The poor USB performance was an issue with the ATi south bridge. Most of if not all of the higher-end boards use a ULI solution for the south bridge so that takes care of the USB issue. Ironically ULI was just recently purchased by nvidia.

I believe some of the MSI nf4 boards come with a 24bit 7.1ch Soundblaster Live. Going for on-board sound means sacrificing a little bit of CPU performance depending on how fast your CPU is, and the quality may not be as high as a discrete sound card. For integrated sound, you may want to check out ...

The nForce4 dose not have the best onboard sound; far from it. All the AMD nForce4 boards are stuck using the AC97 codec. For the best onboard sound on the AMD side ATi has the best solutions. Abit has the AT8, Asus has the A8R32-MVP, and MSI has the RD480 Neo2. Regarding the graphics card; as long ...

Abit AT8 based on the ATI Xpress 200 and ULi M1573 chipsets has been added. It looks like an interesting board; completely passive and apparently control for all six fan headers, nice stuff! Undervolting controls unknown. Also added is the AOpen i945Ga-PLF, a modern full featured board for the P4. W...

I realize that AMD is preferred right now by default for obvious reasons but if anyone has some experience on the Intel side of things that they would like to share we could really use some Pentium 4 and M board recommendations. And, just to stay on-topic, my Asus A8V Deluxe is fully passive, and ru...

Here is an Anandtech review of the board. A good review but missing a lot of information we would find useful.

The NB is also much closer to the CPU HS/F so it will be getting much more air flow then what a typical nForce4 would.

I happened to stumble across the MSI RD480 Neo while looking for S939 nForce4 boards. The board is completely passive which is good and also features fan control for at least two fan headers if that’s something you're interested in. I'm not sure about power consumption but it’s less then you’re A8N3...

I'm going to be working on a fairly high-end build in the near future and am currently looking at something in the range of the x1800XL or 7800GT for graphics. I'd like to use a Zalman VF-700 to replace the stock cooler but rather then using either 5 or 12 volts I like to power the fan off the cards...

nici , alright I added in the DFI board. Do you have any information about SpeedFan support, or CPU under-volting options? Most Intel boards have passive cooling on he chipset(s). And if you want to replace the standard passive HS with a bigger HS its easier because the heatsinks are mounted with h...

I would consider 0.1V to be significant, as it will increase power consumption / heat output of a processor with default 1.4V by ~12%. :shock: I've never used this feature, but the board appears to have support for dynamic fan control via Q-fan. Doesn't look like SpeedFan supports it -- at least th...

I have an ASUS A8V-E SE and would like to post my experiences with it. Not sure if it belongs on a recommended list, but maybe you'd be willing to use the information in your post as an FYI kind of thing. The board is based on the Via K8T890 chipset and undervolting is supported in the BIOS. Howeve...

>Common MB Problems for Silencers Coil whining should be added to the list. Not sure if capacitors can also make noises. My last 2 MBs have made noises, so I think it's a common issue, but very overlooked. Coil whine is pretty rare occurrence in my experience and is often the result of other compon...

Greetings, Several Gigabyte motherboards have passive NB cooling, and they have BIOS control of the CPU fan, and they are undervoltable. There are the Asus and the Abit models that have the heatpipe-cooled NB, and AFAIK, the Asus BIOS can control two fan headers. There are a number of mobos that ca...

The goal of this thread: To create a list of boards for all modern AMD & Intel boards that have features SPCR readers look for when deciding on a board for a new system. Desired features include good fan control of CPU and system fans, the ability to under-volt the CPU, and most important passive c...

Update: So far, I'm very impressed with the Zalman! Just finished with about half an hour of gaming and temps peaked at around 75*C. This is with the rear PCI slot cover adjacent to the card removed, so my case fans are actually pulling cold air into the case and over the Zalman. It's a pretty effe...

Can someone provide some documentation to the problems the A8N has, particularly regarding stability and A64 X2?

I was also under the impression not many if any nForce4 board were actually compatible with Speedfan.

After further research the leading canadate is the Abit AN8 Ultra. It seems to have a good layout, nice Rubycon caps, and all the required features including three controllable fan headers. About the only downside I see is that the fans can only be brought down to 7-8v so careful fan selection may b...

From my experiance the VF-700 sounds about the same as the Zalman 7000, not quiet at 12v but pretty good at 5v.

Well if it can handle the x800XL the GTO shouldn't be much of a problem. While the large heatsinks will limit the air flow I think convection with the included RAM sinks should be enough. If it ends up running too hot I'm sure we (this isn't my build) can make it run with some kind of active cooling...

First off, simply is the ZM80D enough to cool the x800GTO passively?

Related questions how much power dose the x800GTO draw. And just how much heat can the passive Zalman units handle effectively with low to moderate case air flow?

I think, my ASUS A8V Deluxe has 3 fan headers that are controlled by the BIOS. The only concern I might have with the ASUS Q-fan control is how low it can lower the voltage to the fans. The lowest setting I think is [11/16], which is about 8-9V. I just stuck a Fanmate between the fans and the fan h...

Ok, how about the opposite?

Are there any nForce4 boards that do support SpeedFan?

FYI: There are several threads on the Abit forums with people talking about inverted MB's with the heat pipe system on the northbridge. It doesn't work well at all. People have set their cases upside down and done tests which show that the heat pipes on these MB's only work in the "proper" orientat...

Why Nforce 4 anyways? If you are not going with SLI is there a big enough difference in the VIA and SiS chipsets? Except maybe overclocking. It seems most Via boards are passive. I was looking at this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813180068 VIA SiS, and ATi all have adeq...

How much control dose Asus's fan control BIOS and/or software offer? I'd like to have specific control of at least two fan headers, more is welcome of course. What dose the A8N32-SLI offer over the A8N-SLI besides the improved SLI abilities (which won't be used)? I don't think I'll be considering DF...

The inverted positioning of the motherboard in that case would greatly reduce the effectiveness of the heatpipes on the ASUS and Abit motherboards. Personally, I like ASUS boards better and would go for the ASUS A8N-E Deluxe. The northbridge positioning is also better than that of the AOpen IMO. A ...

I was originally looking at an Aopen nForce4 board. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813137066 Typically Aopen has be good about offering a good amount of control over system fans, as well as being very high quality. This board also places the northbridge in an idle location that...

I'm going to be build a higher-end S939 system and need some recommendations on solid nForce4 boards that would be well suited to a powerful yet as near silent as possible system. Here are few of my requirements. 1. At least two controlled fan headers. 2. SpeedFan support, and/or good dynamic BIOS l...

Alpha has a new pretty impressive looking northbridge heatsink out.

http://www.alphanovatech.com/nw050607e.html

Unfortunely I haven't seen it for sale anywhere as of yet.