H67 that could handle 130 watt TDP and OCing would be nice.

Maybe someday I will finish this home made laptop project with Sandy Bridge...
 
Alright so since the Sandy Bridge "design flaw" has borked my plans (still waiting on the official cancellations of my CPU and MB, but seems highly unlikely they would ship it at this point), can anyone recommend an mATX LGA 775 mobo that can overclock with my Q9550 well? Looking for ~3.6GHz, nothing too extreme.

Again DDR2 or DDR3 doesn't matter unless you think my current DDR2 RAM will not afford much overclocking headroom in which case DDR3 would be preferable as higher end DDR3 RAM is much less expensive and I will need some DDR3 anyways for SB. I have gotten to 3.6GHz with an E6750 and this RAM however.

Needs a x16 PCI-Express. SLI would be icing on the cake. Does not need onboard video but if there is a good mobo that fits the bill but happens to have onboard no reason to ding it.

New or used would like under $100, but not too picky.

edit: please post suggestions in this thread instead: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1582890
 
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