Both this and the DFI board are so tempting. However Asus has been my favorite board maker for over 10 years. There is just no way Asus would allow everyone else to have all the fun. They have to have something brewing in the basement. Hurry Asus my will power is not that great!

Here is my aopen used in a flight simulator box.

http://www.pbase.com/beud4x86/fsbox

It is not a silent box but fairly quiet, I'd say.
2x92mm fan at 800rpm (power supply and front exhaust)
1x80mm at 1500rpm gfx direct back exhaust
1x80mm aopen cooling fan at 1800rpm (as noisy as zalman 7000@5v)
1xsmall ati fan (the noisiest at full speed but ok a 40%)

specs:
pentium M 2Ghz at 2.2
1GB
9800XT
HD 2.5' seagate 40GB

I am getting twice the frame rate as my previous P4C 2.4Ghz.

why so many fans? is it the graphics card that puts out so much heat?

upp and running a total fanless pentium m 725 right now! stay tuned for some pics and more info...

I've just swapped mobo with a P4 2.4Ghz, no change in the cooling yet!
But yes the graphics is inevitably hot. I may remove one 92mm but I like the air flow I get now (kinda separated cpu/gfx compartments)

The aopen board is socket 479 ball right. So a pentium M dorthon that is socket 478 will not fit. I am a little confused. Aopen states that it will take dorthon cpus but the only dorthon cpus I see are socket 478 not 479. So there is 2 different cpu pinouts just 1 more available then the other??

sigh so conufused. Just want to know if processor spec BXM80536GC1700F will fit in the aopen board.

I've now been playing with my new setup for a couple of hours. It seems that the Aopen board has trouble running any higher bus than ~120MHz, it doesen't post higher than that regardless of multiple.

Good news though, my Dothan 1.6 seems stable at 119x16 = 1904MHz, undervolted to 1.26v(default 1.34). The CPU is cooled by a Thermalright XP-120 heatsink without fan. I'm running the whole system completely fan-less, it's a minitower with the top taken of, so that the heat can rise. CPU temp with Prime is about 66 degree C (although aopen utility reports 56 the bios reports 66 after a fast reboot).

If you are interested in photos, let me know.

Pictures, yes please

Ok, here we go!

This is my HTPC/Server setup:


The case with fan-less power supply at the bottom right.



Thermalright XP-120 heatsink and ATI 9600 underneath. (Sorry for the ugly ide cabel.. )



System up and running. The aluminium-box in the front is my own made hard-drive silencer, could be better mounted though.

Palled,

Looking very nice!

Regarding your overclocking, did you remember to decrease your memory speed:FSB ratio in the BIOS? My 1.8 runs fine at 145x16 = 2.32 Ghz, but I set the base memory speed to 266Mhz. At a 145 bus speed, my DDR400 is running at 386 Mhz...

Rich

What temps in idle?

What's wrong with running your DDR400 at 386MHz?

Thanks, that did the trick!

But I have quite a strange problem, I can post with any multiple, but when windows has loaded its back to default (16).

Now running 125x16 (2000) at default voltage, 250MHz memory, bios reports a whopping 71C after some prime testing. quite stable though!

Regarding idle temps, I cant tell because temp reading in windows is not correct, but i think its about 50C.

Nothing... I'm happy at 386Mhz. My comment was based on a guess that Palley seemed to have his memory overclocked along with his CPU, so I suggested backing the MEM/FSB ratio down in BIOS prior to FSB overclocking (therefore not exceeding 400Mhz when the FSB is cranked up).

Are you overclocking via BIOS, or are you using the Aopen SpeedStep/Control utility? I overclock manually via the utility, which incidently is still a little buggy on my setup. The utility does seem to reset to the BIOS level each time I reboot. It also seems to crash (requiring a utility re-install), if I close the utility too soon after changing CPU speed.
You might also try setting a FSB that gets your memory speed near its design spec (eg - 266x1.45 = 386Mhz vs 400 design for me). Then start with a low multiplier like x10 and try increasing a bit. You may find that 2 Ghz achieved this way (say 140x14 if you have DDR400) is a much faster setup than 125x16. But....make sure you have the HD backed up first!!


I haven't tried overclocking in the BIOS yet.

The utility doesen't work well for me:
- My computer hangs when I go higher than 121 MHz (regardless of bios settings)
- My external soundcard (Dio Delta 24/96) makes clicking noise when I've overclocked using the utility.


So I stick to BIOS overclocking for now. I'm of course aware of the fact that higher bus speed meens higher performance, but as I described in the previous post, the multiple goes back to default (16) as soon as windows has loaded (the utility not installed). Very strange.

I also have to set my memory to CAS2 in bios, it won't post at all at CAS2.5. (does that work for you?) And since it's some pretty crappy ram, it can't do >300 @ CAS2. May buy some better ram...

.palle

I haven't experimented with memory timings yet, but I have pretty decent Corsair XMS 2-3-3-6 T1, so I'll try to experiment with that soon.

I have one other suggestion if you haven't already tried it. There are two versions of the i855 utility (1.00.02 on the install CD, and 1.00.05 on the web site). I found that the SpeedStep utility part didn't work correctly in 1.00.02, but the overclocking part worked much better than the .05 version. If you haven't tried .02, it might be worth an experiment. Make sure you uninstall both the .05 utility AND the "AOpen application runtime environment" before installing .02. The soundcard problem sounds pretty tricky too!

