Which mATX mb?

lethalox · Post by **lethalox** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:36 am

My wife's computer hit the crapper (old IBM P3 900mhz). So I am in the market for a new box for her. The computer has to fit in her desk. So I bought an Antec NSK3300 case w/PS - Now I am trying to find a decent mATX motherboard that is LGA775 for the C2D E4300 cpu that I am going to buy her. The whole thing is going to sit in a desk so absolute sound reduction is not the primary driver. I was thinking the Asus P5K-VM. Does anyone have experience with that MB?

gotlinuxed · Post by **gotlinuxed** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:25 pm

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboa ... /index.htm

just as soon as i can find someone who will sell it to me. best buy for business it the only who claims they have it for sale, but i'm not sure i believe them. anyway, it's the only uATX i can find that has BOTH the onboard intel sata raid stuff (raid 0,1,5, on mobo, people in newegg reviews have it working) and support for all RAM speeds even up to 8 gigs. hoping to put 8 gigs of 800 DDR2 and raid 5 in a lunchbox sized case.

it also has vista-compliant onboard 3d video and a bunch of that HTPC viiv video stuff if you're not a gamer.

if you're not going to OC i highly recommend intel mobos, otherwise asus has some decent uATX footprint stuff, though none of it has their cool heat piping.

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:11 pm

The P5K-VM seems like a solid choice. I don't have any experience with it.... Or much else to say.

Lawrence Lee · Post by **Lawrence Lee** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:13 pm

Are you completely sold on Intel? Cuz frankly when it comes to budget/mATX setups, AMD has many advantages. They have some pretty cheap boards that overclock well and have better integrated video with more outputs (DVI, HDMI) for less money. Their CPUs use less power too since Cool n' Quiet drops the mutliplier & voltage lower than Intel's Speedstep.

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:40 pm

Amourek wrote:Are you completely sold on Intel? Cuz frankly when it comes to budget/mATX setups, AMD has many advantages.

Agreed. Cool'n'Quiet is actually pretty conservative when undervolting. AM2 chips usually can do 1.0GHz with only 1V (or less). It doesn't sound like your wife is doing anything CPU-intensive, so the idle power draw is very important and AMD has the advantage there, especially when you customize it with CrystalCPUID. Note that AMD just slashed their prices too

Which mATX mb?

Which mATX mb?

I plan to use this one: