Any Merom (C2D) mATX??

[Aris]

I currently have a pentium-M in my main gamming rig, and while it works wonderfully (and silently), id like a little more pep to keep up with newer games comming out. I'd like to upgrade to a Core2Duo, the merom flavor.

I did a search on newegg and didnt really see anything.

Anyone know of any C2D Merom mATX boards?

[Vanseb]

Hi !

For exemple :
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/fr/motherbo ... e%20Socket

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... 45GMMFY-RH
130€ (in France and Deutschland), classic retention bracket

[hmsrolst]

I have two of these and am very pleased:

http://global.aopen.com.tw/products/mb/i945GTm-VHL.htm

It's very stable and set up with a Yonah with no problems. It's the board in this review:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article624-page1.html

One caution is that they seem to come with an earlier BIOS which won't work with Meroms. You should look here if you're interested in the board.

viewtopic.php?t=34763[/url]

[nzimmers]

I've been quite happy with the MSI 945GT speedster, dual GB lan, 4xsata, dvi+dsub, pcie, lots of bells and whistles ( I think it's the most feature rich MOTD board out right now)

problems: Mine came with older bios, newer one supports core 2 duo, might have to flash it - you'll need a compatable CPU, if your dothan (shuweeet chip man!) is socket 479 then it won't work in the merom supporting motherboards.

come with a stock heatsink & fan that basically sound like a hair dryer - if you have an old socket 478 P4 desktop heatsink that should work but you'll have to put a shim underneath - other heatsinks on noewegg might work without shims

fi I didn't need the dual lan and 4xsata, I would go with either the asus board or the abit board, asus look like the winner of the two

[Aris]

Hi !

For exemple :
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/fr/motherbo ... e%20Socket

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... 45GMMFY-RH
130€ (in France and Deutschland), classic retention bracket

Abit board doesnt have standard heatsink mounting
Gigabyte page wouldnt load

=========================================

I like the Aopen board, but i dont want to buy a processor with the board that im just going to throw away so that i can update the bios to properly work with a core2 duo processor.

I actually like the layout of the MSI board a little more than the Aopen board, mostly because i can use standard ddr2 memory on it. Then again we have that pesky bios problem. I really wish i could pay like 10bucks more or somthing on newegg to have them plug in an old processor on the board and update the bios for me before shipping it to me.

[nzimmers]

I have the MSI board and it's probably the most feature rich - although the Abit board is very interesting

As far as i know, the MSI board is the only one that will allow some overclocking, which is great really. I don't know why Abit decided to leave that out.

with the MSI board you can (theoretically) get the following overclocks:
(rough calculations here)

Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 Merom 1.66GHz over clock to -> 2.0 Ghz
Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 Merom 1.83GHz over clock to -> 2.2Ghz
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 Merom 2.0GHz over clock to -> 2.4Ghz
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 Merom 2.16GHz over clock to -> 2.6Ghz

good memory will help with overclocking but it's possible to use a memory divider and not really notice the difference in the memory speed.


There's definately a few kinks with the MSI board, but one of the new thermalright heat sinks that fit the 478 hole dimensions could give you an almost passive cooled CPU

there's an issue with the video cutting out in the middle of windows boot process that I haven't figured out yet - happens if you boot the MB witout a monitor attached and then try to boot with a monitor again, I think it's defaulting to the TV out but I use it as a server at the moment (soon HTPC when I get a large LCD tv) so I just remote in with Ultra VNC

maybe buy a cheap core solo or socket 478 celeron off ebay for the bios.

[johpe]

I have got the MSI Speedster-A4R 945GT and sure the it came with the old version of the bios that does not support C2D Merom processors.

BUT the good news is that you do NOT need a supported CPU to update the bios.

In the manual you can read about a jumper that makes the motherboard boot from a floppy. You can prepare the floppy with the bios update utility to update the bios autmaticaly.

I just installed my Core 2 Duo T7200, enabled the jumper, booted from floppy that ran bios update utility from autoexec.bat and then it was done. And all works fine.

The motherboard does seem a bit unstable though, as has been reported earlier on this forum.

[kklein]

I just built a new system using the Asus N4L-VM DH. I'm running a C2D T7200 with 2GB of RAM. Installed Windows Vista and so far it has been rock solid.

I understand this board doesn't offer as many overclocking options as others might, but that's not what I bought it for.

[johpe]

I can also mention that swapping the cpu coolers retention bracket on the Speedster-A4R to a standard 478p one is very easy and works very well. I now cool my Merom processor (T7200) passively with a Zalman 7000 Cu and it never goes above 65C with dual instances of cpuburn running.

