Crossfire motherboards

MalcolmC · Post by **MalcolmC** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 1:38 am

I've become I bit despondent of late with all the talk of the power requirements of the nforce motherboards, especially the Asus A8N32-sli. I purchased one of these, and then read that they do not like to be upside down (and yes I plan to use a Lian-Li case) and then no sooner had I got over that shock than I read the excellent SPCR review which told me that instead of using less power (the only reason why I spent extra for this board) it actually consumes more.

Sometimes you have to just stop and re-assess where you are going, and browsing through the list of m/boards for sale, noticed that the new crossfire boards (apart from DFI) are all passively cooled.

Unfortunately, there do not seem to be many reviews out on these boards, and my two main priorities are stability and cool/quiet. I do not care if they are a few % slower than the best performing boards out there - does anyone have any experience of using any of these boards in silent system? In particular, does anyone know how much power they consume?

Operandi · Post by **Operandi** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:19 am

I happened to stumble across the MSI RD480 Neo while looking for S939 nForce4 boards. The board is completely passive which is good and also features fan control for at least two fan headers if that’s something you're interested in.

I'm not sure about power consumption but it’s less then you’re A8N32. Probably right around the same mark as a regular nForce4 SLI or slightly less.

MalcolmC · Post by **MalcolmC** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:54 am

Yes, thank you, I had seen that board. The thing that appealed to me about the crossfire boards is that nearly all of them are passive, so presumably this is how the chipset is designed to be run - implies low power useage, whereas the nforce boards nearly all run with fans, and it seems that when people try to run them passively they get very hot.

Operandi · Post by **Operandi** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 10:39 am

The NB is also much closer to the CPU HS/F so it will be getting much more air flow then what a typical nForce4 would.

DanaG · Post by **DanaG** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 1:47 pm

Take a look at the Abit AT8 (and soon the AT8 32X)
It has 6 fan connectors (wow, that's excessive), and I believe most, if not all, are speed controllable by BIOS.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Abit/AT8

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Abit/AT8/6 -- BIOS has lots of monitoring

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 11:51 pm

I fell upon this:- "Do not leak AT8 32X before ATI's RD580 official launch date, 23 Feb. AV8, PSD (12.3MB) " when I googled 'AT8 32X' so has anyone seen anything yet?
The plain AT8 looks interesting but I think the 32X may be even better (even though I don't need dual GPU!) for SPCR guys.
If only ABIT had proportional fan speed control...

DanaG · Post by **DanaG** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:00 am

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33840399

I actually found a way to bypass Abit's login redirect, and posted pics.
Edit: I did this by disabling Javascript and Redirects in Firefox, with the extension Tab Mix Plus

Also, Asus's RD580 board has been discovered as well, but they took the pics down

http://www.vrforums.com/showthread.php?p=1513400

Google cache works, though

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:8Ye ... %3D1513400+

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:26 am

Nice Work DanaG!
Now to wait for prices and the reviews...

Crossfire motherboards

Crossfire motherboards

AT8 32X

Cheers