Hi All

In trying to build a silent HTPC after lightning killed my Biostar M7NCG, I've searched high and low for undervoltable micro atx socket 754 and 939 motherboards.

As far as I can tell the best bet seems to be either the

Jetway A200GDMS-Pro on socket 754

or the Jetway A210GDMS-Pro on socket 939

It appears that these boards support cpu voltage via the bios between 0.8v and 1.5v

If you are interested in the onboard X300 graphics the "pro" version indicates that the board has 32mb of dedicated video ram. As this is hardware DX9 it *should* be suitable for running windows MCE - but don't quote me on that!

Pair the 754 board with an E6 sempron (£45) or Turion or the 939 board with an £80 3000+ Venice chip and you should be able to build a powerful yet extremely cool PC.

It seems these boards are extremely hard to source in the uk at the moment, so finally having found somewhere that stocks them I figured i should share the information!

Both boards can be sourced from here:

http://www.mpcomp.co.uk/mpc.php?page=ca ... make_id=44

I have seen the 754 version slightly cheaper elsewhere but this is the only place i have found that does the A210gdms pro 939 board.

I also looked into running a Turion chip. These again are extremely hard to find in the uk, particularly the 25W version.

www.wisemouse.com stock the MT30 (1.6ghz 1mb cache 22W) version which i figure would be the ideal chip for a passive machine. I hear people have been able to undervolt these to 1.0v (1.2v stock) and still overclock to 2ghz!

Last time i checked delivered price was £128

www.misco.co.uk stock some of the other turions chips, but none of the 25W MT versions currently.

I haven't heard of anyone running a turion on the jetway board, but I am hoping that with the available vcore adjustment and overclocking options it should be possible to run the chip even if the bios doesn't recognise it.

I hope this has been useful, although please be aware that all of the information here is 2nd hand from forums etc and i can't verify it for accuracy.

If any of you have experience with any of the above kit or decide to go ahead and buy, i'd love to hear your experiences.

Marc

Those Jetway boards do look nice. In addition to integrated X300, they also use Azalia audio, which is supposed to be a really high-end HD codec (I've read it's on par with some of the more expensive PCI sound cards available). This board has HTPC use written all over it.

thanks for the info!.. my m7ncg is still working (i think.. not in use ATM).. but its a fairly tempting upgrade.. i can't find any info on the jetway website that they even have a m-atx 939 board?

theres no NCQ support with the sata is there?

and FYI the 32mb onboard can be used with system memory to use up to 128mb (u probably knew that thou)..

so, are u going to get any of this?

and wheres the 754 board cheaper?

It seems it does support NCQ

"The same can be said for the ULi 1573 south bridge, which supports Intel's "Azalia" High Definition Audio standard and Serial ATA RAID with Native Command Queuing. While RAID and NCQ are nothing new, the ULi 1573 is the first south bridge chip to bring 32-bit/192kHz audio to the Athlon 64."

I knew someone was going to ask where i saw the 754 board cheaper! ... are you considering a Turion or Sempron? I am very torn between the three options. It's all dependent on what the home insurance is prepared to give me for the fried kit.

http://www.startcomputing.co.uk/priceli ... der=410000

£2 cheaper on the A200GDMS Pro

Marc

Taken from another forum here are some of the over/underclocking features of the a210gdms pro:

"it supports fan throttling and cool and quiet.

RAM controls are as follows

ras active
ras precharge
ras to cas
and command rate are all controllable. it is settable to 100/133/166/200 , and these numbers adjust based on what the fsb is (so if you set fsb to 250, the numbers are 125, x, y, 250 etc)

hypertransport can only be set to 800 or 1000. this sort of sucks, since 600 is not an option.

WARNING, those settings dont actualy work. according to SI sandra the ram divider does not work. neither does the hyper transport setting. i really hope this gets fixed in some other bios version. it died on boot once, and the boot screen said something like "test bios rs480" anyhow....

pci lock is there.

vcore is adjustable from .825 to 1.55 volts in .025 increments.

chipset voltage can be set to 1.8 or 1.9 volts

ram voltage can be set from 2.55 to 2.85 volts with .1 volt increments

multiplier is adjustable

fsb is adjustable by 1 mhz increments from 200-300fsb. basically it seems just like the fullatx version of this board.

also another thing. the ULI southbridge is not supported by xp. you MUST install the raid driver to use it in any mode. it does not come with a floppy. the easiest way to get the disk is to get the one for the shuttle rs480 based sff.

so since the hypertransport and ram ratios dont work even though the settings are there, the most i can o/c my cpu is 225x9 @1.55v. "


Nice to see it supports cool'n'quiet as well as bios adjustable voltage. There are also bios updates on the jetway website for X2 chips

Marc

Anyone know if this board is well supported by any of the LINUX makes???