For now, I'm running 1.00.05, and seem to have found a way to switch into 145x16 mode when I need it, and most of the time switch back OK (I must press 'Resume Speedstep" on the overclocking tab, wait 10 secs, then press Automatic on the Speedstep tab!)

It seems they still have some work to do on the utility stability!

Rich

Review at Hardwarezone.

Sort of an odd review. He used an older Banias 1.6 Ghz cpu with 1MB L2 cache instead of one of several newer 1.6-2.1 Ghz 2MB L2 Dothan cpus. The main benefit of this board for a performance-minded user (IMO) is to get one of the newer Dothan CPUs with the large L2 caches. That's where the excellent 3D performance seems to come from. The reviewer also said the board isn't sold in the US, which obviously isn't the case...

Yea newegg is selling both the aopen board and the dfi 855 board. One of the best and most dependable sites available for computer parts in the usa. So its definatly here. I drool over them all the time.

Some of things the review talks about is in fact true though for instance the lack of duel channel is a huge performance hit. Hopefully that will be comming soon though sometime in the future. Its an easy way to boost performance for notebooks and it seems almost part of the natural progession of things. Sadly it may be the end of next year or more before we see it.

That is if they only use notebook chipsets (for desktop mobos). Didn't someone mention a DFI board with Intel 9x5 chipset?

Found it here:

Well this has yet to be proved. I believe they designed the Pentium M to work with this constrain (relatively slow memory bandwidth), hence the big cache and advanced prefetch logic.

As for the performance boost, you can see for example with the AMD64: with its integrated memory controller, a dual channel brings not that much increase over the single (5 to 10% if I remember correct).

More memory bandwidth wouldn't hurt though!

ps:so much bullshit in this hardwarezone review

Just wondering the logic here of some of these systems... If you are going to put in a 6800 or like 3 fans or something, why not save a bunch of cake and get a AMD 3500+ 90nm chip?? Certainly the power consumption of the chip is a bit more and all, but it's not that bad. The P-M is nice and may be able to be passively cooled, but, I guess I don't see it being any more quiet than an A64 if you are going to put in all those fans and high power consumption equipment.

Of course, if it O/Cs to 2800, that's a difference story, but I think that's the exception and not the rule. Plus, in a couple months A64's will have SSE3 and at some point a 64 bit OS.

Chris

I have learned that logic and computer hobbyists plans are rarely alligned.

LOL. the logic is simple really:

questioner: why do that when this makes more sense?
answerer: because I can!

Well, I actually though about this a fair bit. My first choice for my new gaming machine was the 939. But... this was to be the second box at my desk (a PowerMac G5 is the other), so this presented some additional considerations. My list of "requirements" came out something like this:

- A SFF case. Portability and desk space an issue.
- A cool and quiet machine with great gaming performance.
- A fast Graphics card that provides BIOS POST screens on an Apple Cinema Display when connected via a DVI KVM switch (long story...)

Based on this list of criteria, it came down to either a barebones SFF case, or similar mini mATX case. For CPUs, I wanted either a 939 or P-M. I passed on the 754 for several reasons, including age, heat load, and chipset/GPU issues. The only shuttle 939 barebones available is $$$, only has a 240W PSU, and its noise factor isn't clear. It's also a proprietary form factor, so no upgradeability. The Antec Aria I eventually chose allows me an upgrade path for mATX boards.

When you look at fast P4s + GPUs with gaming performance comparable to the P-M (at 2.3Ghz), you start pushing the PSU and heat extraction (and noise) limits of small quiet cases. Most people have to add fans to the Aria when using >40-50W CPUs and a gaming video card.

With the Aria, P-M, and 6800, I get great gaming performance, full display compatibility, and a very cool, low power, quiet box. The only thing audible is the NV5 cooler fan, and it runs at about 50% speed. The CPU and PSU fans are inaudible from 2-3 feet away.

The downside, as you state, is that this setup definitlely costs a bit more than a 939 system, and it won't run 64-bit OS's... Nevertheless, it's a great little box, and I'm finally able to hold my own in online games! My son can borrow it for LAN parties too, as it's very convenient to transport.

I'm not sure my logic/rationalization is flawless, but it does show there was some method to my madness

Rich

Cos it's fun to be on the 'bleeding edge'? Cos it's fun to have a new toy? Cos it's fun to have a new toy that no-one else has? You have to admit the Pentium M is a cool chip (all meanings of 'cool').

Well in my case I hesitated btw the pentium M and a AMD64 but for the later only socket 754 was available in MicroATX and it was a via chip set.

On the performance side, P-M seems faster than the AMD of the same freq (at 2.2GHz super pi 1M: 37s vs 43s).

I just got my pentium M the other day in the mail. still no motherboard yet though. I got it over the amd 64 because the pentium m will out perform the amd 64 in many cases. The amd 64 also may be very cool at idle and certainly a whole lot better then a prescott but the heat output is going to ramp up under stress. People treat the amd 64 like its putting the same amount of heat out under stress as when its idle. Thats certainly not the case.

I do think its a great and cool chip, but imho pentium m is still king. Just like amd can beat intels prescott under similar frequencys. Pentium m can beat the amd 64. The pentium m will also remain cool under ALL conditions with low heat output. Not just when its sitting idle.

certainly not shabby for something that runs on a motherboard chipset that isnt duel channel and comming up on 3 or 4 years old or something.