Are there any manufacturers of motherboards that through software and hardware make better motherboards out of a cooling perspektive?
For instance Gigabyte with their heatpipe cooled gaming boards?
Or Asus advanced Q-fan?
MSI are good at passive Graphic cards but motherboards?
Any difference between mATX and ATX?
Best mobo manufacturer from cooling perspective?
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
-
sciberpunkt
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:42 pm
Not sure about the others, but my ABIT A8N SLI board has a total of six 3-pin fan headers all temperature regulated within the BIOS. It makes a utility like SpeedFan unnecessary unless you want to control the fans through software. The board also has a passively cooled northbridge with a heatpipe.
You'll probably have an easier time finding fan control and passive cooling on a full-sized ATX board vs. an mATX one.
You'll probably have an easier time finding fan control and passive cooling on a full-sized ATX board vs. an mATX one.
i dont ever use the motherboard fan headers to lower fan speeds. My personal preference for manufacturers are generally Asus, but i also like MSI and Gigabyte. If i'm going intel, i only buy boards with intel chipsets. If i'm going AMD, i only buy boards with an nVidia chipset. VIA/SIS/ULI are all junk imo. ATI is iffy, sometimes its good sometimes its "blah", so i usually avoid them also.
for me, the deciding factor on a motherboard is always what I/O's it has, and the layout of the motherboard. I prefer boards with a stock passive heatsink on the chipsets, but its not a deal breaker if everything else is exactly what i want. I can always replace stock heatsinks with large passive ones.
I dont overclock, so i generally dont care about Bios options. Some things i do like to see though is manual control over voltage and latency for memory, as some low latency memory comes set by SPD to a much slower rate, and unless the bios lets you change the memory from the SPD settings, you might be stuck running your memory slower than it can actually run. I also like to have voltage control over the CPU, as usually i can run processors at the same default clock speed, but at a lower voltage to reduce heat output.
The difference between mAtx and Atx is the size of the board, and for the most part you'll never see a mAtx board with 2x 16x PCIe slots. Everything else is basically the same. ATX just gives you some additional PCI expansion slots that most people dont ever use anymore anyhow. I'll usually buy mAtx boards even if i'm using an Atx case just so i have that option later if i find a smaller case and want to use it.
for me, the deciding factor on a motherboard is always what I/O's it has, and the layout of the motherboard. I prefer boards with a stock passive heatsink on the chipsets, but its not a deal breaker if everything else is exactly what i want. I can always replace stock heatsinks with large passive ones.
I dont overclock, so i generally dont care about Bios options. Some things i do like to see though is manual control over voltage and latency for memory, as some low latency memory comes set by SPD to a much slower rate, and unless the bios lets you change the memory from the SPD settings, you might be stuck running your memory slower than it can actually run. I also like to have voltage control over the CPU, as usually i can run processors at the same default clock speed, but at a lower voltage to reduce heat output.
The difference between mAtx and Atx is the size of the board, and for the most part you'll never see a mAtx board with 2x 16x PCIe slots. Everything else is basically the same. ATX just gives you some additional PCI expansion slots that most people dont ever use anymore anyhow. I'll usually buy mAtx boards even if i'm using an Atx case just so i have that option later if i find a smaller case and want to use it.
They are user-programmable, right? If so, could you describe how you program it? Can you map any fan to any motherboard temperature and create a speed vs. temp graphical curve?sciberpunkt wrote:Not sure about the others, but my ABIT A8N SLI board has a total of six 3-pin fan headers all temperature regulated within the BIOS. ...