Mobile A64 Motherboard compatibility?

[ddrueding]

I'm looking very closely at a 35W A64 2700+ (1.2V stock) and a GIGABYTE GA-K8VT800M motherboard. I read on SPCR about some compatibility issues, but no specific list of what works and what doesn't. I did a search of the (rather extensive) forums there and came up dry. Does anyone here know of a list of compatible mobos? I'll likely be ordering in a few days to be the gunea pig, but it would be nice to know ahead of time...

 

[ddrueding]

So that would be a no? Oh, well. I'm ordering 3 of them right now...

 

[Jan Kivar]

This AnandTech thread might help...

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Buck]

Good find Jan.

 

[ddrueding]

Holy cow! Thanks for the link Jan, I'm just on page 7 so far...but it isn't looking too good. I may just do it anyway and see...wtf.

 

[Jan Kivar]

Good find Jan.

Well... I can't actually take the credit for it. Somebody else posted it on SPCR forums. Just passing the information.

Jan

 

[ddrueding]

I was able to hold out this long for more info, but I just gave newegg $2k+...I hope this stuff works

 

[ddrueding]

For the record, the Gigabyte board above was actually destroyed by the mobile chip (it worked before with a regular 3000+, even worked after a flash to the latest BIOS, then hasn't worked since the chip was installed, enen with the original 3000+ in it).

I was then foolish enough to try it in a MSI K8T-NEO motherboard with latest BIOS and it works fine. I've never had a CPU run at under 90F with a 7v cpu fan...

 

[Jan Kivar]

What HSF do You use, David? And how You mounted it?

Cheers,

Jan

 

[ddrueding]

I've been using the heatsink mentioned in the thread above, IIRC a Thermalright SLK-9047U. This HS requires no mods to use a mobile chip. If you feel it isn't on firmly enough, it's easy to shim the screws with washers.

 

[ddrueding]

SLK-947U

PUI

 

[blakerwry]

can you run those chips with a passive heatsink?

 

[ddrueding]

can you run those chips with a passive heatsink?

I'm seriously debating it. If I could find a way to underclock it to ~2500+ (1.4Ghz) @ <1v, that would be near certain passive capability. The ones I'm using are stock @ 2800+ (1.6Ghz) 1.2v and 35W heat dissipation. Not quite into the passive range, but really frickin close.

I'm so tempted to use a 4GB CF card on an IDE adapter as an OS drive. I already passively cool both my video cards, and my PS is so quiet it doesn't count. Even if it did; having no hard drives, an ultra-low power CPU and only one hungry video card would allow a small passive PS.

 

[blakerwry]

My SiS based Asrock boards allow me to change the FSB on my athlonXP CPUs from 50MHz to ~250MHz (effectivley 100MHz to 500MHZ)

I find this very interesting because the athlon chip was never designed for anything lower than 100MHz DDR (200MHz effective) FSB.

At 50MHz bus I found the computer to be less than stable, but I don't remember any problems at 66MHz.

Unfortunately the board does not allow undervolting.


I wonder if the a64 based SiS boards cary over these undeclocking features.

 

[ddrueding]

Would one of the more insane coolers support 35W passively?

Thoughts?

 

[blakerwry]

The way that last one fits on there you could certainly use the case fan to cool a low heat output CPU... this would decrease the number of fans in the system... but your case fan would probably need to be 80-92mm to be most effective.

The reason I believe this is because a 120mm fan is not going to have as high of air speed compared to a smaller fan given the same flow. Because of this, a 120mm fan will probably not pull air across the heatsink as well at a given rpm level.

This is just my educated guess though.

hmm.. maybe ducting would help... yep... ducting would probably make that last heatsink work doubly well 1) better air flow across the heatsink and 2) decreased noise escaping from the system.