Which Mobo for E8400 Out of the Box

Flexion

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 20, 2004
Messages
1,607
After a couple weeks of testing and results from HardForum members we've put together a list of motherboards with out of the box (OOTB) support for E8400 processors. Please post findings if you own a motherboard that's not on this list, and get good results.

We now have the following motherboards working with the E8400 out of the box:

Asus P5K-E
Asus P5K Premium Black Pearl Wifi
Asus P5K Premium
Asus P5K-C
Asus P5E
Asus Maximus Formula
Asus P5E-VM HDMI
Asrock Penryn 1600SLI-110dB (According to Anandtech - Yorkfield TOO!)
Asrock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R 2.1 and 2.0
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R
Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 rev 2.0
Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G
Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4
Gigabyte GA-G31MX-S2
EVGA 780i SLI
EVGA 680i P31 Bios or Later (OOTB?)
XFX 780i
DFI LP LT P35 T2R
DFI LP UT P35 T2R
DFI LANPARTY DK P35-T2RS
MSI P35 Neo2-FR
Abit IP35 Pro
Abit IP35 E

Keep up with the hard work in reporting findings everyone. Thanks!
 
I recently bought a Abit IP35 Pro off of ClubIT and I'm getting the e8400 next week. Not exactly sure why I went with IP35 Pro but it seems to be popular.
 
I was considering the IP35Pro. It is well priced and a great OC'er. But I went onto the Abit forums and there is one person having issues. Could be a noob though.

But, I don't have any LGA775 procs. lying around to do a bios flash with and I've got that severe upgrade itch. (Upgrading from Opty 170 and NF4 combo)

Right now I'm looking at the Gigabyte P35-DS3R mobo, cuz it's cheap and I don't need crossfire support, but need the PCI slots (raid controllers and discreet sound).
 
I heard/read somewhere that you can send your board to Gigabyte and they will flash it themselves to a Bios compatible if it’s not already the right bios version
 
Even if they cannot identify it as a E8400 in name you will still get the relevant speed and performance. I ran my E4300 w/o being picked up with the proper name but there is no performance loss.
 
I think that basically all of the P35 boards provide support out of the box. An IP35 Pro is a good board, a good price and good overclocker.
 
I just asked Gigabyte and they told me that revision 2 supports it out of the box. They told me to ask the retailer about which one I'd get.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to say. Revision 2 of the DS3L board.
 
About full support and all I'm not too concerned. I simply want to know if the 8400 will post and let me go all the way to the tool to do the flash.

Lots of people are saying "just boot into windows and don't be afraid of flashing." I don't think they realize that alot of us upgrading are coming from Athlon X2s or Opterons and don't have older LGA775 procs to flash the motherboards with.

There is a gigabyte tool, that'll let me flash off of USB flash, without booting into windows or dos. However, I'm just wondering if anyone out there bought this mobo fresh and installed this cpu. Not an upgrader who had the board before with another cpu and flashed it just to put the E8400 in.

Either way I just ordered the proc, coolers, memory and mobo with next day air, so I guess we'll know soon. I guess I'm the guinea pig. There are lots of folks using the Gigabyte P35 DS3R with this processor and I'm planning to use it for the next two years or so. Hopefully I'll get to 4GHz.
 
e8400 doesn't work properly out of the box with the Abit IP35-Pro.

You get weird voltages, temps and all sorts of things.

It recognizes and runs the chip fine just you never know what its running at so you need to use Coretemp for temps and CPU-Z for voltage and even then that maybe not 100% accurate.

I'm waiting for a new bios release soon.
 
Firebane,

Thanks for letting us know. I believe you made similar posts regarding the IP35Pro on Xtremesystems right?

I wanted to get an IP35PRO, because I like the layout, and SATA configuration.

But ended up getting the Gigabyte because of budget. I can't be bothered to wait for the Q9450 and didn't wanna get a Q6600 or X3210, because they're on the way out. Don't get me wrong I would love to have a quad, but I've been doing well with my dual, even on encoding and rendering and I believe that going from an Opteron 170 at 2.7 to C2D at 4.0GHz would be more noticeable.

P.S. You may want to touch base with ABIT to make sure that it's not simply some kind of problem with the VRM on your mobo. It would suck to wait for the bios and find out that it's a faulty board.
 
Firebane,

Thanks for letting us know. I believe you made similar posts regarding the IP35Pro on Xtremesystems right?

I wanted to get an IP35PRO, because I like the layout, and SATA configuration.

But ended up getting the Gigabyte because of budget. I can't be bothered to wait for the Q9450 and didn't wanna get a Q6600 or X3210, because they're on the way out. Don't get me wrong I would love to have a quad, but I've been doing well with my dual, even on encoding and rendering and I believe that going from an Opteron 170 at 2.7 to C2D at 4.0GHz would be more noticeable.

