Wanted: mobo recommendation

**rickenbacherus** · 12-08-2003, 02:15 AM

Originally Posted by oldgeezer

Overclocking is fun! Is your cpu 'locked'? What stepping does it have? What is the default Vcore? You can get the 'wire trick' and painting guides from www.ocinside.de. Will you stick with aircooling? We can help, if you need it.
OG.

mbmon

Temp.= 36.0, 58.5, 0.0; Rot.= 4500, 0, 0
Vcore = 1.68, 1.68; Volt. = 3.41, 4.81, 11.86, -16.19, -6.12
From the links posted previously by m_yates I found this perfect thread. There seem to be many options for overclocking this board. Including the 'wire' trick and even some mobo modification w/ a soldering iron although I have yet to find any good pics for this. I've not cut any of the bridges on the cpu itself either. All I'm really after is the easiest way to get to 2.0G. I intend on sticking w/ air cooling.

**oldgeezer** · 12-08-2003, 07:18 AM

You seem to have a problem, ricky. It looks as if you've been sold a Thoroughbred 'A', which is a poor overclocker and gets far too hot (should be around 40C), as you can see. You need a bigger HSF with a copper base. You need to assemble your HSF using only pure silver windscreen-heater repair paint (from any car spares shop), after removing the supplied phase-change material and lapping the contact surfaces dead flat. These are the minimum requirements before attempting m/b resoldering. The wire trick may not get you the Vcore voltage selections you require. Your best option is to RMA the cpu you have on whatever pretext and replace it with the cheaper and far better performing Duron1.6, based on the Thornton core. Otherwise, the advice on nforcershq seems OK, although you are unlikely to get the present chip much beyond FSB138 which I would consider unacceptable. Your 5V (4% down) and, to a lesser extent 12V, PSU lines seem to take a bit of a canning, too, which can be important on that m/b. Some way to go with the present combination. [As I said, I wouldn't have chosen this m/b!]
OG.

**rickenbacherus** · 12-09-2003, 05:01 AM

Hold up there OG- nothing's getting RMA'd anywhere unless it dies within the warranty period. Bottom line is I am quite happy w/ my machine. If I don't get it to 2G then oh well- myabe next time. Switching from a 550Mhz w/ 256M to a 1.8G w/ 1G is like night and day. The CPU temp I don't have a problem w/ tryng to lower a bit. All in time.

**oldgeezer** · 12-09-2003, 08:04 AM

Fair comment, rick. Fixing the heat problem is the immediate issue. Allow +25/30deg higher core temperature than the indicated surface value. 95C is max permitted, but diffusion has T in the exponential, so it's good to keep things cool. The stepping is shown in the start up list; you can confirm whether it's an 'A' or 'B' according as '0' or'1' shows. The 'B' types run cooler like the D1.6, partly because the Vcore is lower. Power/heat dissipation is a square law, of course, in V and f. We'll all be on 64bit, BTX within a year or so - fortunately, the penguin is ready for us!
OG.

**baldyeti** · 12-09-2003, 02:16 PM

Hi all. I am considering purchasing the MSI K7N2G-L nforce2-based mobo.
I haven't read the whole thread so just let me know whether my following
questions have been answered previously. I am wondering what is
recognised/supported in standard by knoppix, and what has to be installed
afterwards: my understanding is that one needs to install both an nforce2
driver plus the all-in-one graphics driver as for non-integrated cards. Is this
correct? Were your lan/usb/sound working once this had been done?
And before that, are any cheatcodes needed in order to boot and install
knoppix (or possibly mepis)? Also, when one wants to evaluate a recent
knoppix CD, is this possible with a standard XFree86 nv/fb/vesa driver?

As usual, TIA.

**oldgeezer** · 12-09-2003, 03:21 PM

Best advice seems to be to avoid anything nVidia unless you are reasonably Linux literate. Lets me out, then. KISS rules. Why not try reading the extremely enlightening threads on this Forum?! Could save serious pain.
OG.

**rickenbacherus** · 12-09-2003, 09:58 PM

Originally Posted by baldyeti

Hi all. I am considering purchasing the MSI K7N2G-L nforce2-based mobo.
I haven't read the whole thread so just let me know whether my following
questions have been answered previously. I am wondering what is
recognised/supported in standard by knoppix, and what has to be installed
afterwards: my understanding is that one needs to install both an nforce2
driver plus the all-in-one graphics driver as for non-integrated cards. Is this
correct? Were your lan/usb/sound working once this had been done?
And before that, are any cheatcodes needed in order to boot and install
knoppix (or possibly mepis)? Also, when one wants to evaluate a recent
knoppix CD, is this possible with a standard XFree86 nv/fb/vesa driver?

As usual, TIA.

Knoppix doesn't have the nvidia drivers but Overclockix does although the release is getting a bit outdated. I have integrated everything so I'm not sure about the graphics driver. I used Kano's script to install nvidia drivers. kano.mipooh.net

Everything on my board is working beautifully. I'm very happy w/ the nforce myself. gluck

**baldyeti** · 12-09-2003, 10:37 PM

Hi rick, did you stick to your choice of Asus A7N266-VM? nforce1 thus.
You mentioned a price of 75$, but the MSI board will be more like 130$.
Oh well. If you boot your new system with a knoppix CD, does that work,
only not optimally, or does it require Overclockix for the nforce to be usable
at all? I don't mind recompiling a kernel and whatnot for my HD-installation,
but I'd still like to retain the posiiblity to test new knoppix releases from plain
CD or poor man installl.

Did you try the 'toram' cheatcode with that Gb of memory? How does it feel?
Just the other day a colleague of mine told me someone had announced 500 Gb
HD's for 2004, a pair of which he intends to buy for his heavy-duty video-editing
needs. Sure, terabytes of storage, gigabytes of ram, multi-gigahertz CPU's,
50+ Mbits/s wireless ... what's next

**A. Jorge Garcia** · 12-17-2003, 09:34 PM

Never mind, all I needed to do was reboot the cable modem....

Silly me.

Thanx anyway,

**rickenbacherus** · 12-19-2003, 06:03 PM

Originally Posted by baldyeti

Hi rick, did you stick to your choice of Asus A7N266-VM? nforce1 thus.
You mentioned a price of 75$, but the MSI board will be more like 130$.
Oh well. If you boot your new system with a knoppix CD, does that work,
only not optimally, or does it require Overclockix for the nforce to be usable
at all? I don't mind recompiling a kernel and whatnot for my HD-installation,
but I'd still like to retain the posiiblity to test new knoppix releases from plain
CD or poor man installl.

Did you try the 'toram' cheatcode with that Gb of memory? How does it feel?
Just the other day a colleague of mine told me someone had announced 500 Gb
HD's for 2004, a pair of which he intends to buy for his heavy-duty video-editing
needs. Sure, terabytes of storage, gigabytes of ram, multi-gigahertz CPU's,
50+ Mbits/s wireless ... what's next

I did get the Asus board and it works beautifuly. I couldn't be happier. You won't have networking w/ a standard Knoppix cd- you'll have to use Overclockix or Morphix. I haven't yet tried the toram cheat code.

Hopefully the GPL forcedeth driver makes it into a Knoppix release soon.