Find hex a motherboard!

[directhex]

I'm trying to find a motherboard, for my new PC.

I'll be buying in about 2 months' time.

Socket 939, PCIe.

Passive chipset cooler (no whiny fans with 1 week lifespan, nor warranty-voiding zalmans, please!)

My current favourite, the Chaintech VNF4 / VNF4 Ultra ZENITH VE, seems to have no distributor in the UK

Not fussed between NF4 and K8T890, though the Chaintech is the first NF4 i found with a passive chipset

Okay ladies & gents, find me something to make me happy!

[BUFF]

ABIT AX8 - there's 1 for sale sh in the For Sale section £55 inc.
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=42601

[directhex]

hm... my last abit was diabolical, so i'd at least like to hear some alternatives

[BUFF]

oh well, firebar reckons it's been a lot more stable than his previous nForce4's but he's gone SLi now...

[prehensile]

Definitely dont choose your board according to what type of fan it has, get the best board you can find and stick a large passive aluminium heat sink from any motherboard or old Pentium processor. You will have to use some push pins and perhaps some wire or a drilled flat piece of metal , but it's better than being restricted to only one board, anyone agree? If the chipset heat sink is near the exhaust path of the CPU, this can be particularly effective even with overclocking.
also, when you remove the old heat sink, use a razor blade and acetone to get the cheap heat sink glue of which probably only covers 10% of the heat sink, and that is frankly no better than chewing gum, and replace it with quality heat sink compound, but only remove the heat sink once you have heated the chipset chip either manually ( using your bosom perhaps) or by running it till it is hot.


I am in the same bag, my abit board died about 20 times when I try to flash its different BIOS, and every time I had to hot flash it using an older BIOS from a dead abit board. In the end a nodded BIOS managed to post, but this boaed never could start all right without a hard reboot, and recently when I plugged in a fourth USB device it overpowered the motherboard and the USB has slowly died and today the board would hardly boot up for some reason. dammit nfs!

[directhex]

Definitely dont choose your board according to what type of fan it has, get the best board you can find and stick a large passive aluminium heat sink from any motherboard or old Pentium processor. You will have to use some push pins and perhaps some wire or a drilled flat piece of metal , but it's better than being restricted to only one board, anyone agree?

not many people will honor the warranty on a board you've pulled to pieces

[malfunction]

If you get something like the zalman or thermalright NB heatsinks you can pretty easily replace the original if you need to RMA the board.

[Zak33]

if you're not going SLI Hexman, they guys need to know. or they'll all aim for nforce4 and you might not get the full choice.

[Lee H]

If you get something like the zalman or thermalright NB heatsinks you can pretty easily replace the original if you need to RMA the board.

My thoughts exactly and this then gives you a wider scope and range of motherboards to choose from.

[directhex]

My thoughts exactly and this then gives you a wider scope and range of motherboards to choose from.

is that an official statement from Scan that you'll warranty modded kit?

[directhex]

if you're not going SLI Hexman, they guys need to know. or they'll all aim for nforce4 and you might not get the full choice.

definitely not going SLI. i'd gain nothing from it

[Zak33]

good man

[directhex]

hm, after discussion, forget the passive requirement.

so, non-SLI PCIe S939 board. Preferably not Abit, not fussed on chipset (though I admit i'm a bit biased against ALi or SiS)

[malfunction]

Any other criteria - e.g. anything in particular you want onboard (or left off)? Planning to overclock the socks off it?

[directhex]

onboard ethernet would be nice, something non-broadcom (anti-linux activists). i'm using an audigy for audio, can whack in a cheap tv card as the mood takes me, and there's not much else a board could come with that genuinely interests me

other than that, i'm not really all that fussy. more interested in a decent board layout than the ability to run a 4400+ a whole 5mhz above stock.

[prehensile]

Everything has loads of ethernet, you may as well get dual ethernet. actually from looking at a lot of the boards, some of them definitely require adhesive heatsink compound to fix a heatsink. Hard OCP has full pictures of all the motherboards and review virtually everything, and they can definitely diss a motherboard if they feel like it.
Asus is probably the most stable and reliable by reputation, has everything you want, and uses dynamic fan speed. Q-fan or something?