Asrock K78SXE

[superpsa]

Just bought one and it should come tomorrow.
I'll post a wee review of it seeing as no-one seems to review it (unless it's against Solteks top dog Nforce2...WHY?)
Only cost me £45 so quite a steal for USB2, DDR400 support blah blah...
Anyway, wish me luck If it's a dud i'll say.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheMASK]

Gud Luck!

<b>Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.</b>

 

[superpsa]

Works a treat.

Some board info

1 AGP 8X
6 PCI
4 USB 2.0 on back (support to add 2 more on the board)
DDR 266/333/400 Support
100/133/166/200 FSB Support
LAN
Onboard sound (not tried it out but will have a try of it later)
Basically all the usual gubbings.

Runs the SiS 748 Northbridge which is pretty sweet. Comparable to a performance between the KT400 and KT400A.

Only thing I can really fault with this board is the lack oof any real ability to OC it (but it's a budget board, so you wouldn't expect it to) and also they don't provide you with thecables to take advantage of the USB connectors on the board (altho i have front USB connectors so it didn't matter to me).

The BIOS flaws that were mentioned in the one review i read appear to have gone. It's an American Megatrends BIOS. Very simple and straightforward.

Anyway, running fine for 6-7 hours now not a problem. Running cooler than on my old board too. 36C Idle 40C under load!!! Quite impressed.

So if you want a cheap board with all the gubbings, this is a good option.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheMASK]

Congratulations!!!

By the way, thats a nice Full load temp u get there. What CPU do u have in there?

Care to give out other details such as th memory, Vid card??

<b>I hate scottchen.
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.

 

[superpsa]

Palomino 1.9 with Volcano 7+ on it
Crucial DDR266 (2x256MB)
GF4 MX440

My cheap and cheerful machine

I think a lot of the heat loss comes down to the the SiS northbridge which can apparently run without a heatsink (altho they bung one on just in case!) My room temps pretty low at 23c too.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheMASK]

thats a nice Full load temp for a Palamino 1900+. that Volcano 7+ rocks.

any luck with oveclocking that chip?

<b>I hate scottchen.
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.

 

[TheMASK]

thats a nice Full load temp for a Palamino 1900+. that Volcano 7+ rocks.

any luck with oveclocking that chip?

<b>I hate scottchen.
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.

 

[superpsa]

I pondered over doing the L1 bridges and unlocking the multiplier...but it's just too small and fidgity for me. The onyl way I've OCed it is to up the FSB. I had it running 2000+ (1690Mhz? can't remember) without fault and it booted at 2100+ too, but i put it down again. Not realy played with this puppy much as I've only had it a week .

Still got my old Tbird 1.1 running at 1.33 next door tho. It runs 50c under load! I think the temp sensor must be out a few degrees or something. Gonna connect up my Hardcano to it.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheMASK]

If u have the time and are willing to take the risk, its worth playing around the L1 bridges. But then again, its a Palamino u have there. So even with all that mod i doubt if u cud ever go over 1850MHz which is about 2300+.

Now go get one of those cheapo 1700+ and overclock the heck outta them

<b>I hate scottchen.
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.

 

[pIII_Man]

yup...that would be my next move

So easy to fry yet tastes so good...
Silicon: The other, other, other white meat

 

[superpsa]

It's quite annoying actually because the only reason I got a Pally was because my old board was a bit vague about whether it would run T-breds. Will definitely play with it in future. I even got myself a lovely conductive pen

Just updated the BIOS for it (just too see what changes had been made, nothing wrong with the one shipped). Decided to go with the one with the Logo so no longer see the "Checking RAM" etc screen. Just a big ASROCK logo with "F2 FOR CMOS, F11 FOR NET BOOT". Looks pretty snazzy...or i'm just one for gimmicks

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheMASK]

and u wont regret it

<b>I hate scottchen.
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.

 

[TheMASK]

hey, if it runs a Palamino with out any probs, it shud run a t-bred too. the only difference between the Palamino and the t-breds is the manufaacturing process employed.

<b>I hate scottchen.
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.

 

[superpsa]

Yeah, i thought that but it was a Jetway and there were 3 different versions of the board and there was no way of finding out what version I had (Jetway tech support were useless). This board with run anything up to and including Bartons.

I've just read that ASRock have released an OCing BIOS for the K7S8X so hopefully one for the K7S8XE is coming soon so I can play with the multipliers after i unlock.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheMASK]

Oh i c.
anyways, this new board of urs looks kinda good. It even supports 400 FSB CPUs. Good Luck with overclocking. Do keep me posted

<b>I hate scottchen.
Scottchen's</b> sig: I could only overclock my Barton 2500+ to 2645mhz. My Radeon 9700pro core/mem speed won't go above 410/720.

 

[superpsa]

I think it's now on sale in the USA. I read on the asrock forum at OCWorkbench that if you want to run your Barton 2500+ (333FSB) @ 3200+ (400FSB) all you do is simply flick the FSB setting and they work perfectly on a lot of the boards (like can stand a day of Prime95 running)! Seems like fun. A lot of Beta BIOSs about for the board too. Altho there is currently no way of changing the multipliers and voltages it seems that in future BIOS releases it will be possible. This is what happened with the predecessor (It ran the 746FX chipset).

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[TheMASK]

GOOD LUCK with overclocking!!

<b>D00D i dont know what ur talking about</b>

 

[hatimh]

Considering that this board hasn't got mult and voltage adjustments and overclocking with FSB only (for the time being) is available what would be the best chip to put in there for just upping the fsb. Could you give the 3 best in order of oc-ability (and stability ofcourse) on this board? To help out a bit I read one review which mentioned that they took the board to 208 fsb.

Thanks.

-----------------------------------
Don't extract the urine.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by hatimh on 08/05/03 09:45 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Rob423]

Yea these AsRock's look good, i made a post a few days ago actually asking about these.. i think it was the K7m2 model... something like that.. anyway, my cousin had to build 5 cheap Pc's for his office, and he went with a 52$ asrock that has onboard video and audio, and said they run great.

It's an Asus Product, so it has to be somewhat decent!

RIG
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
80gb Maxtor
Lian-Li PC-60
Lite-On 52X
AMD XP2800+
LeadTek GeForce 4 Ti4200 w/vivo 128mb 8x
Hitachi CML174
1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 Cas2

 

[hatimh]

ok sounds good but what about the cpu....

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The bigger I am, the harder they fall.

 

[hatimh]

bump!

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The bigger I am, the harder they fall.

 

[superpsa]

They're actually not owned by Asus anymore. Asus make their own brand of cheap boards called the "X" series.

If you wait a month or so before upgrading you'll probably be able to get one of the new OCing (Rev3) boards from Asrock.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[superpsa]

If it's the K7S8XE board you're buying then bung in a 2500+ barton and switch the FSB to 400 and you'll have a 3200+ running stable. This apparently works in a number of the boards (but not all).

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[superpsa]

www.ocworkbench.com/asrock if you look here there's a lot of K7S8X(E) users.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[hatimh]

Sweet, thanks alot I'm off there now.

Cheers again.

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The bigger I am, the harder they fall.