Excellent Motherboard for its price
Written: Oct 29 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: stable, cheap, fast
Cons: thermometer not working properly?
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| mojo_n's Full Review: Abit BF6 |
I was in the market for a motherboard that would house my Celeron 300, but have the capability to be upgraded to something speedy in the future. This motherboard was the answer I was looking for. This board, similar to the BE6rev2 except for the replacement of an ATA66 controller for an extra PCI slot, provides stability, but most importantly is an overclockers dream!
This puppy can take bus speeds at 66,75 and 83-200! I don't think the BX chipset will ever arrive at 200, but at least overclocking won't be held back by the motherboard!
This board only has 3 DIMM slots. This is usually enough, but it can happen that you get 4 pieces of RAM and you can't fit them all in (and you curse). But it's not such a big deal.
On the software side of things (ie BIOS), the new SoftMenu III makes overclocking and system adjustments a breeze. This allows you to set the bus speed, the multiplier, and the AGP and PCI dividers. A multitude of other features are also very welcome (although not all that useful). For example, the keyboard hotkey to turn the computer on is pretty nifty, or you can set it to come on at a certain time, etc.
The only really bad thing about this board is that the jumpers are located in a cramped spot, up by the drives in most cases and therefore hard to reach. The jumpers are only used for when you either a) want to prevent other people from just messing with your BIOS and mis-clocking your system or b) when you mess up the clocking and your system won't boot, you can set it back to normal using the jumpers.
The only issue I have with it is the CPU temperature. It reports that my CPU is running at 60-70 degrees Celsius! However, attaching the included thermistor on the outside of the chip assures me that my chip is running at 30 degrees Celsius. Also, the Hardware Doctor does not work in windows 2000 (for me at least).
Overall, I haven't had any real problems with this board, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone looking for a BX motherboard. I rate this a 10/10.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): C139
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Epinions.com ID:
mojo_n
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Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 2 members
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