KT7A to Shuttle AK31?

[Silver]

I bought a Epox 8K7A and was not very happy with it. Yes I got much better ram speeds but I also got slower processor speeds, even with volt mods. I went back to the Abit KT7A and got another 30 MHz. Now the question is that after reading about the the Shuttle AK31 and the good luck that many have had with it as well as its low price, should I give the board a shot? It appears to have good ram speed and I have a couple of Crucial 2100 sticks sitting here. With a volt mod it should at least meet my present speed? I have two other power supplies and am planning to run the board off of one dedicated 400 watt Antec. Water cooling will be used as well. The processor is a T-bird 1.4 that presently almost boots windows at 1.775 and is completely stable at 1.747. It will post up to 1.885. Any and all input would be helpful.

[Just shoot]

First off sorry to here about the epox board its a hit and miss with that board.

I believe the doctor runs that board and has a extremely nice overclock but he's using a vapochill system. You might get similiar results with a 172 or maybe 154 watt peltier. I would also make sure that you get latest version.

You also might want to look at some pc2400!

hopefully the doc will see this and give you some real guidance!!

[Silver]

I am hoping that the Doc will have a look but am open to all. I have 7 kids in the house so I will probably stay with the 2100 at this time (note the GF2-oh well). I have been thinking alot about pelts lately but am leary of putting them in the system. Have been reading alot about water chilling but then again we are talking about 134 or so watts right now. Christmas budget is limited so am looking at a q4 case, a couple of panaflow 120 LA1 fans and possibly a shuttle board but am just not sure. The q4 is cheap and will allow me to put another ps or two in it. Might be fun to mod it but am mainly interested in performance. The question is what would I really gain with this board?

[SickBoy]

I've got the Shuttle. Here's the lowdown on my particular board.

1. Lockups come in fits. Haven't had a locking up fit since I voltmodded it though.

2. The original BIOS that came with it blows. My board would not warm boot in any fashion (reset or a restart from Windows), and it would not boot at all with a fan connected to the system fan header. A flash to the most recent BIOS from the web site fixed all this.

3. The KT266A in general is still really new - I am waiting on affirmative word for the cooling and memory tweaks for WPCREDIT. I tried a cooling tweak for registers 92 and 95, but it refuses to boot with the tweak in effect (I had to boot into safe mode to disable it).

4. An unmodified Alpha PAL8045 will not fit, neither will a MC462 or its variants. Big minus.... I dropped the $50 for a PAL8045 when I ordered the board and I was a little disappointed to not be able to use it. It's ok though, I put the PAL in my TBird system (KT7A) and I'm using an SK6 for now, soon to be a GlaciatorII. There are plenty of heatsinks that will fit though.

Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with it. I haven't had lockup problems in a while, like a week or two, and the warm boot/no boot issues are taken care of. The cooling tweak issue really isnt one at all, because all it does is lower idle temps, and since it folds 24/7, it really never idles anyway. So that leaves the heatsink thing as the really only issue I have with it right now. A few people around here have modded the PAL to fit - I don't really feel like taking my Dremel to my brand new $50 heatsink just yet, but I probably will eventually.

Overall, not a bad board for $85. Needs a little attention, but nothing an experienced user can't handle. But now that newegg has the 8KHA+ (refurb) for $85, I'd probably buy one of those. Those boards have their issues, too, though. They're not perfect.

Anyway.

SickBoy

[Silver]

I am leary of the Epox right now as though a voltage mod on my 8k7a showed in bios, mobo monitor etc. that I had upwards of 2.64v (of course I worked up to this) under load with mobo monitor laid over the stability test you could see the vcore drop to 2.08 which is exactly what it would get without the vmod. It appeared to be real as I could not get any increase in MHz or temps for that matter. The Kt7a retains whatever setting I give it even under load and of course the resulting temperature rise. This allows the chip to boot stable at 1.74 and up to 1.76 unstable (so it does'nt matter). Though it isn't (as tested) the kt7a "feels" faster at 1.74 than the epox did at 1.71. Am looking for the best of both and maybe the shuttle will give me this. Btw the epox would climb back up to 2.64 after testing was complete.

[Luie]

Shuttle AK31 is cool!!!
Look at my sig!!!
Just do a Vcore mod and yes! An Amazing Athlon!
No need to unlock the L1! (although I had unlocked it already)
10.5 x 166!!!

Shuttle rulez!!!

btw, make sure it's rev3.1.