Turion supported desktop motherboards

[Mats]

Like the Opteron 175 I mentioned, if you're lucky you'll get a TDP = 35 W, but in worst case it's 110 W

Hey, isn't that a little misleading? I would want TDP to tell me the maximum power that the CPU could possibly dissipate under worst-case conditions, not the "well if you stand on one leg and undervolt the CPU you might get 35W" TDP.

No, you got it all wrong. Where did you get that "stand on one leg and undervolt the CPU" from???? I didn't say that.
The max TDP for the 175 model is 110 W. But almost all of them dissipate less than that, that's why they have individual TDP which can be anything between 35 and 110 W. Read more here.

[Steerpike]

I was on the verge of buying a Pentium M with an AOpen mobo for my new HTPC project, when I came across the associated SPCR article. I'm now ready to go Turion. I've read throught this thread, and related links, and am still a bit confused. Would welcome guidance.

Which motherboard would you recommend? Money is not an object - I want relative ease and reliability. I plan to get a Turion MT-40 CPU (low power, 2.2GHz).

I've build many ASUS-based systems, so have a tendency to use them, but recently their website and general support seems to be poorer than it used to be (dead links, no support for older boards, etc). So I'm open to alternatives, but don't know who else is at that quality level; basically, I want good documentation, online PDFs, and a healthy community - would rather pay for mainstream than risk a new upstart.

I'm concerned about heatsink compatibility; We all know the AOpen ships with a crappy HSF, and you have to fiddle to use any other HSF, but what about the Turions? It seems the same issues apply (Turion sits lower and therefore requires HSF tweaking). In this area, I'm looking for a solid, reliable, 'easy' solution - I don't want to be drilling, grinding, or making shims to adapt HSFs to the retainer. I want to buy a great HSF and have it 'fit' without too much hassle.

Under/over clocking, less of a strong desire. Use of CnQ (or 'Power Now!') desirable. On-Board LAN, SATA, etc desirable.

The AOpen, while pricey, included some pretty healthy graphics on-board, which is attractive for an HTPC. Having that feature on the mobo would be desirable, but not required. I'm probably going to get a 6600 GT vidcard.

Ideally, I'd like to order the board through NewEgg, so I can make most of my purchases from one vendor!

Thanks for your help!

[Mats]

Steerpike:
I would pick a DFI LANPARTY UT nF3 250Gb, which have become the mobo to use when running a mobile AMD. The T64 article mentioned this one, but it says that CnQ didn't work.
However, this was most likely due to a setting in BIOS, check out my posts in the article thread.

Another reason for getting this one is the ability to overclock, even though you're not that interested of it. The BIOS got lots of settings, and the only drawback with this mobo must be the placement of the nF3 chip, but I can guarantee it's not a problem. I've used the S939 counterpart and used a Zalman heatsink on the chip, no problem with clearence as long as you're not using a dual slot graphics card.

I'd suggest getting a MT-34 instead, it's so easy to overclock it beyond the speed of a MT-40, but now I saw that money is not an object here...

If you want µATX then maybe the one used in the T64 review?

[Steerpike]

I would pick a DFI LANPARTY UT nF3 250Gb, which have become the mobo to use when running a mobile AMD ...

... the only drawback with this mobo must be the placement of the nF3 chip, but I can guarantee it's not a problem. I've used the S939 counterpart and used a Zalman heatsink on the chip, no problem with clearence as long as you're not using a dual slot graphics card.

Looks good ... what's the issue with the location of the nF3 chip? - the pictures (at the newegg site) don't give any indication to me of a problem.

Regarding the Zalman HSF - could I use this 120mm version? Al/Cu for weight, 120mm for noise? With this HSF, am I relying on my ability to judge the pressure applied via screws when attaching, versus relying on springs? I guess I can handle that. Actually, I note that you've used the 939 version, which I guess means you have not used the Turion, which sits 'lower' in the socket, so that's still my concern - can I easily attach the Zalman to the Turion without a) too much pressure, and b) uneven pressure. I guess it's time to order and find out! Thanks!

[MikeC]

Regarding the Zalman HSF - could I use this 120mm version? Al/Cu for weight, 120mm for noise? With this HSF, am I relying on my ability to judge the pressure applied via screws when attaching, versus relying on springs? I guess I can handle that. Actually, I note that you've used the 939 version, which I guess means you have not used the Turion, which sits 'lower' in the socket, so that's still my concern - can I easily attach the Zalman to the Turion without a) too much pressure, and b) uneven pressure. I guess it's time to order and find out! Thanks!

