UNOFFICIAL BIOSTAR TPower I45 M/B

[DonNiger]

Too early for you to be worried. I shipped (priority) that MB on the 1st of December, on the 8th I received an answer, that the board was there. Today, it is 21st on January!

Meanwhile, I thought that I will OC my Celeron collection. And bought second hand Asus Commandos. But that peace of sh..t is even worse than my dead TPower:

http://static2.nagi.ee/i/p/369/60/0924008314e7fa_o.jpg
http://static2.nagi.ee/i/p/369/60/09240091f1efcd_o.jpg
http://static2.nagi.ee/i/p/369/60/09240093a676c2_o.jpg

[Wallbanger]

lol...brother...i'm still waiting on my rebate check sense 11/24/08 when..I mailed it..

I checked the status of my rebate, expect it in 12-14 weeks. Maybe March?

[bigwill68]

I checked the status of my rebate, expect it in 12-14 weeks. Maybe March?

yea your right here's my status on that $20 rebate..it just don't take that long on Video cards and Memory to get your rebates back

[Indignity]

Has anyone applied any "Aftermarket" Heatsinks on the NB or isn't it really necessary? I'm thinking of an HR-05 if the stock isn't effective enough to take care the heat.

[mrcape]

Has anyone applied any "Aftermarket" Heatsinks on the NB or isn't it really necessary? I'm thinking of an HR-05 if the stock isn't effective enough to take care the heat.

I used both HR-05 and Duniek's NB pot on this board under LN2. Both worked great. I think the stock cooling is fine for normal gaming OC though, not a hot board unless you max NB voltage.

[chuck4456]

Has anyone applied any "Aftermarket" Heatsinks on the NB or isn't it really necessary? I'm thinking of an HR-05 if the stock isn't effective enough to take care the heat.

The factory NB cooler is AOK. I added a 40mm fan to the top of mine - fit right on. Prolley didn't even need it but did it anyway.
I have an HR05 on my AW9 NB BTW.

[Indignity]

I'm having a hell of an adventure trying to get a RAID0 Array setup on this ^&*&^T%$ right now. I have a slave drive with Vista installed that isn't part of the RAID array, but the second I make an attempt to install an OS to the array, it Blue Screens on me or tells me that there are no drives .... Do I really need to slipstream or set up a floppy drive for this thing with the drivers?

The drives are initialized & formatted.

By the way, I'm attempting to install Server 2003, which is a Technet version with a legit key.

As a side note; thank you guys for replying to the HS question. So far I've had her cranked a little bit & no heat issues, so I'll leave it be. (for now anyways )

[Lvcoyote]

I'm having a hell of an adventure trying to get a RAID0 Array setup on this ^&*&^T%$ right now. I have a slave drive with Vista installed that isn't part of the RAID array, but the second I make an attempt to install an OS to the array, it Blue Screens on me or tells me that there are no drives .... Do I really need to slipstream or set up a floppy drive for this thing with the drivers?

The drives are initialized & formatted.

By the way, I'm attempting to install Server 2003, which is a Technet version with a legit key.

As a side note; thank you guys for replying to the HS question. So far I've had her cranked a little bit & no heat issues, so I'll leave it be. (for now anyways )

If your using XP then you either need to slipstream or use a floppy to load the drivers the F6 way. If your trying to load Vista, then the drivers can be loaded from Floppy, CD, USB drive, or whever.

I'd also disconnect all other hard drives until the install is finished.

[Lvcoyote]

Oh, server 2003, how does it prompt you for additional drivers??

[Mark90]

What waterblocks are available for the mosfets and the northbridge?

[mattkosem]

Are there any tricks to getting this board running with the 1066mhz latch with high FSBs? My ram will run 1270mhz+ with the 5:6 ratio on the 1333mhz strap, but gives me errors when I attempt to drop the strap down to 1066mhz to get the next higher memory ratio. I tried it with a 505mhz FSB and was able to boot, but got memory errors left and right. I've got all of the Clock Gen settings at stock, and have my ram set to +300mv, NB set to +250mv, and FSB set to +175mv. These settings get me a 10 pass Linpak stable setup at PL8, but can't even make it into memtest86+ when dropping down to 1066. I tried bumping the PL up to 10 and even 11, but it didn't help.

--Matt

Edit: I tried setting DDR2 Enhance Mode to Disabled, and tried bumping up the voltage on the ram and the nb. Neither helped.

[Indignity]

What waterblocks are available for the mosfets and the northbridge?

I believe the MCW30 is pretty universal for the NB. I don't know of any for the mosfets.

Oh, server 2003, how does it prompt you for additional drivers??

The same way XP/Vista do during install. Looks like I'm going to have to hook up a floppy drive. I'll just have to knock off the 1" of dust sitting on top of it

[Lu523]

I tried the floppy with my DFI board and XP64. Went round and round with it. I finally slipstreamed them in. Was a lot easier. You can do all the updates and all.

[Lvcoyote]

The same way XP/Vista do during install. Looks like I'm going to have to hook up a floppy drive. I'll just have to knock off the 1" of dust sitting on top of it

XP & Vista do it differently, that was my point..... XP is limited to using a floppy, where Vista can pull drivers from anything.

[mattkosem]

Are there any tricks to getting this board running with the 1066mhz latch with high FSBs? My ram will run 1270mhz+ with the 5:6 ratio on the 1333mhz strap, but gives me errors when I attempt to drop the strap down to 1066mhz to get the next higher memory ratio. I tried it with a 505mhz FSB and was able to boot, but got memory errors left and right. I've got all of the Clock Gen settings at stock, and have my ram set to +300mv, NB set to +250mv, and FSB set to +175mv. These settings get me a 10 pass Linpak stable setup at PL8, but can't even make it into memtest86+ when dropping down to 1066. I tried bumping the PL up to 10 and even 11, but it didn't help.

--Matt

Edit: I tried setting DDR2 Enhance Mode to Disabled, and tried bumping up the voltage on the ram and the nb. Neither helped.

I finally managed to get this running, but it's not worth it. I had to jack the NB voltage up to +.5v, kick the FSB up to +.300, adjust the CPU GTLs to .63 (from .67), adjust the MCH GTL to .56(from .59), and disable DDR2 Enhance Mode. Even still, 500 was the limit and performance suffered heavily. I'm back on the 333 strap now :-)

--Matt

[LedHed]

Has anyone else put a GTX 295 in this beast and noticed that sometimes during boot the system will hang at the temp monitoring page?

[Mark90]

I found a Waterblock for the Mosfets for the I45, its the koolance MV40 Nickel plated copper. Also for the people that have the stock heatpipe/heatsink removed. Whats the surface area of bottom of the mosfet heatsink? Since I need to buy a heat plate for it.

[bigwill68]

I found a Waterblock for the Mosfets for the I45, its the koolance MV40 Nickel plated copper. Also for the people that have the stock heatpipe/heatsink removed. Whats the surface area of bottom of the mosfet heatsink? Since I need to buy a heat plate for it.

As...I searched the internet to find the part your talking about... I came across this below...



link
http://www.koolance.com/water-coolin...product_id=660

As for the bottom of the stock heatpipe/heatsink it's a (soft) brass material made for faster heat escape that builds up...
It's made out of the same material that you have in your house (water pipes) but there's a little harder
base made

[Mark90]

I know that I was wondering the surface are of the part that touches the mosfets:/. Thanks though!

Koolance have been making sexy blocks lately.

[Indignity]

Well, I finally managed to get Server 2003 x64 installed by slipstreaming the drivers onto the install disk. Thanks for the additional suggestions guys!

I don't have all of the drivers installed yet, but I'll post my results once I get cranking the FSB up on this Q9550

[bigwill68]

I know that I was wondering the surface are of the part that touches the mosfets:/. Thanks though!

Koolance have been making sexy blocks lately.

see if koolance is making some brass plates for the bottom..You should be alright you need heat to escape as quick as possible

[Mark90]

The Width of all the transfer plates are 16mm. I just need to know which one is the right length for the mosfets.
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 107.5mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 140mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 58mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 67mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 72mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 75.5mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 76mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, Stepped 72mm

They are Nickel plated copper, I just need to know which is the right one. Does anyone have an idea on the length?

[DoomSayer]

I'm handing this board off to my dad in a new build and I have a question.

I'm getting a checksum error after some reboots. It's retarded because the settings are 8 hours Blend Pr9 stable, OCCT stable and the mem is memtest86 stable for hours. If I do anything that requires medium or more processing and then reboot, I'll bet the checksum error F1 to enter or F2 to load defaults. If I enter and load the OC'd profile it will work again.

Any ideas? I want to use those settings, but I don't want anyone to have to deal with checksum errors. Is there some crap in the post routine that's causeing that, logo, oc retry etc?

EDIT - I've tried clearing cmos, rflashing via afudos etc. It's just something flaky in the boot up process. Is there a known issue? Another part of the symptom is that it's actually power cycling instead of a normal restart. And once it powers back up it either hangs or throws a checksum error. This thing is pissing me off. I have done a lot with this board, and now I just want to get rid of it. It's all in the bios this issue, I'm certain. I just need a solution if one exists, no matter how much of a kludge fest.

I had something like this aswell.
After upping the FSB voltage alot it went away.

[mattgmann]

The Width of all the transfer plates are 16mm. I just need to know which one is the right length for the mosfets.
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 107.5mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 140mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 58mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 67mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 72mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 75.5mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, 76mm
MVR Heat Transfer Plate, Stepped 72mm

They are Nickel plated copper, I just need to know which is the right one. Does anyone have an idea on the length?

The stock length is 64mm, but the width is 22mm. There are 3 rows of mosfets, so it's wider than most heat sinks. The koolance product won't work if it's only 16mm. I'd like to find a solution as well, as I've now blow mosfets on two of these boards.

[DonNiger]

We should make a club - blow up mosfets.