Bga 437(ON-BOARD),NVIDIA MCP7A-ION Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Using WD Green 3.5" drive, 2x2GB DDR3, 90W Adapter, DVD Drive, 120mm fan at low speed.
Power Consumption:
1W @ OFF
2W @ Sleep (Win 7)
26W @ Idle
30W @ 1080p h.264 mkv
32 @ 1080p h.264 + hulu 480 p (Flash 10.1RC)
Overclocking:
I had it POST at 2.3GHZ, but doubt it would have been stable.
Finally settled on setting FSB at 666, which sets CPU @ 2ghz.
This let me set the memory to exactly 1200mhz, which I've found to be the highest this MB will go for memory. I had it stable at 2.13GHZ, but could only set memory at 1185ghz or so.Pros:
-N Wifi works great, better even than my previous full size Rosewill N Card
-Integrated bluetooth picks up my Logitech Dinovo keyboard
-plays my HULU, Netflix, and h.264 files just great (having installed Flash 10.1 RC)
-takes DDR3 memory, which uses less power and is now cheaper than DDR2.
-Win 7 seems snappy enough at 1.6ghz, but easily overclockable to 2.0ghz. I had it stable at 2.13Ghz, but I couldn' set the memory to 1200mhz.
-Comes with Laptop power adapter and the molex adapter that plugs into the MB can power 3 Sata devices, which GREATLY reduces wire clutter
Cons:
Hotter than expected, was hoping for completely fanless, but I'm not comfortable with this:
Cold boot temp was 35 CPU, 25 MB, but temp approached 65 CPU/ 45 MB when running 1080p video.
This is normal, considering it is a high powered GPU.
I read about a fanless Zotac board hitting 71C and no crashing problems.
Regardless, I threw a 120mm fan on the heatsink, which I cannot hear after setting to Silent in BIOS.
Motherboard reserves 512MB for itself, plus another 256-512MB for the GPU. So my OS reports only 3 of my 4GB, so make sure you have 2x2GB memory, else you'll end up with 1GB usable for the system.IMHO, This board is definitely a better value than Zotac's equivalent offering.

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