Don't do the Z7700; it is overkill. Too heavy, not as safe as the 7000alcu, which is only marginally above the 450g recommended weight, and is perfectly good enough to cool any Turion at min speed. Its fan is quieter than the 120mm one on the 7700. As we described in detail in the article, just go back and forth between the two screws when mounting, and keep one hand on top of the HSF to make sure it does not tilt. Tilt the HS and then apply high pressure is how you can chip the edge of the bare die. A bit of care is all you need, no special skill.

[Mats]

Looks good ... what's the issue with the location of the nF3 chip? - the pictures (at the newegg site) don't give any indication to me of a problem.

The nF3 chip sits just in front of the PCI slots, meaning that you can't use it together with a dual slot cooler like VGA Silencer (I think).

I hope you all have seen the T64 heatspreader in this thread.

[Steerpike]

The DFI Lanparty is out of stock over at Newegg; what would be a second recommendation? Anyone have a specific Asus recommendation, one that works well with the Turion, and can take the Zalman 7000 alcu, and be under-volted to take advantage of the Turion?

Also - I see a recommendation above for an "MT34" rather than the MT40; fair enough. But I can't find MT34 at Newegg. I DO see an MT32, which is also 1.8GHz. How do the MT34 and MT32 compare? This is the search I'm doing over at Newegg. Actually, clicking on the link above in Mats' post takes me to the same result set.

[Mats]

The MT-32 have 512 kB L2 cache, just like todays regular A64. The MT-34 have 1024 kB L2 cache, like Opterons. The difference in performance is very small.

[ekjk]

Hi,

I posted this sometime ago (end of January) on the motherboard forum at anandtech---


I don't know what ASRock's official position is about supporting the Turion but I have ASRock's NVidia 6100 board. The BIOS that came with the board (it was purchased about 3-4 weeks ago) recognized my Turion (MT-32) but the voltage it set was 1.35 V instead of 1.20 V. Also, I couldn't manage to set either the multiplier or the voltage for the CPU manually. However, Linux (Kubuntu 5.10--I don't use Windows) seemed to use Powernow fine but with the maximum voltage of 1.3V at 1800MHz and 1.00V at 800MHZ.

Yesterday I flashed the BIOS to the most recent version, 1.60 (out 01/13/2006). The board now recognizes the MT-32 and sets the voltage at 1.25V. I can now manually set the voltage (maximum of 1.25V) and multiplier for the CPU. Linux now says the system runs at 1.20V at 1800MHz and 0.90V at 800Mhz (these values are correct for the MT-32).

So it seems as if the board correctly runs the MT-32.

Regards,

Eusebio


P.S. I have been running the system with a PicoPSU-120 DC-to-DC converter power supply, a Zalman 7000 cooler with fan on the lowest setting and a Seagate 3.5 inch drive. The system is very quite and cool. Just recently I purchased a Samsung 2.5" SATA notebook drive and a completely passive cooler for the CPU. I think these items will arrive by the end of the week. I presume this should be very low power consumption. low heat and very, very quite.

[BruceG]

I've just set up a Turion MT-40 system on a Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF motherboard. The BIOS doesn't directly support undervolting or Cool&Quiet, but using Crystal CPUID, I have full control of voltage and the multiplier.

I undrervolt at 1.075 V, which leads to an idle power of 55 watts for the entire system, not including the monitor. Maximum power consumption running Prime 95 is 71 watts.

I made my own shims for the top of the processor so that I could install a Zalman CNPS7700-Cu cooler which runs at 5V and keeps the CPU around 40 degrees Celcius. I plan to turn off the fan and direct air from an 8cm case fan onto the cooler for further noise reduction. I'm convinced that the entire system could be passively cooled if the case were left open, as it has a passively cooled power supply as well.

In answering the original question on this thread, this motherboard uses the nVidia 6100 chipset. Someone has probably already pointed out that there are no socket 754 board using the nVidia 6150 chipset. It drives my 1600x1200 monitor well at 32bitx85Hz, without any artifacts.

My next challenge will be to undervolt this system in Linux. Multiplier alterations haven't make a noticeable difference in total system power consumption or in CPU temp, all other things being equal.

[MikeC]

I made my own shims for the top of the processor so that I could install a Zalman CNPS7700-Cu cooler which runs at 5V and keeps the CPU around 40 degrees Celcius.