As for stability, I never seem to have any problems in Windows XP, but I'm running Linux to be able to use the computer as a media center with MythTV, as a webserver with Apache, as a local DNS server with Bind, as a DHCP server and as a mailserver. But in Linux I experience random hard hangs sometimes three times a day sometimes once every second week.

[johpe]

Just answering my own post to let people know that now finally the MSI 945GT Speedster A4R works perfectly with a Core 2 Duo Merom processor. No more hangs or freezes.

This is due to a BIOS update that MSI recently released (version 1.30). The strange thing is that you can only find this bios on MSIs japanese homepage.

For anyone that is interested you will find the bios here:
http://www.msi-computer.co.jp/bios/9632v13.zip

Hope it helps for everybody with instability problems, from what I've read it should.

[VesaM]

I can also mention that swapping the cpu coolers retention bracket on the Speedster-A4R to a standard 478p one is very easy and works very well. I now cool my Merom processor (T7200) passively with a Zalman 7000 Cu and it never goes above 65C with dual instances of cpuburn running.

Is it possible to use Zalman with a VGA card, is there enough space?

I think that the original CPU retention bracket will accept Intel Xeon coolers, a spacer between CPU and heatsink is needed. Has anyone tried Thermalright SI-9XV?

[johpe]

Since I cool the processor passively it works with a Zalman 7000 and a VGA card. But I had to bend the outer fins (closes to the vga card) a little bit so they don't touch the card.

[Delta_42]

I'm running a T7200 on an Asus N4L-VM board and apart from the initial pains of getting the bios flashed to support the CPU, no problems.

I chose the Asus as it had on-board SPDIF without needing to find an 'optional extra'

The machine is now running Windows MCE flawlessly (well it was flawless until I forgot that later Nvidia drivers don't support the MCE extensions and ended up watching all my DVDs in negative colours )

[simeli]

I can also mention that swapping the cpu coolers retention bracket on the Speedster-A4R to a standard 478p one is very easy and works very well. I now cool my Merom processor (T7200) passively with a Zalman 7000 Cu and it never goes above 65C with dual instances of cpuburn running.

As for stability, I never seem to have any problems in Windows XP, but I'm running Linux to be able to use the computer as a media center with MythTV, as a webserver with Apache, as a local DNS server with Bind, as a DHCP server and as a mailserver. But in Linux I experience random hard hangs sometimes three times a day sometimes once every second week.

i am also looking in upgrading my current rig to the merom speedster. i currently also run mythtv on mine. could you post the exact specs of your machine? ram, graphics etc? do you use an additional graphics card?

many thanks

[simeli]

The machine is now running Windows MCE flawlessly (well it was flawless until I forgot that later Nvidia drivers don't support the MCE extensions and ended up watching all my DVDs in negative colours )

This seems odd. About a year and a half ago I tested WIN MCE sucessfully with a NVidia GeForce 6200 without problems. I ran a Hauppauge TV Card and used the NVidia PureVideo MPEG decoder.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html

[Delta_42]

If you look at the notes on the latest Nvidia driver release it says that the MCE extensions aren't currently supported and will be supported in a later driver release.

I forgot this and tried tweaking my image through the MCE extensions as well as through the regular driver control panel.

I ended up with a negative image on DVD playback. I couldn't be bothered trying to fix it so I just rebuilt the PC and now I know better

Now I'm playing around with Theatretek and FFD show to try and tweak my image quality, however none of this is down to the Asus board, which I like.

Its not an enthusiast's board by any stretch of the imagination, while the BIOS isn't as limited as the BIOS on a HP PC, its hardly a tweaker's dream.

However I wanted a powerful, quiet, low-power Media PC that would give me optical-out to my surround sound amp without needing to find extra dongles.

The stock HSF ASUS supply with the board isn't as bad as I made out. I did some more testing last night, using the scientific method of stopping the fan with my finger. It was actually the little fan on the 7600GT making all the noise after all

Still, I have a NorthQ cooler on order that will fix that and a passive heatsink to replace the CPU fan (which mounts using crummy little hoops like a NB fan), so by weekend it should be virtually silent (certainly inaudible from the couch which is what counts)

[johpe]

i am also looking in upgrading my current rig to the merom speedster. i currently also run mythtv on mine. could you post the exact specs of your machine? ram, graphics etc? do you use an additional graphics card?

many thanks

Here comes the specs:
- Core 2 Duo T7200 Merom
- MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R (with bios v1.30 from msi-computer.co.jp)
- MSI NX7600GS-T2D256EH (passively cooled)
- 1 GB Kingston KVR667D2N5K2 RAM
- 500 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000KS HDD (read about it here at spcr and it is pretty quiet)
- Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE TV-card
- Zalman 7000-Cu cooler (without the fan)
- Antec Fusion case (switched the fan in the stock PSU to a Nexus one since the original was too loud)
- Two 120mm Nexus exhaust fans in the Fusion case connected to the CPU Fan connector on the mainboard so they spin up when the CPU gets warmer (usually they spin at 5v).

