Computer Motherboards

See also:

• Small Form Factor (SFF) computers
• mini-ITX motherboards
• cases
• computer building main page.
• ASUS P5E Motherboard
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H Motherboard

Motherboards

• 2010-Mar-11: An article that looks at how the various components of a desktop PC contribute to power consumption. [9013]
• 2009-Oct-09: Google has released a study that finds that RAM errors are more common than expected. [8600]
• 2009-Sep-19: DFI will be releasing a motherboard that contains two systems, a conventional socket 775 Pentium system and an Atom-ION low power system, on the same motherboard. They also include a built in LAN and switch (so the two can communicate without additional hardware) and a KVM and USB port switcher. The general idea is that you can keep the low-power system always powered up to do long downloads and provide network services, and save on your power bills by only having the high-performance system powered up when needed. [8523]
• 2009-May-15: Pheonix Technologies are working on a Linux distro that includes virtualization technology built right into the BIOS. [7976]
• 2009-Jan-21: Ever wondered what that TPM header was for on your motherboard? This article explains a bit about how this is used to create and store encryption keys for drives you attach to the motherboard. It can be used in such a way that the data on the drive is only accessible when attached to the motherboard that was used to format it. [7470] [1]
• 2008-May-20: ASUS's new P5E3 Deluxe motherboard (reviewed here) will include an instant-on Linux desktop environment built into the BIOS so the computer can even be used for web browsing and VoIP without booting into a full operating system. Earlier attempts at this sort of thing have been limited to CD Audio and DVD play back. Discussed here on Slashdot. Engadget has some more information about this. In mid-2008 ASUS announced that it intends to start shipping Splashtop on all its motherboards. [2797]
• 2008-Apr-15: The Chinese are starting to produce counterfeit DFI motherboards. [5804]
• 2008-Mar-29: CNet's list of 10 most obsolete computer interface ports. It includes a reference to the Red Dwarf robot Kryton too. Most of this makes sense except, perhaps, for the inclusion of FireWire. Discussed here on Slashdot. [5346]
• ArsTechnica on BIOS tweaking. [5922]

Manufacturers

• 2008-Sep-04: Abit may be leaving the motherboard market at the end of 2008. [6803]
• Wikipedia's article on the ACPI system [2731]
• With some high end dual processor motherboards you can install two of the new quad-core CPUs to get a total of 8 processors. Here's a review of Intel's V8 platform. [2730]
• Looks like Intel may be the winner of the first round in the quad-core battle, what with better performance, lower power consumption and more motherboard choices than AMD. [2729]
• The new (Nov'06) Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is the first quad-core CPU [2728]
• Info on the new quad-core Opterons from AMD [2727]
• When will we have enough CPU for real-time ray tracing, perhaps by 2010? [2726]
• In Aug'06 ABIT launched their AW9D motherboard, based on the Intel 975X chip set that is said to be quad core (Kentsfield) ready. Apparently these chips will be available in Nov'06. [2725]
• Tom's Hardware has updated their CPU comparison chart to include the dual core CPUs that were introduced in 2005. [2724]
• An overview of all the different types of current (2005) CPUs [2723]
• The Pentium 4 Socket 478 is discussed here [2722]
• Motherboards - The Designing Process discusses the chipsets that go into motherboards [2721]
• AMDBoard focuses on the various AMD based motherboards [2720]
• 4 way memory interleaving on VIA motherboards. [2719]
• The Register reports that VIA chipset based motherboards may have problems keeping up with full PCI speed data bursts, and that this could hurt the performance of high speed (like ATA133 and U160 SCSI) disk controllers. And this article documents a similar problem with the Intel 850 and 860 chip sets. [2718]
• According to this Register article the AMD 760MPX chipset (which is used in some of these new dual boards) will not ship in volume until Q2 of 2002! AnandTech has this article on the 760MPX chip set. Around then the newest Athlon XP should be the 2500+. [2717]
• The MSI K7 Master-S (MS-6341) seems to be the only Athlon single processor mother board with built in SCSI (U160). [2716]
• More dual Athlon boards are due out soon (start of 2002?), this picture is the MS-6501 (or K7D Master I from MSI) and is reviewed here and here and here, and mention of the ASUS A7M266-D (which is also to be seen here and reviewed here). The Tyan Tiger S2466 is an AMD dual-cpu MPX chipset mother board, reviewed here. [2715]
• The ASUS A7N266 is an nVidia nForce 420 based single Athlon motherboard, its a bit odd since ASUS went with the basic audio and for some reason did not connect up the built-in ethernet port... [2714]
• The ASUS KT266A is an Athlon board that does include overheat shutdown, although it might not save you if your heat sink detaches completely from the CPU... [2713]
• The ABIT KR7A looks like a nice Athlon board, but for some reason does not use the Athlon's thermal diode [2712]
• It appears that if a CPU fan dies on an AMD Athlon chip that the chip itself could die, as of 30 Oct 01 AMD is issuing new design guidelines to motherboard manufacturers to help prevent this in future board revisions. [2711]
• AnandTech's overview of Value Dual Socket 370 motherboards [2710]
• a round up of current Athlon mother board chip set solutions [2709]
• a round up of current (summer 2001) VIA Apollo KT266 based main boards [2708]
• This article reviews five of the VIA chip set based dual processor motherboard designs [2707]
• amdmb.com is a site that specializes in AMD motherboard news [2706]
• 2cpu.com a dual processor motherboard site [2705]
• An AMD Motherboard review site - the first dual processor Athlons should soon be among us, maybe by March 2001 [2704]
• ABIT VP6 motherboard fan site [2703]
• Tyan makes some nice motherboards, their Thunderbolt S1837 makes a great workstation or server box. Tyan so far is the only manufacturer to make a dual Athlon mother board, their first model was very high end and required an expensive custom power supply, this new Tyan Tiger MP S2640 (and here too, and here and here as well, and at AnandTech too) looks like it could open the flood gates for AMD. [2702]
• Gigabyte only limited experience with these, had some problems with the Celeron II until the BIOS was updated, still having some problems with the USB port though. [2701]
• Micro Star (MSI) I have not had any experience with these, but they have been favorably reviewed in the past. [2700]
• IWill again, no personal experience with these but they often have a nice feature set [2699]
• FIC I have not had any experience with these, but they have been favorably reviewed in the past. [2698]
• ECS EliteGroup. ECS and PC Chips have merged and produced a new motherboard, the ECS PF88, that allows you to add different CPU sockets to it via a set of custom riser cards. [2697]
• Soyo has a good on-line store. [2696]
• ABit seems to make some pretty good mother boards, their BP6 (although quite dated today) is a nice unit [2695]
• AOpen one of my clients uses a number of AOpen's highly integrated motherboards for management and secretarial machines, seems to be a good solution unless you need to push the video beyond 1280x1024 resolution. They had some problems installing the NT drivers, but that's pretty common. In late 2004 AOpen introduced a motherboard that uses the Pentium-M (mobile) chip, this allows one to build a much more power-efficient workstation as one of these chips uses between 3W and 20W when running instead of the more typical 100W of the current Pentium-4 and Athlon processors. [2694]
• Shuttle little experience with these, but no problems [2693]
• ASUS all the experience I have had with ASUS motherboards has been good. Good single and dual processor solutions, generally quite expandable and well supported. ASUS even provided free BIOS upgrades to address Y2K problems with a motherboard that was about 5 years old (and had been out of production for 4 years). [2692]