Biostar are a relatively unheard of brand down under, but they are extremely popular in many other countries. With Intel’s brand new P45 chipset onboard, this board has everything you could want, on paper. But does it fulfil its promises?
Thankfully, the answer is a resounding yes. The dark brown PCB, with fluoro green and orange slots interspaced with copper heatsinks, leaves an area around the CPU socket s bereft of any capacitors or components that can interfere with aftermarket heatsinks, and the copper cooling is far enough away that they avoid causing any spacing problems.
The roominess of the cooling is part of the board’s overall theme. The RAM slots (DDR2) reside next to the CPU, with just enough room to remove and install RAM without having to take the graphics card out – great for those who upgrade frequently. The 8-pin and 24-pin power sockets adorn the top and right hand side respectively, and are conveniently placed for connection to the power supply.
The board’s six SATA ports are right-angled to allow access when large graphic cards are installed. And for those with older gear that they want to port over to a slick new motherboard, the Biostar TPower I45 conveniently provides an IDE port.
A surprising (and extremely handy) feature is an LED display that reports the current CPU temperature at all times: great for those with perspex viewing windows adorning their case, or overclockers who want to monitor every detail.
And for anyone who prefers to work at the more extreme end of computing will be pleased to find the power and reset switches on board, which allows testing even without a case. The BIOS options are plentiful, and the board is very reliable when overclocking.
For an entry-level board, there’s no shortage of gaming potential. Two PCI ports, two PCIe 1x ports, and two PCIe x16 ports are provided and the headers are used to configure the two PCIe x16 ports, giving the top port full x16 bandwidth with a single card, or allowing dual x8 bandwidth under Crossfire.A Molex port is also available here, which aims to provide more stable power to the expansion slots when using two cards.
Six USB ports, two eSATA, a single Ethernet, PS/2 ports and audio ports fill out the backside of the board, with plenty of connection options back here to add peripherals or external storage.
The package is nicely rounded too, with optical/coaxial ports offered via a PCI expansion bracket. An IDE cable, as well as six SATA cables offer plenty of support for devices, a notable standout considering that most motherboards provide the bare minimum amount of cables. Also included are five Molex to SATA power adapters, great for older tech that doesn’t support the newer standard.
Another nice surprise surprise was the add-on for chipset cooling that screws onto the array and provides an extra heatpipe as well as a 60mm fan. This fan is extremely loud at stock settings, but can be controlled via the BIOS to become almost silent and performs an effective job at cooling the board.
The TPower I45 is an enthusiast-grade board at an entry-level price, and as such it should definitely be near the top of your shortlist.
This Review appeared in the October, 2008 issue of PC & Tech Authority Magazine
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