Asus M2NC51-AR

Info & chat about quiet prebuilt, small form factor and barebones systems, people's experiences with vendors thereof, etc.

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Shobai
Posts: 80
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:34 pm
Location: Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

Asus M2NC51-AR

Post by Shobai » Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:28 pm

Hey guys, just wanted to document a little my experiences with this motherboard - there's a great thread over on the [H] that i stumbled upon, but they won't let @gmail's register =)

anyway, the main reason i wanted to post this is that the board i bought came from ebay - ie, i bought just the board. this normally wouldn't be a problem, but in this case Asus has set up this AM2 board with LGA775 mounting holes only, and i was a little worried about finding a compatible heatsink. that's basically the reason for this post; i wanted other people who buy this board to know that at least one 'low profile' [=P] heatsink will fit.

in the end, after a lot of digging around, i went for a Zalman CNPS8000 which fits beautifully =)

anyway, that marks the end of my first post. i hope to be back soon with some pics of the setup.

Shobai
Posts: 80
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:34 pm
Location: Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

Post by Shobai » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:28 pm

Ok, so here we are with some pics =)

first up, some general specs:

AMD X2 5200 EE [2.7, 2MB, 65W, max the board can handle]
2GB DDR2 800
HP/Asus M2NC51-AR
Zalman CNPS8000
7900GS
Toshiba MK6032GSX
[some bodgy PSU..stand in]
all on a µATX removable motherboard tray, for setup

Now, the little Arlec wattmeter i picked up the other day tells me the machine/PSU pulls 13W when off. with no GPU, sitting idle at desktop with Speedfan running, the meter read 60W. dropping the 7900GS in lifted that to 79W, idle with Speedfan. to test it a little, i downloaded and ran furmark, which pushes the GPU but only seems to use one CPU core, and saw 110W max.

So, with a bodgy '400W' no name PSU, running at less than 25%, i expect that it's pulling more power than it needs to, not even including that 13W at power off [is that normal?]. i'm planning to go the dc-dc route, but having trouble picking between the picopsu 150 and the pw-200-m - would you guys recommend one over the other? they'll both run the system [the 'ATX' socket on the board is not your standard, so either one will be plugging into an adaptor]

oh, and i can't hear anything over the PSU fan, so the quicker that goes, the better!

after setting up rivatuner for the 7900GS [haven't done anything about underclocking/volting the CPU yet - need to go read up on it. any suggestions? good threads?] i've got the following temps at

idle:

CPU: 0C [Wow! the Zalman takes me below ambient!! ~20C]
ACPI: 40C [not sure what this is measuring, never seems to change]
HDD: 20C
GPU: 36C

'load': [furmark]

CPU: 5C
ACPI: 40C
HDD: 21C
GPU: 60C

so, a few things to notice - the board is reporting the CPU temp very low..i'm not sure what the 'ACPI' sensor is, as it doesn't seem to change at all. i don't have fan profiling in rivatuner set up yet, just down/up clocking - need to set that up. i can't hear the hdd seeks over the psu fan - to give you an idea how load that is, the Zalman with fanmate at about half range is just getting towards the same level of noise..

Anyway, enough words! pics time: [hmm, maybe i should resize these..]

Image

Image

there are a few more pics in the album, if you're keen =)

petefeet
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri May 01, 2009 11:56 pm
Location: Guildford, UK

Post by petefeet » Sat May 02, 2009 12:01 am

Hi,

I'm having similar difficulty to you in finding a compatible heatsink/fan for this AM2 motherboard.

However, with the added constraint that it has to be about a 1u size!

I bought it to go in a Hiper HMC-1K53A case, so it needs to be about >34mmish (H) and max 71 x 65 mm

I don't suppose anyone's found one this small?

Any help greatly appreciated

Shobai
Posts: 80
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:34 pm
Location: Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

Post by Shobai » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:49 pm

so, a bit of an update:

there is a problem with these motherboards which apparently has been fixed in the next version [so yeah, grab the '61' version if you're looking at these] whereby they lose the PCIe slot. so, my plans of a mad little LAN box have been brought to a halt after the board i've got developed this fault. basically, it's perfectly fine until one dayyou turn it on and get no video =)

so this machine is currently driving my TV =) the onboard graphics has TV out in the I/O cluster, which is nice. other than swapping the PSU for the 300W SeaSonic SFX unit, this machine is pretty much just waiting for a case. hopefully that'll happen in the coming weeks, after we finish building our new shed =)

jouli
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:47 am
Location: new york

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Post by jouli » Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:52 am

Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly-used input devices, such as PS/2 connectors for a mouse and keyboard. Early personal computers such as the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support on the motherboard.

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