Why do you need shims? We've installed 3 different kinds of Zalman HSF (7000, 7700, 9500) on turion / socket 754, and because of the graduated bolt mount system employed in the Zalman HSF, never had a problem either getting it tight enough or overtightening. Surely, removing the shims will give you better cooling.... tho I have to admit, it's not a big deal in any case because there's so little heat from the Turions.

[jaganath]

there are no socket 754 board using the nVidia 6150 chipset.

The Albatron KM51PV-754 uses the 6150. I don't know if there are others:


Albatron website-KM51PV-754

[Steerpike]

there are no socket 754 board using the nVidia 6150 chipset.

The Albatron KM51PV-754 uses the 6150. I don't know if there are others:


Albatron website-KM51PV-754

I searched high and low for that board a month ago, and gave up (in the US). Maybe it's becoming available. I ended up with an asus a8n-vm csm, and an Athlon 64 3000+. I use CrystalCPUID to undervolt (only to 1.1 though, limit of the Venice cores) and underclock, and am getting VERY good results in a small case (LC11). I need to post results but still tweaking fans, etc.

[MikeC]

Jason Jackson emailed to tell us MSI is officially supporting Turion now. This link leads to a search results page at MSI that shows 8 motherboards (and the BIOS version) which support Turion 64.

Thanks Jason.

NOTE: Keep in mind that "support" means a T64 will be recognized correctly and run on the board, but to what degree CnQ will work, and whether the correct Vcores are used, won't be clear until someone actually tries the boards.

[Mats]

While we're talking about it I'd like to remind you of the T64 supported DFI boards.

I guess the desktop T64 will soon be a pretty bad idea compared to the upcoming 35 W A64. Did you see that AM2 will show up 2 weeks earlier, on may 23? It's only one month left!

[BruceG]

First, the shims: Nothing special, just foam punch outs similar to, but a little more firm than, the ones that came glued on my old Athlon XP CPU.

"Graduated bolt mount system"? I don't know what you guys are talking about. My Zalman CNPS7700-Cu cooler bolts to the motherboard with a thumbscrew with a threaded hole in its head to which I screw a spring clip that's attached to the heatsink. Maybe they've upgraded the clips since they first came out. I bought my over 3.5 years ago.

About the Albatron KM51PV-754: I searched for quite a while for any 754 board with the 6150 chip and gave up after even the nVidia website didn't show any. Perhaps there are others... Specs on the Albatron website don't include gigabit ethernet or 2 PCI-E x1 slots, which the 430 SB chip is advertised by nVidia to be capable of.

Correction: In my earlier post, I said: "Multiplier alterations haven't make a noticeable difference in total system power consumption." That's not quite true. Multiplier alterations alone haven't made a noticeable difference, but running the multiplier down to 4x AND dropping the Vcore to 0.8v shaves 2.5 watts off of the total system power consumed at idle. That's not very helpful for my purposes, but might be to someone using a thermally controlled fan.

That's good news about MSI's support of Turion. That may keep the Turion Desktop movement alive a little longer.

Pardon me if I've missed some things which are common knowledge in this forum. I visited the SPCR site a few years ago and then forgot about it until I found it again recently. I was looking for tools like Crystal CPUID, without knowing if they existed. The site has changed a lot.

-Bruce

[valnar]

It seems the DFI Lanparty nF3 UT 250GB motherboard is no longer available. Does anyone have any concrete information that another one would work with supporting the appropriate vcore in the BIOS? I want to run Linux so Crystal CPUID is not an option. I am also looking for the same nForce3 250Gb chipset and require a gigabit ethernet adapter.

Two that I've found are:
Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro
ASUS K8N-E Deluxe

Anyone know if these would work as well?

Robert

[BruceG]

I tried a "refurbished" board from NewEgg. It came in a box alone, without software or even a backplate to fit it to an ATX case. It had to go back. It's a nice board and was my first choice, but it's discontinued and getting pretty hard to find.

If you can find one, it supports undervolting from BIOS down to 1.2v. I don't recall if it goes lower, because I played with it for only one evening and didn't have time to go lower. It uses the nForce 4-4x chipset, not the nForce 3 250. The major complaint just about everyone has is that the northbridge fan goes bad very quickly. I didn't find many other complaints.

The Gigabyte board uses a passive heatsink for the same chipset, so that shouldn't be a problem as a quiet solution (for either board). The Gigabyte board lacks IEEE-1394, and I believe the BIOS comes from a different vendor. I have no personal knowlege of how the board works with the Turion.

