Finally! A moddable NF4 board!

Green Shoes · Post by **Green Shoes** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 11:06 am

looks like Abit took their time and listened to some early complaints; the northbridge on this board won't get in the way of a long VGA card!! w00t!! Yeah, it's active cooling, but we're all going to Zalmanize it anyway.

EDIT:

On closer inspection, the RAM placement might be a problem for very large heatsinks, and that OCES cooling system will have to go (2 80mm fans to cool the MOSFETs? Methinks not), but perhaps this is a sign of things to come.

/EDIT

GrahamGarside · Post by **GrahamGarside** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 12:04 pm

Yeah it has those crappy bit's of FATAL1TY cooling on it.

Theres always epox's board

http://www.epox.com.tw/eng/products_content.php?ps=335

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 12:26 pm

Hello:

The EPoX mobo has a different problem: totally lousy ATX and 12v power plug locations!

I think the best mobo is the Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9:

The stock NB HS is passive and it is low enough to fit under the video card.

The XP-120 does fit, with the heatpipes towards the DIMM's; though you have to install the closest DIMM before the XP-120. There is a lot of room between the XP-120 and the back/top of the video card -- I don't know (because I didn't try it), but it might just fit an AeroCool VM-101 with the XP-120.

The worst thing is, if you install an aftermarket video cooler -- and even some stock video cards, you only have 2 standard PCI slots left. Though, for many/most people this won't be a problem, since the motherboard already has so many standard features; dual LAN, 8 SATA ports, 10 USB2, 3 Firewire headers...

Some nits: the only system fan connector is at the front of the board; they need more connectors, and they need a BIOS fan controller. The standard backplate is plastic and does not have any threads. The F2 BIOS doesn't have any RAM timing control.

Other things I like: they provide 8 very good quality SATA cables, including 4 SATA2 cables that have metal retention clips. I have not had to rely on it, but I like the dual BIOS. A 24 pin ATX fits -- but I don't think that it is required.

BTW, are there any cards that use those (1X ?) small PCI slots?

GrahamGarside · Post by **GrahamGarside** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 1:26 pm

It is true the power connector positions on the epox are badly placed, but it does have a good reputation when it comes the it's power system.

I don't think there are any cards that fit the pci-e1x slots, nor can I see any being produced, but theoretically you could install any pci-e card in one by modifying the slot to allow the added length of the pci-e connector to fit.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:07 pm

Back to the AN8, I must say that I own an AN7 right now and I will NEVER buy a board with the uGuru chip again. Ever.

There is NOTHING out there that can read anything useful (fan speeds, voltages, temps) from a uGuru board, except for MBM 5 (which can't do any controlling), and the uGuru software, which is absolute garbage.

Straker · Post by **Straker** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:02 pm

GrahamGarside wrote:I don't think there are any cards that fit the pci-e1x slots, nor can I see any being produced, but theoretically you could install any pci-e card in one by modifying the slot to allow the added length of the pci-e connector to fit.

erm, that's like saying you can put a Winchester in an s754 mb if you drill another 185 holes in the cpu socket

IIRC the slots are such that an additional lane = x more data pins and same power pins regardless, but if there's any compatibility between them it's putting a smaller card in a bigger slot.
almost all consumer cards will be a single lane - yeah, it's a lot of lost potential, but so is wasting 16 lanes on a video card. one lane is still double regular PCI anyways, better than nothing.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:57 am

Couldn't you replace the entire slot? Sure, it would be a lot of soldering, but it's still better than a hacksaw...

GrahamGarside · Post by **GrahamGarside** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:02 am

Straker wrote:
GrahamGarside wrote:I don't think there are any cards that fit the pci-e1x slots, nor can I see any being produced, but theoretically you could install any pci-e card in one by modifying the slot to allow the added length of the pci-e connector to fit.
erm, that's like saying you can put a Winchester in an s754 mb if you drill another 185 holes in the cpu socket
IIRC the slots are such that an additional lane = x more data pins and same power pins regardless, but if there's any compatibility between them it's putting a smaller card in a bigger slot.
almost all consumer cards will be a single lane - yeah, it's a lot of lost potential, but so is wasting 16 lanes on a video card. one lane is still double regular PCI anyways, better than nothing.

Actually no it's not, you can take a PCI-E16X video card, and tape up 15 of the data lanes and run it in 1X mode, SLI boards only used 8 data lanes, and I believe there are boards due with a 4 lane slot that will take a normal pci-e card
The comparrison to s754/939 isn't accurate, it's more like using udma133 on udma33

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 5:31 am

Has anyone had any experience on mounting the Epox-board with the XP-120 and the zalman passive chipset cooling? If this combination would work, this could be the mainboard i've been looking for, finally!