Few questions..

acidturnacidturn
edited October 2005 in Hardware
New to the forums and I thought Id ask a few questions that have been on my mind.

If a case uses an extended atx, does a regular atx board not fit?

My other question is whether or not the msi board oc well. Ive been told that they dont oc as well as DFI boards but the person who told me wasn't all that sure himself so I wanted to clear the issue up. Thanks guys.

Comments

  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    Welcome to Short-Media!

    Could you be more specific about the mainboards in question? If you are referring to the DFI NF3/NF4 series of mainboards, they are generally considered to hold the overclocking crown today. The latest 939 MSI boards do have some nice features over the DFI, like better integrated sound etc.
  • acidturnacidturn
    edited October 2005
    Oh I see, so the MSI boards arent hard to oc with?

    What I mean with the extended atx is, if a case says its form factor is extended atx, and the mb you want says its form factor is atx, then will the atx board not fit? I didnt really understand so forgive me if its a really stupid question.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    acidturn wrote:
    Oh I see, so the MSI boards arent hard to oc with?

    What I mean with the extended atx is, if a case says its form factor is extended atx, and the mb you want says its form factor is atx, then will the atx board not fit? I didnt really understand so forgive me if its a really stupid question.

    No such thing as a stupid question :D

    Generally, the DFI and MSI are not terribly difficult to overclock with, however the DFI gives you many more 'tweaking' options, like greater ranges of voltage to select, and many memory timings to adjust. The MSI will still have plenty of tweaking options, but not quite in the same league as the DFI boards. Both are great boards in my mind.

    Extended ATX is a larger, server style form factor. Neither the DFI nor the MSI are EATX boards. Most mainstream cases do not support EATX. You'll need to check with the case manufacturer. Some workstation or server cases support them.

    Below is an image of an EATX board. It is probably about 30% longer than an ATX board. The second image is a standard ATX style board.

    rev-xeon604-moboLG.jpg

    GA-K8NPRO-SLI.gif
  • acidturnacidturn
    edited October 2005
    Oh, I see. I was wondering because a thermaltake case I am looking at/interested in is an extended ATX. Bummer :(

    If you can bear another question, I was wondering if a fan/heatsink says its compatible with an Athlon 64 FX 939, does this mean it wont fit into a regular 64?
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    acidturn wrote:
    Oh, I see. I was wondering because a thermaltake case I am looking at/interested in is an extended ATX. Bummer :(

    If you can bear another question, I was wondering if a fan/heatsink says its compatible with an Athlon 64 FX 939, does this mean it wont fit into a regular 64?

    Actually, that case will be fine. A standard ATX motherboard WILL fit in an extended ATX case, however an extended ATX motherboard is too big to fit into an ATX case. It is backwards compatible.

    Also, all socket 939/754/940 CPU coolers should work on any A64 system. They have a standard retention system.
  • acidturnacidturn
    edited October 2005
    I think these two are the same product, except one site says seektime=8ms while the other says 8ms. The other difference is that, though they are both retail drives, there is a $80 difference after rebate. Correct me if Im wrong, but are these two drives the same? And if they are the same,which seek time is correct?

    http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4303165

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148070

    SEAGATE 300GB
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited October 2005
    They both are advertised using the same model number, so I'd assume they are indeed the same drive. One vendor offers a rebate; the other does not. Ensure that you check the rebate details.

    I wouldn't worry about the seek time documentation discrepancy - minor typo probably: 8ms vs 8.5ms. It's probably the former number. But it could be one vendor is selling a later revision of the drive that could be slightly faster. You won't notice a real world performance difference between 8 and 8.5ms response time.

    The key to knowing the proper fit of a heatsink is to know for which CPU socket design it is engineered. For AMD 64 variations there are sockets 754, 939, and 940. Most heatsinks marketed for one of those sockets will fit all three. But you must make sure the vendor specifications states exactly which sockets the heatsink supports.
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