ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Z68 Chipset Motherboard Review

When Intel brought out the P67 and H67 chipsets, many enthusiasts complained that the features of one or the other were only available on one or the other, but not both. Intel has heard the community and is therefore launching the Z68 chipset. As usual ASUS is among the first board makers to offer a board featuring this latest chipset. The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro promises to be an interesting first look at this new chipset

Introduction

You’ve probably owned ASUS built products without even knowing it. It makes everything from motherboards to monitors, to consumer electronics, and more. Founded in 1986 ASUS has become one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world and is probably the largest motherboard manufacturer on the planet, surely when it comes to retail box packages.
The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro is based on Intel’s brand new Z68 Express chipset. Less than six months ago Intel launched two chipsets. P67 and H67.

The former was targeted towards mainstream and some enthusiast users. This chipset offered the ability to overclocked multiplier unlocked K series parts with impunity. At least, through turbo multipliers. The H67 chipset on the other hand featured support for Intel’s Integrated Graphics Processors, or IGPUs which are part of the Sandy Bridge core processors’ dies. Furthermore Intel’s quick sync feature was tied to H67 and anyone who might have wanted to take advantage of these features had to choose between using the IGPU’s and Quick Sync or overclocking. This didn’t sit well with many enthusiasts and of course, many people made their opinions on this well known. Well if Z68 proves anything, it’s that Intel has been listening. No longer must you choose between the feature sets of P67 and H67. You can now have both feature sets and more. And when we say "more" there is a LOT more.

Read More - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/05/11/asus_p8z68v_pro_z68_chipset_motherboard_review

PSA: Intel recalls its 6-Series Sandy Bridge Chipset due to serious flaw.

Intel has today announced that its 6-series chipset, for use with the Sandy Bridge processors released earlier this year, has a serious flaw and that the company is recalling and replacing the affected parts. The chipsets, which provide PCI Express, USB, and other connectivity to the processor, have a problem in their SATA controllers causing performance to degrade over time.

In its statement, the company states that customers who have taken delivery of systems with the P67 and H67 "Cougar Point" chipsets can continue to use their systems "with confidence," suggesting that the flaw is restricted to a performance issue and cannot cause data loss. Nonetheless, such users should contact their computer manufacturers to obtain a fixed system.

The flawed chipsets are no longer shipping from Intel, and the company has already started manufacturing corrected versions. These will reach customers by the end of February. Full production volume won't be achieved until April. Intel estimates that the full financial cost of the error will be around $700 million, with $300 million of that incurred during the first quarter due to the production interruption. The company has adjusted its investor guidance accordingly.

via ArsTechnica
www.customdesktops.moonfruit.com

Foxconn A6VMX AM2+ Motherboard Review

I recently purchased a relitivly cheap Socket AM2 motherboard produced by Foxconn. It is the Foxconn A6VMX. This review is based upon using the motherboard for about 3 months getting to know it's features.
Firstly I would like to start of with the price. It is a fairly cheap motherboard priced around £31 ($47). At this price I was expecting a flimsy low feature motherboard with relitivly low quality capacitors and barely any external ports but I was wrong.

The motherboard has the following rear I/O connectors;

• 1 set 5.1 channel Audio jacks (3 jacks)
• 1x Parallel port
• 1x PS/2 keyboard port
• 1x PS/2 mouse port
• 1x VGA port
• 4x USB 2.0 ports
• 1x RJ45 LAN port

1x Serial port
This is enough for many people although lacking DVI and HDMI this is to be expected with a motherboard that costs this ammount. I am glad to see that this board comes with both PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse which many motherboards are now leaving out to save space on the I/O plate. It also includes 5.1 audio which I have been very pleased with when playing music through my X-540 speakers. The sound quality is very good.
On the inside this motherboard offers plenty of connections for the PC builder to work with. The motherboard has the following ports for internal uses;

• 1x CD-in connector
  1x Front Audio header
  1x S/PDIF Out header
  1x IRDA
  1x TV Out header
  1x Floppy connector
  1x Front Panel connector
  2x USB 2.0 connectors support additional 4 ports
  1x Speaker
  4x SATA II connectors
  2x USB Power header
  1x IDE

I was amazed to see so many SATA ports on a motherboard of this price but it is very nice they have included so many. It also features a floppy connector and an IDE connector. These are great if you have either an old hard drive or old floppy disk that you would like to save the data from. IDE performance seems ok with it being able to run both of the disk drives at the same time. I am also sure that many people would be glad to see that they have included S/PDIF and TV out headers for use in a media computer setup.

The board has the following expansion slots;

• 1 x PCIe x16
• 1 x PCIe x1
• 2 x PCI

The small ammount of expansion slots is mainly down to the fact that this is a Micro ATX board. I have installed an Nvidia 9400GT 1GB edition with a double slot cooler which unfortunatly renders on of the PCI slots unusable and with only 2 on the board this could be a problem for some people. Another problem is that when you install a long graphics card such as a Radeon HD5770 you will loose 2 of the SATA ports behind the graphics card as they are not mounted horizonatly. Another small issue with the layout of this board is where the 24 Pin power plug is mounted. It is half way down the board on the right hand side which means you have the giant 24 wire cable running across the top of the RAM slots and CPU fan plug. This isn't too much of a problem but it does create a bad look and could impede cooling.

This board is relitivly cool running when paired with a Athlon 64 x2 and 2GB of RAM. The northbridge heatsink is slightly warm to the touch the same as the southbridge. When I turned the PC off after long use I found that the Capacitors and the VRM (Voltage Regulating modules) where also very cool. The board also seems to be build quite solid with the cpu heatsink mount being firmly attached and the heatsinks for the northbridge and southbridge being aligned and perfectly secure. On the other hand this board doesn't feature many solid capacitors which many people would want these days but I haven't had any issue with this as all the capacitors are good japanese brands on this motherboard.

With the Athlon 5600 installed I managed to overclock it from 2.9Ghz to a stable 3.15Ghz which is a fair improvement.

I do however have some very small issues with the software that was supplied. 

Included with the motherboard was;

• Motherboard Drivers
• Fox one overclocking utility
• Fox Logo
• Fox Live Update

I found that the programs were all a little glitchy apart from the overclocking utility. They do not seem to be fully matured just yet and may need to be updated to improve stability and features. The Overclocking utulity is great and I did managed to get a stable overclock. It also monitors temperatures and voltages which seem to be more reliable than other hardware monitoring tools. The fox logo on the other hand didn't seem to work and to me it is a little risky using it as it messes with theBIOS to change the boot photo. After an atempt to change mine it didn't do anything at all so I didn't touch it again. The Fox Update tool is OK but does have a few minor glitches. It does make updating the BIOS and Drivers easier but I wouldn't recomend updating the BIOS with it as it doesn't seem all that stable and messing with the bios is risky enough as it is.

Overall I have found this board to be stable, reliable, and fairly fast with a lot of features. I do however find that the software supplied isn't great. Maybe Foxconn will release a few updates to improve them but until now I have decided not to mess with them. (apart from a little bit of overclocking using Fox One)

www.customdesktops.moonfruit.com