Fujitsu-Siemens D1184 (ICH1)

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The Fujitsu-Siemens D1184 has the highest standard of manufacturing quality. Nevertheless, in the end user market Siemens still leads quite a shadowy existence, which is unnecessary considering the board's performance and quality. In the past the board production was exclusively aimed at the project business, and the regular user could not buy these boards in retail stores. But this is supposed to change now, with Siemens planning to offer the boards in retail stores as well. The D1184 is still equipped with the old ICH1 chip, but it also possesses a network chip. The extensive thermal management that is implemented as a pure hardware solution independent from the operating system platform ensures high reliability. It monitors temperature and fan revolutions, and adapts them to the actual operation status. The manufacturer is very much on the conservative side with the settings for Front Side Bus and memory clock: Siemens strictly complies with the specifications recommended by Intel, thus the maximum possible FSB clock is limited to 133 MHz. As a result, this board is more for PC OEMs than for overclocking-eager home users. The benchmark results are not bad at all: In all disciplines, the D1184 occupies one of the top places. If Siemens would implement all important overclocking features in a special version of this D1184, it could instill fear in the competition.