I'd like to use this board for a low power (watts) high powered (CPU or upgradeable) server.

I would mainly just need good thruput on the drives, and the PCI-e 1x slot (For gbit ethernet). Maybe the 16x slot for a RAID controller. (if I when the lotto!)

This would start as just a file server, but might end up being more, if I started playing with web stuff.

Well, I just ordered an A200GDMS and Sempron 3000+ for an HTPC project I'm working on, I'll post back how things go.

I look forwards to hearing how you get on!

At the moment everyone seems to be out of stock of the a210 version, but I have a few stores who have promised to e-mail me as soon as they get new stock.

Marc

It seems that MP Comp have stopped selling the A200GDMS.

OK, well the mobo arrived, was duly fitted with the Sempr0n and seemed to work OK. Windows installed without a hitch, and I started playing with the speed setttings, underclocking, undervolting, etc.

Then the integrated graphics went south... the display is all corrupted now, so the board needs to go back for replacement.

bad luck nutball

Hope you have more luck with the replacement. Let us know how you find it once up and running.

Incidentally - are you running Media Centre on this PC?

Marc

No, I'll be running Linux/MythTV -- I've installed Windows for now because it's easier to mess about with underclock/undervolt/CPUBurn/temperature monitoring things than Linux. Once I find some stable settings I'll wipe and install Linux.

Holy thread revival batman!!!

Well after several months being a lazy bugger and not doing anything with this system I spent a rainy Sunday yesterday reviving the project. I thought I'd post an update for posterity, it might be useful for those folks who use the search function

Recap of the specs:

Jetway A200GDMS
Sempron 3000+ (CPUZ reports this as revision DH-E6, whatever the hell that is)
Zalman 7000B-AlCu
Silverstone LC-04

The processor runs stable at stock speed (1.8GHz) at 1.075V CPU temp of 44C under load. If I underclock to 1.6GHz it'll undervolt to 1.000V. It's been running Prime95 overnight at this latter setting, processor temp 40C, system 30C, that's with the stock Zalman fan at the low-end of a Fan-Mate.

Curiously, as has been mentioned in other threads in relation to the Sempron64, although the BIOS will allow undervolting down to 0.8V it's not possible to go below 1.1V with CrystalCPUID or RMClock. This makes the last few steps downward below 1.1V a case of continuous reboots and BIOS fiddling. I've flashed the latest BIOS, that doesn't seem to help (though it does correctly name the processor now!).

With the processor clocked at 1400MHz I got the voltage down to 0.950V before running into an apparent brick wall (Windows wouldn't boot, and indeed the machine wouldn't even POST, I had to reset the BIOS NVRAM to get back control). So I've stopped there for the time being. Overall I'm pretty impressed with what the combination of the CPU + motherboard can achieve so far.

I'm not at all happy with the level of noise from the system though. The 7000AlCu is noisy at the low-end of the fan-mate (~1300rpm) and the PSU fan in the Silverstone is similarly intrusive.

I'm wondering if it might be possible with a bit of judicious ducting to use a single Nexus 80mm to draw air over the CPU heatsink (having removed the stock fan) and blow it out through the PSU, ie. cool both with a single fan. A Nexus won't physically fit in the PSU, so it's going to be a modding challenge I think! The alternative would be to replace the fan in the 7000AlCu with a Nexus 92mm and duct the down-draught through the PSU (having removed the PSU fan of course). This latter option is probably less destructive, so I'll likely try it first.

Did you have any success with Linux/MythTV on this setup?

When you undervolt below 1.1v in BIOS, does the vcore readings from monitoring utilities like Speedfan, CPUZ, or BIOS Hardware monitor also reflect this lower voltage? I'm asking as I was also able to undervolt below 1.1v via BIOS on a DFI budget board, but later checking the system's AC draw found that actually the Vcore was not going below 1.1v despite it being set lower in BIOS.

Yes, the BIOS h/w monitor, CPUZ and some silly utility that came with the board all report a voltage <1.1V.



Well, my circumstantial supporting evidence is that my CPU runs happily at 1.075V (or 1.000V) but if I lower it a notch or two it stops functioning. If I set it back to 1.075/1.000 it's happy again. This strongly suggests to me that the voltage is indeed doing what the BIOS says it's doing.