My mistake with the power supply cost me money. These LGA775 boards require a 24-pin main hook up. A standard 20-pin ATX power supply will not work with these mothers of all motherboards. (Okay, everyone in the universe knew that but me. I knew I should NEVER have let my subscription to Maximum PC expire.) If you buy an ATX case and PSU bundle for this board make sure that the PSU has a 24-pin main connector. Or buy a thermally advantaged case without the power supply and then buy the PSU separately. This 24-pin form factor is known as the ATX-E standard. It includes an added 12 V power rail for the motherboard, but so do some 20 pin supplies. I doubt if there are any 24-pin power supplies without the special 12 V motherboard connector, but check nevertheless. This board needs it.
FYI: There is a 20-pin to 24-pin adapter available, but the manufacturer warns that these require a 450 W or greater power supply and at least 20 amps on the main 12 V rail to work. Moreover, I saw more than a little
evidence that they do not work all that well. The tech at the PC mod shop here in Oslo, Norway pulled his 20- to 24-pin adapters from the shelves since he got so many complaints about them. And in one write up of an LGA775 board the authors reported that it did not boot up at all with such an adapter. The board simply wouldn’t function until a proper 24-pin power supply was installed. I, as I already said, learned the hard way when I made the mistake of buying a standard ATX case bundle from Antec and I had to scrap the lovely, smart Antec power supply that came with the case and buy a new ATX E PSU suitable for an LGA775 mobo.
I have another project with which I can use the 430 W Antec power supply; that is, unless you want to buy it.
Bottom line: You will probably do well to upgrade your 20-pin PSU.
Painful Memory
DDR2 memory, as the name vaguely suggests, should be bought in pairs. Identical pairs. Absolutely, completely, perfectly, identical pairs…. From the same manufacturer. Preferably put into their anti-static bags
simultaneously by the same employee, or her twin sister. This is to get the benefit of dual-channel performance.
This does not matter to me because I bought one big stick. Populating the slots one at a time is allowed, but you lose duel channel functionality. But at least I can console myself that the one slot I have filled boasts the biggest chunk possible. 1 GB. This will help down the road. But now I will wait till the prices drop a little before I buy
another 1 GB identical stick from Crucial.
Okay, this is not a disaster. With the overclocked hyper threading P4 and a gigabyte of DDR2 I am still smoking. Crucial had an alert on their web site. I just missed it. Headbanger.
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