micro atx with vdimm control

[eat@joes]

Hi everyone. I just got a micro atx Gigabyte with a 6150/430 chipset. Works really nice, except a few problems. The chipset gets very hot and uses only passive cooling. This causes stability issues and many lockups and restarts. Putting a fan over it fixed that problem instantly. The board, as well as many other Gigabyte boards have posting issues. After a few restarts during the first boot, it finally gets past post. Looking past these issues it works really nice. The 16 up/down is a nice feature to the 6150 and the memory transfer rate is really good. The vdimm is non-existent so don't plan on using high quality RAM. I had to RMA my OCZ Gold for OCZ Platinum since the Platinum runs at 2.5~6V. The board won't give 2.8 to the dimm :(. Runs fine now.

A question. I haven't been able to find many boards with vdimm control, or any voltage control in that matter in micro atx form. I know it's because of the small size and they're just meant for basic use, but does anybody know of a decent board that has good voltage control?

My system uses:
Gigabyte GA-blah blah I'm too many characters for a model name 6150/430
Athlon64 3000
1GB PQI Turbo dual channel (waiting for OCZ to mail the RAM back)
2x300GB maxLine in raid 0
Power Color X1600XT
No VDIMM control!

[Yawgm0th]

Re: micro atx with vdimm control

Going through Newegg...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813153027

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135191

People say the second one doesn't overclock too well, but it does have the voltage control. The reviews say the first one OCs well, but it's relatively pricy and you're getting onboard video that you won't use.

[dingetje]

Re: micro atx with vdimm control

Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS board has vdimm and vcore control and is a reasonable oc'er

msi 6150 (k8ngm2-fid) has vdimm (and vcore but it is disabled in bios, so maybe a later biosversion also vcore) and is a mild oc'er (240/250 mhz possible but the disabled vcore is holding it back)

albatron 6150 km51pv has also vdimm and vcore according to manual

[eat@joes]

Re: micro atx with vdimm control

I was thinking either the BIOSTAR Tforce6100 here or the MSI RS482M4 here. The biostar has a good bios in it allowing for full control, but the MSI has 2 more sata, and a newer (RS450) southbridge than most other Xpress200 chipsets which use RS400. I'm not worried too much about having better on-board audio though. The chipset isn't a huge deal since I won't be using the on-board muck. The MSI also has firewire and more headers. So it pretty much comes down to those two and I really haven't been able to choose between the two. Here's what I have if I haven't said it yet:
Athlon64 3000
1GB PQI Turbo (soon to be OCZ platinum)
Power Color X1600XT
2 x 300GB maXlines with NCQ support
OCZ 450W Modstream
Sony DW-Q30A DL DVD writer

[Yawgm0th]

Re: micro atx with vdimm control

My experience with Biostar motherboards is to never get one. Perhaps Biostar has changed since socket 939, but previously Biostar has been most well-known for its shoddy manufacturing and unstable boards. I'd say go with something else even if that's a good board, just because there will be other good boards from better companies (such as the MSI you're looking at).