P.S. You may want to touch base with ABIT to make sure that it's not simply some kind of problem with the VRM on your mobo. It would suck to wait for the bios and find out that it's a faulty board.

I don't post on XS but I do post on the abit forums about this and if you look over there about the Abit board you will actually see its a common problem.

Someone has recommend back dating the bios to a v12 when it originally supported the wolfdales and I may attempt that tonite to see what happens.
 
I have the Gigabyte P35-DS3R and the E8400 coming to me (mobo here tomorrow, cpu here monday :-( ) from newegg, will post results when I get it in, although I've been "hearing" that the most current revision of this board supports 45nm OOB.
 
Firebane, have you tried BIOS 12 and 14 both? I was literally moments away from ordering E8400 and IP-35 Pro but your post stopped me cold in my tracks.

Anybody with DS4 have any luck with the Wolfdales? I need a sub-$200 mobo that can hit 450FSB and beyond, and works well with 45nm chips.
 
As you can see by my sig I have this board

http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2560

and the Gigabyte says that both the revision 1 & 2 Supports Intel® Core™ 2 multi-core and upcoming 45nm processors.

Its been rock solid for me and for under $100 you cant go wrong.

I must agree...I have the same Gigabyte MB (Version 2.0) & it's rock soild. Wonderful board for the coin. I haven't tried my luck yet with o/c'ing. Waiting for my Artic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 to come in.

PS: I just checked...Newegg dropped the price to $89.99 plus free shipping (01/25)
 
I grabbed an IP35-Pro and the E8400 the other day and I can confirm that even the latest released BIOS (14) has issues with the E8400. It reports weird temps (first it was 227C, then 2C) and seems to have other isses as well. Don't know what the particular issue is, but I have been unable to install Win XP on the board - random BSODs during install, and then even after installing it won't boot into windows - gets halfway through the loading, kicks out a BSOD that flashes by so fast I can't read it, and then reboots. Tried with multiple RAM configurations, hard drives, two different Win XP install discs, and two different Intel driver floppies. Not sure whether the issue is just my board, the combo with the E8400 or something else, but personally, I'm planning on RMAing it for something else.
 
After googling a bit, and checking various forums, I found that the IP35s are having some issues with the 45nm chips. They should support them, because the power regulation circuitry should be up to par, and they are some of the best overclocking boards around now. I believe it's probably a bios problem.

My GA P35-DS3R just arrived and it's a Rev.2.1 which is supposed to be out of the box compatible with 45nm procs. Haven't installed yet, still backing up data from my old raid arrays. If you don't need crossfire, this board seems good according to reviews.

Will follow up with results after the weekend.
 
well some motherboards will support 45n with bios update the mobo i have has a beta out so i doubt they ship it with beta bios.
 
Gigabyte P35 DS3R supports E8400 out of the box.

Okay, just did the install. Put everything together and my GA P35 DS3R posted with the processor on the F9 bios Rev 2.1 board that I received from Newegg. I was able to install XP and all I needed to do after the XP install was to bios flash.

One thing though the F9 bios didn't let me overclock 1 MHz. The system would reset itself after rebooting which scared me, because I thought I had a dud processor.

I flashed to the latest bios from Gigabyte, (It was using an automated tool inside of windows) and now I'm cruising along at 4050 MHz. I've booted into windows at 4.5 GHz as well.

So, I know now that there is one motherboard that supports this chip out of the box sort of.

I finished this build at 6AM this morning, so no stability testing yet. Ran Orthos, for a few mins. and the results look promising, yet inconclusive.
 
Update:

My Gigabyte GA P35 DS3R is suffering from a reboot problem, not unique to myself or the E8400 processor. This is simply after one day of it running beautifully at 4.05 GHz. Now it refuses to save my bios settings and always defaults back to 3.0GHz. Don't know what's wrong. But I'll provide an update later.

I started this thread asking which motherboards support the E8400 out of the box. At the moment I'm not sure I would recommend the GA P35 DS3R.

Hopefully this is only happening due to my PSU not being up to par. I do have an 8800GT, Audigy 4, 8 Sata Hard Drives, and a DVD burner all hooked up, with mobo and processor to a OCZ 550 powerstream PSU. My rails seem fine however, and I did remove a whole watercooling setup. I can't imagine the E8400 sucking up more juice than an Opteron 170, but I'm not sure.

I plan to research further and possibly replace the PSU with a 700.
 
GA-X38-DS4. Last week I installed a E8400 on a X38-DS4 with bios F1 and it booted fine.
 
