I bought last year a pack of 4 LGA775 motherboards for $16, each being said it has something broken.
1. Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L - this one was said to have a bent pin in the socket, but it POST'd fine and all pins were straight.
2. ABIT IP35 PRO - this one would show up 84 POST code, beep then shut off. Bridging the Gate and Drain on a certain MOSFET near DIMM4 (the closest to the slot) brought it back to life along with setting the RAM to 2.1V in order to work correctly. (1.8v would result in lockups during POST, dunno why.)
3. MSI P6N SLI V2 - wouldn't power on, dead proprietary MSI chip. (probably a rebadged Winbond chip that is also used on ABIT motherboards)
4. ECS G41T-M7 - dead MOSFET which in turn must have fried the southbridge. I could care less about it although it's DDR3, because it's ECS.
After this I've been left with two working boards - a Gigabyte EP31-DS3L and the ABIT IP35 PRO.
I'm also planning on going with a Core 2 Quad (or at least a E7600 C2D if I can't find a quad) because my Athlon II X4 is driving me nuts with how slow can it get sometimes.
Which one do you recommend? By the way ASUS is out of the question, their boards are now ECS/PCChips quality and even then ECS fares better than a ASUS.
1. Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L - this one was said to have a bent pin in the socket, but it POST'd fine and all pins were straight.
2. ABIT IP35 PRO - this one would show up 84 POST code, beep then shut off. Bridging the Gate and Drain on a certain MOSFET near DIMM4 (the closest to the slot) brought it back to life along with setting the RAM to 2.1V in order to work correctly. (1.8v would result in lockups during POST, dunno why.)
3. MSI P6N SLI V2 - wouldn't power on, dead proprietary MSI chip. (probably a rebadged Winbond chip that is also used on ABIT motherboards)
4. ECS G41T-M7 - dead MOSFET which in turn must have fried the southbridge. I could care less about it although it's DDR3, because it's ECS.
After this I've been left with two working boards - a Gigabyte EP31-DS3L and the ABIT IP35 PRO.
I'm also planning on going with a Core 2 Quad (or at least a E7600 C2D if I can't find a quad) because my Athlon II X4 is driving me nuts with how slow can it get sometimes.
Which one do you recommend? By the way ASUS is out of the question, their boards are now ECS/PCChips quality and even then ECS fares better than a ASUS.
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