MSI's Final BX Achievement
Written: Dec 26 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Overclockable and Stable
Cons: No on-board RAID or ATA100
|
|
|
| BBeck's Full Review: MSI Slot 1 BX Master Motherboard |
The MSI BX Master is Microstar's last Slot 1 BX motherboard, now discontinued in favor of newer architectures and chipsets. It can still be found at certain locations and MSI continues to support it with occasional bios updates at their web site. While it may justifiably be coined a little "long in the tooth" by today's motherboard standards sporting ATA-100 and RAID, I see no reason not to consider this great board. The BX chipset is a proven performer, widely supported throughout the industry.
I did quite a bit of research before purchasing the BX Master, comparing it to similar offerings from, among others, Abit and Asus. The BX Master in fact replaced an Abit BF6, a solid board in its own right but lacking on-board ATA66 support like the BX Master. An add-on card for the Abit could have been purchased, but this would have meant using an additonal PCI slot, problematic in light of all the other cards in my system.
The BX Master was purchased with 2 important objectives in mind: overclockability and stability, factors which can be at odds with each other without quality components to complement the board. The Slot 1 design provides more room to handle the larger heatsink/fan solutions than socket boards though the BX Master is still a bit too small to house my large Alpha without blocking 2 DIMM slots. My system is composed of the following:
p3 700e cBO SECC2 @ 854 (2-2-2) /1.70v
Alpha P3 125S w/ YS Tech's
MSI BX Master 5.4 bios / UDMA 66
256Mb Kingmax PC150 TBGA rev 1.2
Voodoo3 3000 AGP / Iomega Jaz 2g
Deskstar 75GXP 20.5g / 34GXP 13.5g
Adaptec 2906 SCSI-II / Linksys 10/100 NIC
Ricoh 7060(S)csi 6x4x24 / SBLive Value / Diamond Supra Modem
InWin Q600 Tower + (4)x 80mm Sunons + slot fan
As you can see I've achieved a nice overclock to 854 Mhz from a 700Mhz processor with complete stability, running 24/7 for the past 3 months. With upgrades to the video card and voltage tweaks I'm confident of even higher speeds though I'm quite happy where it's at. Anyone who's considering just one step away from cutting edge (translation: no compatibility issues) without worry of technological obsolescence any time soon would benefit from this board.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
BBeck
|
|
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.