I just built myself a new computer (more details next time) and the original motherboard I wanted to get was the Intel D975XBX. It had good reviews, and from my previous experience, Intel motherboards have been known for their rock solid stability.

The D975BX was very short in supply in Sydney as it was in high demand, but I was able to get one from Umart. My sources tell me only OEM versions of the board is available in Australia, hence all I got was a lousy brown box with boring red SATA cables, floppy and ide ribbon cables, a back panel, 2 cd-roms and 2 raid driver disks and one sticker detailing where to plug things in.

Once I installed the board and plugged everything in, I installed Windows 2003 Server (my OS choice) and attempted to install the LAN drivers from the cd-rom, so I could download updated ones from Intel later. I experienced the same problems reported by Toms Hardware. But I was able to download drivers from my existing computer and got everything installed.

After a couple of hours, I had a couple of blue-screen-of-death occurences. The system hanged at different times and eventually I could not boot into Windows. My attempts to reinstall proved to be futile as well, with Setup complaining files were corrupted etc. I then realised it was probably faulty ram, and when I removed one DIMM everything was fine. When I added it back in I got errors.

I had the ram replaced at Umart, and reinstalled everything and things were okay for a couple of hours with the new ram. All of a sudden I had the same problems. I realised it was the Intel board that was killing the RAM, the third slot to be exact.

By this stage, I had wasted too many hours and was really fed up. I went back to Umart and returned the board and ended up getting an ASUS P5WD2-E Premium. The ASUS came in retail packaging, complete with manuals, software and good quality cables, and was just slightly more expensive than the Intel board.

I’ve had the computer for 2 weeks and have no problems whatsoever. I still think Intel boards are good, and was just unlucky with this one. And the was a Desktop Control Panel app from Intel had stress testing and benchmarking software from this Australian company (forgot the name) which was pretty cool.

One thing to note for those who are planning to get an Intel D975XBX. You need to plug in not only the main cable from the power supply but also a secondary one that supplies additional power. Most newish motherboards are the same but get this… the D975BX has a 3 pin one as opposed to a normal 2 pin. This power adapter came with my new Antec Smart 2.0 500W power supply but if you’re reusing parts you probably won’t have it and won’t be able to power up the board. I have not seen these adapters available for sale anywhere. And I’ve gone through this lengthy explaination only because I don’t know what to call these cables.