soyo motherboard review

Am thinking about building a machine and I am able to get the case, 350w psu and a Soyo Sy-p41 845pe v1.0 for free. Am looking for someone with Soyo experience as to whether this is a good board to start from.

Been a long time since I build one myself but for that above being free just thought I might give it a try.

 

Must be similar to this and I'd grab it if you're into Intel cpu's. It got 5 stars, not bad.

 

Only thing I can see is different than the v1.0 is it doesnt handle 800fsb, it takes pc2100/2700 dimms and 2g vs 3g max memory. Other than that looks the same.

Yes, I do trust Intel processors. Not a fan of AMD or IBM's chipset been a fan of Intel since the beginning guess I figure the god father of the chip is Intel so they must know what there doing.

 

Minor correction to below on soyo's web site it says that this board can be overclocked to 800fsb.

Question: says it will take upto 2g memory. board has 3 slots can I assume it will handle a 1g dimm in one of the slots. cant find anything on their web to indicate how to divide 2g into 3 slots.

 

Another question - am finding some conflicting information on what the board will handle. One area I looked at says the v1.0 will go upto 3.2g cpu and another says 3.06. So what I am finding when I look for a processor that the 3.2g has 800fsb and the 3.06 is 400.

What am I to believe ??? Will it take a 3.2/800 ???

 

I'd suggest you find a Soyo Mobo forum and do some reading. Although I'm one of those "Athlon proponents" I've done a lot of Soyo boards and while very pleased, I was quite disappointed that their 400 mhz VIA chipset boards wouldn't handle 400mhz memory or processor speeds. Even more disappointed to find out after the fact. I spent some time reading a few forums hoping to find a solution and learned that I wasn't the only one who should have done a little more homework. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a happy camper - just not quite as happy as I wanted to be. And, although my Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra Platinum and KT400 Black Dragon have 3 memory slots, it is recommended to run sticks only in 1 & 3 - even Soyo states this in tech support Q&A. Not that I will be or was planning on running 3 sticks, but it sounds like you might be, so check it out first. Other than that, I've had good fortune with this company and it sounds like you have too.

 

Rockster

I appreciate you feedback and I will go to a soyo forum and see what is said. No actually I wanted to just use 2 sticks each a gig but wasnt sure how to divide that up into 3 slots. Didnt look at the faq's at Soyo just the specs. sorta figured if there were 3 slots one would be able to use all three. Maybe thats to logical.

Soyo does state in their specs that this board will handle a 3.2/800 so hopefully it can handle what it says it can before I buy these parts of it.

Not sure if I'm going to keep this machine after I build it or sell it. One thing I do know it will be packed so not to much of a call for a packed machine around here. Probably sell my p3/1g fully loaded and keep this new one.

Thanks again.

 

You just need to paint the case a pale yellow cream color, drill a few big holes in a random pattern and let the bidding war begin.

I understand your comments re: selling the P3 - I try to move my personal stuff every couple of years while it can still fetch a decent buck. Didn't used to do it that way, but it works out pretty well.

 

I have 2 main machines both are p3's one a Intel 667 and the other an Intel 1g. Both are about 3 years old and even though they do the job for me I think its time to replace one of them with a newer p4 and sell one of the p3's. Should be able to get a good price on the p3 yet. A lot of my clients cant necessarily afford a new system at 800 - 1000 bucks but cut that in half and I'm sure I'll get some good bites.