A64 MATX boards.

[Ocbench]

Hi guys..


Im a planning on building a A64 system. My requirements involve a Micro ATX motherboard. But the only Nforce 3 based board in the MATX format, I have heard about is the Biostar K8NHA-M. This board is fine for my needs, but there are no EU dealers.. I will have to order it from the states.. And that means the price + 25% in according to danish tax laws for shipping it abroad when it is outside the EU contries.

I would appriciate it a lot, if you could mention some good Nforce 3 MATX boards. Or even some good VIA based MATX boards for the Socket 754..

Thx alot.

Daniel Andrew Lowe /Ocbench

[Ocbench]

Hmm okay..

That sound cool..

You don´t by chance have a Link to the Gigabyte? I have searched for a Gigabyte MATX board, but didn´t find one, and assumed that they didn´t make them.
The Oc potential is not eccensial it this setup.. As long as it can run 200fsb at CAS 2.0 stable, is fine for me..

[CoolioCat]

The GIGABYTE GA-K8VT800M is an excellent little MicroATX A64 board. If you do get one, make sure you enable the 'secret' bios settings by hitting CTRL+F1 in the bios. That will give you access to all the funky memory settings, etc. It has a small problem with the cpu speed - even though it offers fsb all the way up to 300, it doesn't actually do anything. The CPU speed appears locked out.

SPECS are here: link

If you rather nForce3, the BIOSTAR K8NHA-M is pretty decent. This allows full immediate access to all mem settings and cpu overclocking. Had it at 215Mhz FSB on basic 3200 ram quite easily, air cooled. Probably would go higher. It's less picky than the GIGABYTE in regards to brands/speeds of DDR RAM, but doesn't have serialATA or anything fancy on-board.

I have a few BIOSTAR K8NHA-M boards left over here, so if you fancy one, e-mail or PM me and i'll send one out to you. You can have the board for free, but you'll have to pay postage though.

[Shade00]

I've been looking for the Biostar board, too. Is there any place in the States that sells them?

[CoolioCat]

I haven't actually seen any USA stores advertise the Biostar one. The Gigabyte one is everywhere. Use pricewatch.com and it lists in order of the cheapest.

I'm working with the R&D team at BioStar at the moment in regards to revisions to the ideq 200P bios, and customising a MATX A64 to our own design (but they are talking about wanting a stupidly high no. of units to be ordered); so it looks like we'll modify the current BioStar K8NHA-M ourselves.

One of the problems I'm having is that there are so few people who have even worked with this board, testing and benching is taking soooo long nForce 250 will be out by the time we're done.

I find it hard to believe some of the figures mb companies give us when they say "oh well we manu. this number - xx,xxx boards a month so fitting your order in is going to cost you a billion dollars" I mean, just where the heck are they all if they're so bloody popular?

I guess there is some massive warehouse in Utah that has em all, stacked up, with some kid let go from bestbuy who has an Intel fetish monitoring them all, refusing to list em as available to retailers.

I can help anyone in the UK/Europe with Biostar boards. I'll send to the US, but i have no idea if you'd get hit with tax etc.

[Shade00]

I don't really like the Gigabyte board. The Biostar looks intriguing, though. CoolioCat, you've got a PM.