ECS uses double-sided tape for their KT400 mainboard too.

[CougTek]

I received today another motherboard from ECS, but this time based on the KT400 chipset instead of the SiS735. It's a LVT7A, rev 1.0. I removed the north bridge (and had even more misery doing it than on the K7S5A Pro I sent to Handruin) just to see if they fix all their heatsink the same poor way they do with the K7S5A and...yep, they do. The KT400 dissipates more heat than the SiS735 IIRC, so using tape to fix the heatsink on top of the chipset is even worst in this case. I hope I'll be able to remove all the tape without scratching the heatsink this time, because I have better things to do than lap it this evening.

I'll plug a Duron 1.6GHz on this mainboard and add it to my crunching farm. I won't reach JoJo's level, but hopefully, I'll lose less ground to him than during the last two weeks. If I can o/c the Duron to 2GHz (FSB jump), it'll be even better.

 

[Mercutio]

Coug, why do you keep buying those things?

 

[CougTek]

Because I bought it at half-price and that it works fine when used normally. And once I'll have put thermal paste on the heatsink above the north bridge, it will be just as fine as any other budget board for running the F@h client.

But it's probably the last ECS board I buy in a while. With my revenues increasing significantly now, I'll pay to save myself the trouble of removing tape on tiny heatsinks.

 

[CougTek]

And the board works. I found out that S.O.S. iron wool does wonders to clean glue leftovers on heatsinks. Too bad I couldn't use it on the north bridge itself.

Overclocking didn't work. Probably caused by the poor heatsink I placed on the CPU rather than the motherboard. At the default frequency, the BIOS tells me that the temp. is hovering around 65C, ouch! I thought my Thermaltake Volcano 7 with a fan ducting thermaltake kit would fare better. Whatever, it's better than my old T'bird 800MHz.

 

[Adcadet]

hmm...who was it asking why I didn't go with ECS's Athlon 64 motherboard?