There are two motherboards I have always wanted but found to be too pricey for my liking. The Asus Maximus II Formula and the Abit IP35 Pro. Just last week I picked up the Abit for £30. Got all the bits together and slung in an old chip I had from a few years back. Pentium D 945. Got my old machine up and running, purring like a little kitten. Couple of pics Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler
Yep got that in mind. Last night though, slung it in a spare case I have, bit of a squeeze though. Half way through the OS install the screen threw a wobbly then went black and the PC went off. Damn ! Took the GPU out of my main machine and the Abit booted into life again. Hopefully though it was just that the GPU I put in was old n knackered and not the fact that this board as a major fault and eats up GPU's. Gunna have a rummage through my box of bits and see if I have another GPU. If that works ok I will treat it to a new one and a new case too. My luck I bought a bad one.
Your 'retro' is my main rig.... one of my systems is a Q8200, Asus P5Q PRO and 4GB of DDR2 at and earth-shattering frequency of 800 MHz. but yeah, that looks pretty nice. What CPU are you running in it?
Just this very minute I dismantled my rig and slung in a nice Core 2 Quad Q9300. Tested it on the bench and up she pops like a sweet thing. Cost of this chip, £27 with postage. Been buying me a new home for it, a new cooler and a new PSU. Will take some pics when it's all back in. Found summet very interesting too. its not exactly a pro but it turns out to be an Abit IP35 Pro XE. I found out when going to flash the BIOS. Run all sorts of tests on CUPID and AIDA64. All results lead to it being a XE. And when I flashed it with the latest BIOS for an XE all went well. have a thread on that BIOS update http://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/59489-Abit-IP35-Pro-XE-Wont-flash-the-modded-BIOS-My-Own-mod. Actually I have left it alone for a few days. The whole house came down with flu and I did not want to make any silly mistakes. Will take pics of the finished thing when It's done.