[BruceG]

My mistake. The GA-K8NS Pro uses the nForce 3-250. I was confusing it with the GA-K8NE which uses the nForce 4-4x.

[dgpretzel]

I want to build a file (media) server with a capacilty of >= 3TB. Since it will run 24/7, I want to minimize power. So, I am drawn to using the Turion.

I have done a lot of searching, and I think I have found a suitable MB:

Aopen N250A-FR

I haven't seen any comments in this thread (or others) about that board.

I solicit any comments.

I like this board because it has 6 SATA headers, which means I could use the new 750 GB SATA drives to get the storage I want, without using an additional RAID card. (I will run some distro of Linux on it. Or maybe FreeBSD.) This board also has onboard gigE, which I want, and is undervoltable from the BIOS. I don't know what it will do with CnQ, but the SPCR article seems to indicate that that is not as significant as I at first thought it might be. So, I am willing to live without it, if it doesn't work. SATA headers and onboard gigE are more important to me.

I am not aware of any other s754 board that has 6 SATA headers, onboard gigE, and is undervoltage supportable from the BIOS.

Perhaps, BIOS support of undervoltage is not absolutely critical, since I have learned of software utilities that can implement the 1.2V Vcore.

I do wonder to what degree the onboard LAN, which doesn't seem to be the LAN from the NForce chipset, but is a discrete addition (Realtek), and the SATA ports, and the PCI bus will compete for the same bandwidth. In other words, does gigabit Ethernet come out of the same "bandwidth budget" as the PCI bus? Same question with the SATA ports.

It really looks to me like this board sort of stands alone regarding using a Turion on a board with lots of SATA, and gigE.

This board is not listed on that Japanese site of T friendly boards.

Any comments?

Thank you.

DG

[Mats]

Unless you KNOW it works with T64, don't buy it.

I'd suggest socket AM2 with a cheap Sempron, you don't really need all that CPU cache, do you?

[valnar]

See if you can find somebody who has that board (AOpen forums maybe?) and see if somebody will tell you that the vcore goes down to 1.2. That's most important.

If you care alot about network speed, Realtek sucks. It would be better to find a motherboard with a Marvell or Intel gigabit integrated NIC instead. That's more important that 6 native SATA headers. Just get a PCI card if you need more, or a RAID card would be better yet.

Sharing 6 hard drives from the regular PCI bus isn't that important since you're using this PC as a file server. If it was local speed to that PC, it would be a different story. You're going to saturate the speed of the gigabit NIC before the SATA or PCI bus anyway. Most real-life speed tests regarding gigabit ethernet are only 2-4x times faster than Fast ethernet.

I have the DFI Lanparty UT nF3 250Gb motherboard and I love it. They aren't made anymore, but my Turion MT40 works well. You can find them regularly for sale on eBay.

Robert

Edit: I don't know if this Gigabyte motherboard supports the Turion or not, but it was on my short list previously before I bought the DFI board. It has the better TI chipset for Firewire and dual network, although the second is 100mb.

[dgpretzel]

Mats,

Sounds like a good idea, but can I buy AM2 today? I could be totally wrong, but I thought AM2 wasn't coming until June, or maybe later.



Valnar,

According to the specs at the Aopen website, the N250A-FR goes well below 1.2V.

Thank you for the info on Realtek.

Regarding you comment on gigabit ethernet speed... I have been wondering for a long time about that. It seems that everywhere I look, folks are saying what you say about gigE speed. People frequently mention speeds as low as 300 mbp, or even lower. I don't understand why that is. At first, I thought it may be due to lack of support for jumbo packets, but that would only seem to be an issue for application such as streaming video or audiio, right?

Is there any gigE solution that gives real speeds of 700 - 800 mbs?

Thank you for the comment on the DFI Lanparty UTnF3 250Gb. The SPCR article reported lack of support for CnQ/PN on that board with the T64, didn't they? Is that also your experience?

Thank you.

DG

[valnar]

Is there any gigE solution that gives real speeds of 700 - 800 mbs?

Not that I know of. I could probably google and look up why that is, but you could always do the same. The analogy that works best is USB or 802.11b/g wireless. Both have rated throughputs much higher than reality due to overhead or latency.

Thank you for the comment on the DFI Lanparty UTnF3 250Gb. The SPCR article reported lack of support for CnQ/PN on that board with the T64, didn't they? Is that also your experience?

