Experience of Abit IP43 mobo, anyone?

[MSIC]

I'm almost certain that i'm going to go down the Core2Duo route over the next month or so, instead of waiting for Core i7, given the likely cost.
It'll have to be cheap as chips, but i want
a) reliability (which in my mind requires an Intel chipset)
b) some level of overclocking (eg a 2.5Ghz chip to 3Ghz is fine)
c) not overly interested in 'features' such as RAID, or legacy ports that i'd never use.

Am currently therefore looking at Abit's IP43 which Scan have for a bargain-licious £46.
Team up with an E5200 and 2 Gig of RAM, and £130 makes me a happy bunny, plus £15 for an AC Freezer CPU HSF.

Given this sort of budget, is there any other motherboard within approx £20 that i should be seriously considering? A Super-wak luminous orange "ova-clox like a muver" is of no interest to me, if it's not good value for money. Thanks, as always, in advance.

PS Check out my current system spec, everything other than Mobo, RAM, CPU is staying

[staffsMike]

One critique if I may,

The freezer is naff for noise, the Xigmatec S2183 is only £3 more.
http://scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=700899

The rest all sounds good to me. The Abit sounds like very good value for money at £46

[matty-hodgson]

that cooler that Mike has suggested is a much better cooler than the Arctic Cooling..
motherboard looks like a steal at £46..
good CPU
maybe this RAM instead? has tighter timings for a fraction more.

[BUFF]

at that price I'm thinking of adding an IP43 too.
Only thing is that supposedly all production P43 chipset mobos have been somehow limited to overclock to only ~400fsb rather than the levels that the very similar P45s can reach.

[matty-hodgson]

at that price I'm thinking of adding an IP43 too.
Only thing is that supposedly all production P43 chipset mobos have been somehow limited to overclock to only ~400fsb rather than the levels that the very similar P45s can reach.

but how much is a P45? just a general price..
i can get 450FSB from my iP35 motherboard.
Q6600 @ 450*7
was completely stable aswell.
all depends on the motherboard really.

[BUFF]

from about £70.
Thing is that engineering sample P43 chipsets hit very high fsb too but supposedly the production chipsets have been hobbled ...

[matty-hodgson]

so d'ya reckon that the P43s are just to 'fill a gap' in the market?
but really they could sometimes outperform their bigger brother?

[Webby]

If they have been intentionally hobbled then no they will never out perform an un-hobbled P45

I guess it all depends on what your overclocking, if your playing around with an E5200 then at a FSB of 400 you get a mighty 5GHz so not really an issue, but if you have an E6550 (7x multi) then 400 FSB is a bit limiting at only 2.8GHz

Oh and my G33 chipset is stable at a FSB of 532 with my E6550 How tempting is an E5200 but do I really need to have a duel core faster than 3.73GHz?

[matty-hodgson]

what i meant was.. they were purposely 'hobbled' so that they fill the gap in the market, but when unhobbled they could sometimes outperform the P45s..?

a 5GHz dual core would surely do some awesome folding?
a 5GHz dual would be as good as a 2.5GHz quad?

[Webby]

In theory but not in reality, you lose to many cycles to other things and it doesn't scale in a linear fashion (that is if I remember correctly... after all I wrote the Hexus F@H points guide) even though it should really.

And yeah if you could un-hobble you would probably be on to a winner, but then again they may have inferior components (voltage regs, non-solidstate caps etc.) to hit the price point.

[MSIC]

One critique if I may,
The freezer is naff for noise, the Xigmatec S2183 is only £3 more.

I have a Freezer 64 right now, and it's really good. However if the Xigmatec is better, then fair enough. Any links / reviews / evidence?

Edit: By the way, my F64 is quiet because i just remembered - when i got it, i added a small voltage resistor thing to reduce fan speed

[Pob255]

Well the ACf7p is not the best out there for 2 main reasons
1 the fan on it get loud when it spins up to full, something like the Xigmatek S2183 with it's largr surface area and 120mm fan generates far less noise.
2 it was great when it first came out for it's low cost + good performance, however there are now many which perform better without costing much more or cooler that equal it's performance for less cost eg the Akasa AK-965x3

Review of the Xigmatek HDT-S1283
http://www.frostytech.com/articlevie...articleID=2233

[BUFF]

what i meant was.. they were purposely 'hobbled' so that they fill the gap in the market, but when unhobbled they could sometimes outperform the P45s..?

they were purposefully hobbled to prevent them performing as well as P45s - in reality they are extremely similar & Intel would rather that enthusiasts bought more expensive chipsets.
I don't know what has supposedly been done to limit them fsb-wise but if it has been done then I doubt that it's something that the average user can undo.

[Mithrandir]

Wow, thats a cheap p43 mobo. I've been looking around for a skt775 mobo too and this one looks good.
However, can't find any decent info about this mobo. Would be nice to see any user comments

[matty-hodgson]

they were purposefully hobbled to prevent them performing as well as P45s - in reality they are extremely similar & Intel would rather that enthusiasts bought more expensive chipsets.
I don't know what has supposedly been done to limit them fsb-wise but if it has been done then I doubt that it's something that the average user can undo.

something in the coding for the BIOS?
surely that'd be a pretty difficult thing to adjust..

[Pob255]

Is there anyone out there who's useing the p43 chipset? if so what is your experience of overclocking them?
I too would like some info on these boards, doing a new low cost build for a friend, the p45's are a bit too much, so it's a p43 or a p35
Although the good p35 boards are getting harder to find now, (where did all the nice ip35's go? )

Must admit that I like the look of the Asus P5QL Pro, if it wasn't for the way they've gone and stuck the 24pin connector in the middle of the board. What the heck is that all about?

the Foxconn P43A looks nice, a bit pricey, but from my experience of Foxconn motherboards no good for overclocking as they lack too much in the BIOS anyway.

BUt back to the ip43 I'm starting to really like the look of that, if you matched that up with a e5200 I wonder what sort of overclock we would be looking at?
esp. considering the motherboard and cpu would olny be £102 which you could expect to pay for a good p45 motherboard by it's self.

Shame we lost the ABit care section, it's always when you need something that you miss it.


EDIT: another oddity, http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/mothe...&fMTYPE=LGA775
in the bullet point info it says

SATA 3Gb/s RAID

Along with all the places that sell it, that I've seen
However in the detailed specs it says

6 x SATA 3Gb/s offer by Intel® ICH10

now the ICH10 does not do raid, you need the ICH10R for raid . . .