Update:

My Gigabyte GA P35 DS3R is suffering from a reboot problem, not unique to myself or the E8400 processor. This is simply after one day of it running beautifully at 4.05 GHz. Now it refuses to save my bios settings and always defaults back to 3.0GHz. Don't know what's wrong. But I'll provide an update later.

I started this thread asking which motherboards support the E8400 out of the box. At the moment I'm not sure I would recommend the GA P35 DS3R.

Hopefully this is only happening due to my PSU not being up to par. I do have an 8800GT, Audigy 4, 8 Sata Hard Drives, and a DVD burner all hooked up, with mobo and processor to a OCZ 550 powerstream PSU. My rails seem fine however, and I did remove a whole watercooling setup. I can't imagine the E8400 sucking up more juice than an Opteron 170, but I'm not sure.

I plan to research further and possibly replace the PSU with a 700.

OCZ is your problem, horrible ripple on those PSU's.
 
I just installed a Intel e8400 today with an ASUS P5E and it ran flawlessly! :)
 
OCZ is your problem, horrible ripple on those PSU's.

See that's the strange part. This PSU was running an Opteron at 2.7 with all the same hard drives, vid card, and a Swiftech Apex Watercooling setup. All pretty flawlessly. The 550W OCZ has Active PFC, so it's not nearly as bad as the 650W powerstream that I had before. (funny, how they make a lesser model better.)

I'm probably going to pick up that new black DFI motherboard on newegg for $130 and RMA the Gigabyte.
 
I just installed a Intel e8400 today with an ASUS P5E and it ran flawlessly! :)

Did you get a new mobo out of the box? Or was this an upgrade and you had an upgraded bios?

If it's out of the box. I'd be interested in picking up that Asus P5E. Asus is pretty much always solid! ;)
 
As I mentioned before, I ordered the DS3R (Gigabyte) from newegg, and got REV. 2.1, and it ran without a hitch!
 
Thanks for all of the suggestions and replies. I set up an RMA, but something tells me that maybe there's something different with this mobo vs. others.

I didn't use any washers between the screws and the mobo and the brass posts on the case.

When you screw the mobo to the case, typically the case has a copper post and on the mobo, there is a metallic ring where the screw and case post become GROUND. Could it be that my system is not properly grounded?

I've done about 50+ PC builds and I've always just screwed the motherboard directly to the case with screws and using the brass posts.

This would not explain why my machine worked well for 1 day and started going screwy after a few hours. It would've simply kept rebooting and my PSU would constantly cut off because of the short.
 
Thanks for all of the suggestions and replies. I set up an RMA, but something tells me that maybe there's something different with this mobo vs. others.

I didn't use any washers between the screws and the mobo and the brass posts on the case.

When you screw the mobo to the case, typically the case has a copper post and on the mobo, there is a metallic ring where the screw and case post become GROUND. Could it be that my system is not properly grounded?

I've done about 50+ PC builds and I've always just screwed the motherboard directly to the case with screws and using the brass posts.

This would not explain why my machine worked well for 1 day and started going screwy after a few hours. It would've simply kept rebooting and my PSU would constantly cut off because of the short.

I was worried about that with my mobo, since I was doing the assembly at my parents, I didn't have those little washers, but the computer has worked fine so far. As for the cause of yours...sorry...no suggestions here.
 
I'm getting ready to put together a new system with this mobo/proc, should be ordering in a day or two. Hopefully it'll go off well.
 
Asus P5E-VM HDMI works out of the box. Booted up with the shipping BIOS, and I flashed to the latest BIOS just now.
 
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L worked right out of the box, and allowed me to do a bios update.
 
The Asus Maximus Formula will recognize the E8400 right out of the box - *IF* you get one with BIOS version 505 or later. The new Maximus Formula I received from Newegg had 505, but others in this forum who've recently purchased these motherboards (don't know where from) have had issues if they get one that has an earlier BIOS. In that case, you need an older CPU to boot up with initially so the BIOS can be flashed.
 
Update for GA P35 DS3R

Okay, so I'm pretty sure now that it's not the PSU, CHIP or any of my other components and probably a faulty bios chip on the motherboard like the other forum member at Hardocp, with the reboot issues.

I can start up the board with an E8400 at stock 3.0GHz and boot into windows. Inside windows I've OC'd to 4.05GHz and ran Orthos no problems. (using Gigabyte OC'ing software)

My bios won't save any OC'ing settings and the motherboard will enter a constant reboot loop.

Guess I have a faulty Rev 2.1 board.

I'm going for that new dark edition DFI board. My DFI Lanparty Socket 939 board was great. I will post on whether the shipping bios is good with the E8400 in a couple of days.
 
check the intel board at xs. theres an 8400/8500 thread and separate threads for most p35, x38 and some 780i boards. i will let you know how the dfi lp does with it tomorrow.
 
Back
Top