I've fought it a little to get it to work, but it does with Rightmark. You also have to realize that the AOpen board may not support CnQ either. Few do on the Turions, and it's unknown which boards do. But a Turion running at full speed and a vcore of 1.2 takes about 5 watts more based on my measurements with a Kill-a-watt meter. Having my Turion MT40 run at .98v and 800Mhz speed (~ to CnQ) was only 5 watts less than max speed.

-Robert

[dgpretzel]

Not that I know of. I could probably google and look up why that is, but you could always do the same. The analogy that works best is USB or 802.11b/g wireless. Both have rated throughputs much higher than reality due to overhead or latency.

Of course, you're right about googling. I was just making a spontaneous comment. Folks at other another forum that I frequent are also "scratching their heads".

I understand the overhead argument. But, the interesting thing is that the overhead scaling from ethernet to fast ethernet doesn't seem to carry over to gigabit ethernet. Also, lack of support for jumbo packets (which was suggested on another forum) doesn't seem to explain it either, as it seems to be a general problem, and not specific to the A/V folks. Besides, when gear supporting jumbo packets is used, it seems to increase speed only a little.

Oh well, this is OT for this thread, so I won't persue it here.

Regards,

DG

[/quote]

[Mats]

Mats,

Sounds like a good idea, but can I buy AM2 today? I could be totally wrong, but I thought AM2 wasn't coming until June, or maybe later.

Next week on May 23 is the official date. I'd definitely wait for that and pick a Sempron if I were you.
It becomes easier to find a 6 x SATA mobo since they are new, or even 9 x SATA and 1 x eSATA.

[ekjk]

Hello,

I finally got around to measuring the power supplied to my system (see post above for initial comments). The system is an Asrock K8N4FG-SATA2 socket 754 MB and has the Nvidia 6100 chipset. I use the onboard video. The CPU is a Turion MT-32 and the harddrive is a 40 GB Samsung SATA notebook drive. I also have a Netgear USB wireless B ethernet device. As a note, powernow seems to work very well in Linux.

I measured the power as follows:

A wattmeter which measures the wall plug power to the power supply which is an 80W AC/DC converter and a PicoPSU120. The voltage out of the AC/DC converter was measured using a good voltmeter. The current supplied to the PicoPSU was measured using a clamp on ammeter (Fluke 36) which can measure with an accuracy of 0.1A. I also measured the voltage out of the PicoPSU and the current to the CPU via the 12V connector using the Fluke. The basic results follow (+/- ~3%):


Wattmeter (W), Power into PicoPSU (W), CPU Power (W), State of System
27, 21.8-23, <1.5, Idle/Powernow/NO Ethernet
31, 24.2-25.4, <1.5, Idle/Powernow/ Ethernet
~48.5, 39.5-41, 16.5-18, Kernel Compile-CPU Utilization 85-90%/Ethernet

The numbers indicate an efficiency of ~ 80% for the AC/DC convereter.

The system also has a Zalman fan set to its lowest setting (Zalman plus fan regulator consume ~ 1W). This fan speed is sufficient to keep the CPU temp < 40C for typical use. I have also run the system using the Zalman heatsink but no fan. The CPU temp reaches a maximum of ~ 55C under full load.

Overall I'm happy with the system. It is fast enough and very quiet.

Eusebio

[osl]

I want to build a Turion MT-40 and PW-200 (DC-DC ATX converter) compatible, very small desktop PC. I am considering using either an ASUS A8N-VM (Nvidia) or A8V-VM (VIA) motherboard. Any idea which would work best in this configuration ? ASUS motherboards typically provide a vcore of appr. 1.25 or 1.3v for Turion MT - is this too much ?

[ekjk]

Hi,

I don't know about either of the boards you mentioned but the ASRock board I mentioned above works very well with the MT-32 I have. It recognizes the chip correctly and can throttle both speed and voltage using powernow. I suppose the MT-40 will work fine as well.

I use the Pico120PSU with an 80W AC/DC converter and it works very well. The Zalmann fan on the heatsink can be run on the lowest setting, or not at all. The Turion stays well within it's max temp limit for anything i can through at it.

Hope this helps.

Eusebio

[osl]

Hi Ekjk,

Thank you for suggesting the Asrock K8N4FG-SATA2. Form factor looks fine and has all the features I need incl. PCI-E x 16.
What Vcore are you using and are you using Bios or SW to change Vcore ?
Have you experienced any booting problems with this using the picoPSU-120 ?
Are you allowed to plug/unplug the 12 v from a "hot" AC adapter to the picoPSU-120, or is this a no-no (destroying the MB) ? If you don't know, don't try this !