Motherboard – MSI P35 Neo2-FR
The Pentium Dual-Core E2140 comes with a locked multiplier of 8x and runs on a 200 MHz FSB (800QDR). A very high FSB of over 400 MHz is required in order to increase the CPU’s clock speed beyond 3 GHz. For our overclocking project, we chose the P35 Neo2 made by MSI, since this board is very capable of handling such high FSB frequencies.
The board is equipped with Intel’s P35 chipset and uses the current ICH9 southbridge with RAID functionality.
Further points in this board’s favour are its feature set, its overclocking functionality and its affordable price of €92. If you don’t need Firewire functionality, you can find the board for as little as €88.
The board is equipped with a heatpipe cooling solution that dissipates the heat produced by the northbridge and southbridge as well as the voltage regulation modules.
What sets the MSI’s BIOS apart from others is its speed, thanks to which the POST sequence only takes about two seconds. The live preview feature of the BIOS that calculates the processor and memory speeds is also very useful, saving you the hassle of using a calculator to do the job.
The MSI P35 Neo2 also offers a special core voltage feature for overclocking. In addition to setting increased voltages for overclocked operation, it also displays the minimum voltage when the SpeedStep power saving feature becomes active. This allows you to leave SpeedStep activated even when the system is overclocked, allowing you to conserve energy.
Northbridge and Southbridge Voltage
Beginning with a front-side-bus of 317 MHz, the BIOS automatically increases the northbridge and southbridge voltage of the MSI P35 Neo2.
| Frequency | up to 316 MHz | beginning with 317 MHz |
| Northbridge Voltage | 1.250 V | 1.450 V |
| Southbridge I/O Power | 1.5 V | 1.8 V |
A stable operation cannot be guaranteed if these settings are manually reset to their default voltages. The automatic voltage increase is no cause for alarm anyway, as other motherboard manufacturers do exactly the same thing – they’re just not as open about displaying it in the BIOS. Effectively, all motherboard makers are forced to proceed in this manner, since they all buy the same chips from Intel. We have often run tests with other companies’ boards in our lab where the BIOS doesn’t indicate any change even though the voltage was being increased.
| Component | Price |
|---|---|
| Processor | €49 |
| Motherboard | €88 |
| Memory | - |
| Cooler | - |
| PSU | - |
| Graphics Card | - |
| Total | €137 |
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Each time you run these tests I wonder why the GTX has a reported ram size of 512mb, does such a thing exist I thought I was 768mb.
def 768mb
that does semm like a good deal, i'm curious as to how it compares with stuff like the x2 4000 OC'd....
I'm going to sound like a proper skin-flint now but why do sites always spoil buget overclocks by using a €90 motherboard and a €45 cooler.
If I was tring to save a few pounds/Euros then what is wrong with a P31 based system board at around €50-60 and running the cpu it 2.66-3.00Ghz (333-357fsb), without having to spend another €45 on a cooler (Use the boxed Intel one).
Use the €75-85 you have saved to buy a better graphics card which will make more diffrence to gaming.
I'm wondering why the X2 6400+ comes up on the graphs coloured as an E2140...
This is the kind of articles that make THG great! This is why i read this site. Other sites are just like an advertising leaflet.
Maybe I've found a worthy successor to my P4HT 631.
Here, victim victim victim... *starts sharpening P35-DS3L's claws*
Would this make a good HTPC?
Looks very good and you can stick a quad processor in it when they come down to a reasonable price and OC that to increase its longevity.
Could any one recommend the rest of the core components to complete the system that whist sticking to a low/medium budget will not become so decrepid it will need chucking out at the next up grade. I am going from a P4 (and I was Delled) so I need everything except Keyboard/mouse and monitor. I.e a good quality case, Sata HD and optical drive.
It will not be a gaming machine but a home workhorse with some graphics work running XP2/Vist a ?Leopard (yeah I know). So the Power Colour gfx card is over kill and I am prejudiced against ATI(probably unjustly). I was thinking along the lines of a LIAN LI PC-7B plus II ATX case and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA II. Some Sata DVD/DW drive. (All Sata because of the ?Leopard bit I know I might not work ... yet.)
Any suggestions would be welcome.
Sakamura
I wonder if it's possible to use SpeedFan in order to drop the FSB on this motherboard when idling, so that it's possible to take advantage of the low power consumption of a non-OC CPU, with the performance of an OC version (when demanded) at the same time...
On my ancient Athlon, Speedfan automatically switches from 107MHz FSB when CPU is 70%. The plug-in power meter I have shows 106W @ 107MHz (idle) and 131W @ 163MHz (idle). 1200% CPU uses more in both cases. This is on a A7N motherbaord that has a clock generator supported by SpeedFan.
Thanks for the article guys. I followed in your footsteps and built a PC based on a E2140 and Neo2.
I'm using a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro which is a bit cheaper than the one in the article and at 2.9GHz it still idles at 24 degrees C, and stays around 31 when under load (e.g. Prime95 or Crysis).
However, mine gets unstable at 3.0GHz - but I haven't tinkered with it so I don't know if it's the CPU or the memory - or I may just leave it as it is as it's running at 180% of the rated speed as it is!
One thing that caught me out... the Neo2 has an 8 pin 12V CPU power socket, and mine had no blanking plate (which you can see in some pictures of the board). When I plugged an 8 pin 12V lead into it into the 8 pin socket (I'm logical like that), it tripped the power supply. I double checked the manual on the Neo and the PSU and it appeared to be okay... but as soon as I swapped to the 4 pin power lead, it suddenly worked fine (thanks to the tech support at Scan for sorting me out)!
I got a SLA93 E2140. Running on a P35-DS3P with Geil memory (not black dragon) the best I can get is FSB on 364ish (about 2912mhz), with memory underclocked to 728 (1:1). Any more and it's really unstable.
Great article. I must say I'm not computer professional, just normal user, in past 8-9 years I put together 4 machines for use at home, all worked well without bigger problems.
After reading this article, some other (about motherboards) and considering other not so cheap options, I tried my luck and changed my old PIV 2.8 based machine with this:
e2140 + gigabyte p31-ds3l + 1x kingmax ddr2 800MHz + radeon x1950gt, all together cost me about 240€, matched it with my old Hitatchi HDD and cheapo Codegen case with cheapo 400W ps.
Must say, this motherboard is great for overclocking (someone mentioned this chipset in earlier comment) cheap but stable with a lot of oc options.
New machine works great, from the start worked at 2,66GHz, with memory at 800 MHz,stock processor boxed fan without any need for adjustment. From 2,66 to 2.8 GHz, my enthusiasm was on pause a bit, failed to boot so I needed to adjust Vcore up a little from original setting (from 1,32500 V to 1,37500 V) and there I was in two steps at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz, reached FSB of 375, with memory running at 750MHz. Never tried to go any further.
With that final 3.0 GHz setting I run Prime for hour and a half, without any instability, and than I just give up Prime and continue my work as usual at 3.0 GHz with hours (better days) of gaming, multimedia and all that... no problems so far.
For me, it's great processor and perfect match for my GA-p31-ds3l motherboard.
Looks like 3 Ghz is the magic number for these processors. Nice article.
Thank you, 'Tom'. I trusted this site's view, as I have with other hardware. I've been running this chip at 3GHz for a month, just now hammering it with H264 decoding. Just rolling steady. Not a single blue screen. Thanks again.