new motherboard help =/

[Hicks12]

my friend needs a new motherboard for his e5200 he has just bought. he has around 50 quid to spend and needs a recomendation.
needs to have:
at least 4 sata ports ,
pci express 16x,
support the core 2 e5200 processor,
overclocking capabilities (up to 3.4 ghz)
atx size is fine,

any help given is very appreciated,
thanks,
hicks12

[Hawker1986]

Well for that price I would be thinking about something like a gigabyte P31, but thats if you can find one :S, otherwise scan have an MSI P43 mobo for £51 but its still on pre-order.

Hawker

[Hicks12]

cheers for the reply, is the g31 any good for overclocking tho?
Hicks12

[Hawker1986]

Personally ive not used a G31 mobo, from what ive heard and read I dont see why it wouldnt make that overclock, just make sure to stick with gigabyte or asus would be my advice.

Hawker

[Hicks12]

Well i think the board he has can be sorted but atm it wont budge using the e5200, its an abit IL9 pro and forces the cpu at 1ghz(6multi). I cant see any usb utility to flash it via flash drive so anyone know how to flash the mobo to the new one? want to try the free options first.


PS: sorry ment to say P31 not G31

[Hawker1986]

Hi again Hicks,

P31 is fine for overclocking btw, easily took a Q6600 I used to over 3Ghz.

Now as for flashing, you can burn the new BIOS to a CD, not sure about using USB flash drive, it may well work the same. Most bios's have a flash utility in the BIOS itself. But normally if you put the new bios rom file on cd/floppy/something then go into the bios somewhere it should give you access to the flash utility and then you should be able to go from there.

Hawker

edit: I checked the abit website and it says the IL9 Pro does not support the E5200, its worth trying to flash it to the latest revision and see as it does support E7xxx which are the same process size I think.

edit 2 :S: checking their website a bit further im not certain that they do have the flash program in the bios, you may need to use another PC and make a bootable CD with the flash program on it (you can dl it from their website under utilities) and the new bios (rom) and then boot from it and do it that way. But in the end im not sure if it will work knowing its not officially supported!