The extra graphics card is more or less necessary since the Intel 950 GMA integrated on the motherboard really sucks! The TV-out and the resolutions of the 950 GMA is more or less worthless under Linux. And, though a bit strange, adding the extra graphics card didn't raise the power draw more than a few (2-5) watts.

The systems draws between 55-60 watts when idle, measured by a kill-a-watt meter. When starting two instances of CPUBurn it draws 90-100 watts.

The CPU never goes above 65C under full load.

I'm running Ubuntu 6.10.

That's the specs of the system.

[simeli]

i am also looking in upgrading my current rig to the merom speedster. i currently also run mythtv on mine. could you post the exact specs of your machine? ram, graphics etc? do you use an additional graphics card?

many thanks

Here comes the specs:
- Core 2 Duo T7200 Merom
- MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R (with bios v1.30 from msi-computer.co.jp)
- MSI NX7600GS-T2D256EH (passively cooled)
- 1 GB Kingston KVR667D2N5K2 RAM
- 500 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000KS HDD (read about it here at spcr and it is pretty quiet)
- Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE TV-card
- Zalman 7000-Cu cooler (without the fan)
- Antec Fusion case (switched the fan in the stock PSU to a Nexus one since the original was too loud)
- Two 120mm Nexus exhaust fans in the Fusion case connected to the CPU Fan connector on the mainboard so they spin up when the CPU gets warmer (usually they spin at 5v).

That is a good idea hooking the case fan to the header of the cpu. I'll be running it in an Antec P180 again and I'll definitely try that. The Zalman does not collide with the PCIe graphics? Or did you have to bend the fins?

The extra graphics card is more or less necessary since the Intel 950 GMA integrated on the motherboard really sucks! The TV-out and the resolutions of the 950 GMA is more or less worthless under Linux. And, though a bit strange, adding the extra graphics card didn't raise the power draw more than a few (2-5) watts.

Have you tried using 915resolution to get other resolutions than the ones officially supported? Does the TV Out not work at all? I'd be using DVI anyhow to power my plasma.

The systems draws between 55-60 watts when idle, measured by a kill-a-watt meter. When starting two instances of CPUBurn it draws 90-100 watts.

I'll most likely add a 3ware 9650 RAID Controller and 4-5 WD disks. So that will probably be a bit higher. My guess would be about 50-60W.

The CPU never goes above 65C under full load.

That's not bad given that they are rated for up to 100C. My Mac Book goes up to 78C quite often

I'm running Ubuntu 6.10.

I will probably continue using Gentoo as everything runs smoothly right now.
Again many thanks. From what I've read so far, the MSI seems a bit picky about the RAM you feed it. So it's definitely nice to know which works.

[johpe]

That is a good idea hooking the case fan to the header of the cpu. I'll be running it in an Antec P180 again and I'll definitely try that. The Zalman does not collide with the PCIe graphics? Or did you have to bend the fins?

Yeah I had to bend 3-4 fins a little bit, if I wanted to though, I could still run the zalman fan.

Have you tried using 915resolution to get other resolutions than the ones officially supported? Does the TV Out not work at all? I'd be using DVI anyhow to power my plasma.

Yeah the tv-out works but it does not allow any overscan so there are big fat black borders around the image on the tv. And yeah I've tried 915resolution, it fixes some problems with the resolutions on the dvi but not the tv-out so in the end I think it's better to put in another graphics card in there. I also think the tv-out quality on my nvidia card is better than on the integrated 950 gma.

I'll most likely add a 3ware 9650 RAID Controller and 4-5 WD disks. So that will probably be a bit higher. My guess would be about 50-60W.

Yeah, each disk adds about 8-10 watts I think.

Again many thanks. From what I've read so far, the MSI seems a bit picky about the RAM you feed it. So it's definitely nice to know which works.

I thought I had RAM problems earlier, when the system was instable, and swapped the RAM-modules but it turned out to be the stupid bios. Now everything works fine.