Micro ATX

[chris_ah1]

I've had enough of hauling big computers to and from uni so no water cooling.

What i do want is nice and small, but powerful.

Chassis I've seen are the Sugo SG01 microatx towers, lanboy or v800 or v880. Which ones do you like the best? Are there any others that are good?

The only problem is that I would need to find a good micro atx board that can overclock - are there any?

looking at the manuals none of them have good options - foxconn, asus and Gigabyte. Foxconn have voltage adjustment, but then the only clock speed change seems to be via software. Other boards just have simple clock speed options.

I guess I'll have to go full atx in the V800 case if i can't find a good matx board.

specs i will probably plump for:

single GPU (x1900xt or g71), tv card, 2GB ram, 4400+ x2, 150GB raptor, WD400GB, xfi, 600W FSP/seasonic psu. Prolly two optical drives

I already have the tv card and xfire, but will get the ram shortly.

If i go Matx i don't have a clue what motherboard. If i got ATX i'll probably go with the expert board for PCI slots. Cost is between £1500 and £1600. matx is the cheaper option, but by the time i get anything it will probably be £1400.

Thank you!

p.s. I would probably get this around May/June. But it all depends if I go away all summer or not. If i do then there's no point in getting a good one as i will simply not be around to use it.

 

[chris_ah1]

turns out only the foxconn matx board can overclock - and only up to 222 :'(

Not to mention those opterons are multiplier locked upwards so I'm going to have to go for atx

 

[stocky]

Yeah, most of the mATX boards are a bit poop, with less support. I even find these ATX boards a little lame at times.

Half the reason they don't overclock well is the use of smaller, cooler components driving the voltages - so as you raise the volts and bus speeds it becomes more unstable because they can't handle it

 

[chris_ah1]

Yeah, that's what i really feared - and of course why most of these boards have almost no clocking/voltage options in their bioses.

I guess I'll be stuck with a lian-li pc800 or pc880 :S

 

[Firelord]

Hi Chris,

I have had the Biostar 6100-939 TForce and now the Foxconn 6150 and have to say the Foxconn is the better board. I have just updated the BIOS to a new one and running 250MHz 1:1 on the board with a 2GB PC4000HZ kit.

I am running in an Aspire X-QPack with an enermax liberty. It's a great system for gaming and moving about.

Need any more info hit me up bud

 

[chris_ah1]

Thanks firelord- that's good to know - How did you overclock the foxconn?

Is there just a cpu clock option that stays at 1:1 which you set at 250Mhz so it would speed up memory and CPU (when memclock is set to 250 too)?

 

[Firelord]

It's no different from your desktop boards. The Foxconn has HTT up to 450MHz (pushing it I think possibly!), memory to 2.85v and VCore to 1.55v + 140mV, PCI-E to 145 etc etc. Not as many memory timings as say a DFI but same as the likes of Abit or MSI.

I brought the board from a mate who had it to 279 with his 3700 and Corsair 4400 1:1.

I am testing at the moment @ 10*250MHz 2.5GHz 1.44v 1:1 @ 3-4-4-8 with a 3700+ and G.Skill 4000HZ.

There is options of dividers (100, 133, 166, 200, 216, 233 and 250) so they are fairly varied.

You never will achieve the massive oc's that a desktop can but imo you can get with in 90%+ with the right components

 

[chris_ah1]

thanks for the details because the manual is pretty sketchy on all this stuff.

this is the nforce430 board right?

 

[Firelord]

Yep 6150/430 combo. Comes with 4 SATA300 ports, IEE3914, USB2.0, 2 IDE, nVidia GeForce 6150 vga and 8.1 HD audio

 

[justin]

what about a shuttle?

 

[Firelord]

Had an SN25P and swapped to the aspire combo and much happier and cheaper! Far more upgradable and quieter as well. Shuttles are extremely poor VFM

 

[chris_ah1]

Had an SN25P and swapped to the aspire combo and much happier and cheaper! Far more upgradable and quieter as well. Shuttles are extremely poor VFM

Not to mention that they usually have four pci backplane slots versus shuttle's two.

plus in the sugo you can put a full atx psu

 

[jellybeard999]

ive got a biostar 6100 now, need to set it up yet, but gonna shoot high

will let ya know

i was recommended it by the same mate of firelords he told me :

the biostar clocks inconsitently (some hit 330, some only 240) but the foxconn suffers MAJOR coldboot problems...

 

[Firelord]

I am having cold boot issues at 260 and above but 10*250 is solid day in day out