Motherboard with 4x DDR2 & on-board graphics?

[Craig321]

Hi,

I have some spare parts so I only need to spend £115.09 to get a new PC up and running.

I currently have the following in the basket:
Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L
Corsair Builer Series 430W
Samsung DVD Writer

Which will be used alongside the following spare parts:
E6600
4x 1GB Geil Ultra 4-4-4-12 RAM
Lian li PC-7 II Plus
2x 250GB RAID0 drives + 2x 500GB storage

So far I have only been able to find boards with either 2 DDR2 slots, or combo boards with 2 DDR2 and 2 DDR3.

Does anybody know of any in-stock boards with 4 DDR2 slots and on-board graphics? ATX or mATX please.

Thanks.

[Pob255]

You need to look at G43 chipset for 4 memory slots if I remember correctly, however you're going to have a bit of a tough time finding one new, as most of the newer boards that are still around are ddr3 now
Correction there where a few G41 with 4 memory slots eg Gigabyte GA-EG41MF-US2H
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167788

[Craig321]

That one looks good!

Someone in one of the comments on eBuyer said it doesn't take 4 double sided sticks? Is this true only for installing the OS, or do I need to make sure I'm not putting double sided sticks in?

[Edit]
There's a warning on the Gigabyte website about putting 4 sticks in. Is this just a warning, i.e. can I put the voltage slightly to make 4 sticks run properly as you have to with a lot of boards, or will it simply not work with 4 sticks?

Thanks

[scaryjim]

Most chipsets support RAM by number of "banks" rather than number of DIMMs. My guess is that the G41 memory controller only supports 4 "banks" of memory, which mean either 2 double-sided DIMMs or 4 single-sided DIMMs. If you stick 4 double-sided DIMMs in, I would imagine that the board will either a) not boot, or b) only recognise half the memory.

The onboard memory controller on some AMD CPUs has a similar issue, iirc.

[Craig321]

Hmm, I guess that's why most of these boards have 2 slots.

Anyone know if Geil Ultra 4-4-4-12 DDR2 1GB is single or double sided?

I'm getting to a point where I might just get something with two slots on! Better than the hardware sitting there doing nothing, but I would hate having to run it with only 2GB RAM. I'm not going to be buying 2x2GB of DDR2.

[scaryjim]

you might be better off getting an ATX mobo + cheap discrete graphics card, tbh. Here's an ASRock P43 mobo with 4 DIMM slots for only £50, and you could pick up a bottom end PCIe graphics card for about another £20 or so - a GeForce 8400GS, for example

edit: This Intel G43 board appears to support 4 DIMMs without limitation. The downside? @ £67 it's only £5 cheaper than the ASRock + 8400GS, and I know which I'd rather have

[Craig321]

Hmm, good point, that was what I was originally going to do, but then at the time it turned out cheaper to buy a board with integrated graphics, but I never got round to buying the stuff! It seems all the decent integrated graphics ATX boards have disappeared now!

Might give me an excuse to use my current GTX260 in this 'spares' PC I'm building and buy a GTX460 for my main or something

Thanks for the link, I think I'll be going for the normal ATX board. Gives more room for upgrades as well if necessary.

[scaryjim]

Might give me an excuse to use my current GTX260 in this 'spares' PC I'm building and buy a GTX460 for my main or something

Sounds like a plan to me

[Pob255]

That's why I originally said you wanted a G43 chipset.

[Craig321]

That's why I originally said you wanted a G43 chipset.

Ah I see. I've not had much luck finding one with a G43 chipset unfortunately

Think I'll have to go for the slightly more expensive ATX route.

Thanks for the suggestions / help everyone