questions about 845PE chipset boards.

first off, i'd like to thank everyone who writes/moderates these forums.
i have you all to thank for my choice of hardware.

i'm looking at the BE7-Raid, IT7-MAX2 ver 2, and the BH-7.

i read in a review on the BE7-Raid that it lacked some tweaking options
that the IT-MAX2 ver 2 had. the memory timing settings were there, but
the voltage options to the Ram seemed limited, as well as the Vcore.
i would like small increment increases on each. and would hope for more
than just 2.7 volts on the Ram. (bios update?)

i'm going to be gaming, encoding video, and of coarse crunching SETI@Home for O/C seti team.

bottom line i want overclockability. can someone tell me the differences
that they are aware of for each board (features listed on Abits website aside)?


here is a list of the other components i plan to use...

• UPS Belken F6C100-UNV 1000VA (550 Watts) or the F6C120-UNV 1200VA (670 watts)
• PSU Fortron- P530XF530W from NewEgg (thanks dustybyrd!)
• CPU PIV 1.8a or 2.4b C1 stepping on both
• HS Thermalright SLK-900-U will this bolt on to these boards?
• Memory 512MB stick of PC2700 or 3200 with Windbond chips; Kingston, Buffalo, Twinmos. did i miss any? not including Cor$air.
• Graphics ATI Radeon AIW 8500 128 till the 9700 pros come down in $$
• HDs 2 Western digital IDE 80 gig 7200 RPM 8MB buffer drives
• Optical drive Sony DWU10A DVD+/-RW
• Sound- Is the onboard sound a resource hog?
• NIC possibly a Intel Pro 100+, if it will free up resources
• Fans at least 4 Panaflo L1A fans.

sorry for the flood of questions, and thanks for reading!

i guess how those boards rate is the it-7 has all the goodies, the be7 has raid but no tweaks like you said, and the bh7 is the overclocker of the group but it has no raid so you would need a pci raid card (if desired).
if you do get the bh7 secure the northbridge heatsink! i have had two bh7's and both times the heatsink clip has popped off and landed on the vid card.

and now for the obligatory "maybe you should get the ic7/is7".


edit: not just the clip fell on the card but the whole darn heatsink

I don't really understand why anyone is still considering 845PE based boards, when 865PE is so close in price.

the price is very close. and considering that the newer chipsets do
200mhz on the memory stock. that should rule out the chipset being
the weak link when i decide to push a 1.8a or 2.4b

thanks for the advice

looks like it's gonna be a IS7-E. do you have to run a C CPU (800mhz FSB)
to take advantage of the Dual DDR memory?

no, you should get dual ddr with the older chips.

your right. dual DDR will work with any CPU. i was going to get a 1.8a
but the 2.4B is only another $30. then i saw the 2.4C for another $30.
looks like it's gonna be the 2.4C