Intel Boxed Desktop Board BOXDZ68DB Media Series Socket LGA1155 ATX Motherboard
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- The boxed Intel Desktop Board DZ68DB includes: I/O shield, SATA cables, I/O layout stickers, quick reference guide and driver and software DVD
- uses DDR3-1333 memory, 4 DIMMs, 32GB max
- 3 SATA ports at 3Gb/s and 2 SATA ports at 6.0 Gb/s
- 2 PCI Express. 2.0 x1 slots and 1 PCI slot
- 2 USB 3.0 back panel ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports
- 3 year warranty
- DVI-I + HDMI + DisplayPort display outputs
The Intel Desktop Board DZ68DB is an Intel Z68 chipset-based desktop board in full ATX form factor. It supports the 2nd generation Intel Core processors with socket LGA1155. This performance board supports Intel Smart Response Technology and LUCIDLOGIX VIRTU which allows you to seamlessly switch between Intel Graphics and a Video Card
Intel motherboard
Intel Boxed Desktop Board BOXDZ68DB Media Series Socket LGA1155 ATX Motherboard
List Price: $ 149.00
Price:
SOLID platform, a bit cramped (-1 star) – overclocks quite well!,
I wanted an Intel Z68 motherboard, and this Intel DZ68DB is their only offering. I like their extensive product support, attention to sound engineering over hype, the onboard Intel NIC, and overall system stability. And who better to integrate drivers for their own chipset? Despite some obvious limitations in the physical layout of this board it’s what I got and I’m happy overall. It’s economical and has been working very well. I have a 2600K installed with 16gb of Crucial Vengeance ddr3-1600, a huge Noctua NH-U12P heatsink, and a GTX580. Fitting all that in was a bit of a chore because of the tight spacing of the ram, cpu socket, and PCI-Express slot, but it works, and airflow is not impeded enough to cause any problems. I can remove and replace the ram without removing the GTX580, but it’s a bit of a trick. I also had to mount my heatsink fan in a pull configuration, because the huge Noctua heatsink was too close to the tall heatspreaders of the Corsair vengeance ram. But it works well with the fan pulling air through the Noctua, shooting the air straight to the 120mm rear case fan. 55C max temps under full 8-thread stress load at 4.1ghz overclock. 4.6ghz on two cores. Stays cool. A Kingston 64gb SSD V+ OS drive with windows7 64bit and a WD 1TB Black for storage tops it off and the system runs like a dream.
First thing I did after basic OS install was update the BIOS, which is very easy thanks to Intel product support pages online. After reboot, I installed the latest motherboard/chipset drivers from Intel (it’s good to download them and store to USB stick or CD ahead of time, otherwise you’ll have to use the driver CD to get the NIC working and get online to download drivers). Reboot and then latest drivers for the gtx580. etc. then test stability. then overclocking fun.
It can be over-clocked by adjusting the max turbo settings, but it lacks fine tuning of voltages and it locks the max base frequency of the CPU. (I’m not sure but I think this is normal for Sandy Bridge and it applies to all P67/Z68 motherboards). I settled at max turbo setting 45 for one to two cores, 44 for three, 42 for four cores. Hyperthreading enabled. Works great. I like it this way for a number of reasons. I have all the power management features enabled. When idle it sits quietly and cool at 1.6ghz .99v. It can spike up to 4.5ghz/1.26v with up to four threads cranking along (hello games), hover around 4.4ghz under heavier loads, and fully stressed it cruises at a steady and cool 4.1ghz/1.26v (8 threads maxed!). It does all this without ever going over 1.34v/55C which is well-within spec and I haven’t even tweaked the voltages, just let the motherboard handle that automatically on default setting. I did raise the wattage for burst and sustained mode, but only modestly (134/130). I left the cpu max amperage at 97. I could push it harder but it’s working well this way. It seems very efficient and performance is excellent.
I am getting 4.4ghz-4.5ghz consistently in games, which is great. Performance/feel is smooth. Handbrake rips average about 150fps (from a mounted dvd iso from WD green 2tb on eSata 1.5gbps to output to internal Sata 3gbps WD 1tb Black, format .m4v file with ipod 5g support, 8 threads at 4.1ghz), which ain’t bad. I’m not sure how much of a gain there would be to push it much harder, to have all cores running at peak all the time. I wouldn’t mind higher clocks full-time, per se, but this way is so efficient, cool, and stable, and with very snappy performance.
(NOTE: see the edit at end, I got MUCH better overclocks later!)
As to features, I have used the eSata port on back and it worked flawlessly. I haven’t used the SSD caching(“smart response technology”), the USB3, or tapped the potential of the SATA 6gbps yet, or tried the hdmi or displayport video ports that serve the CPU’s integrated GPU. Intel supplies Virtu software which is supposed to make the onboard (sic) video work alongside an add-in card and supports quicksync. So I look forward to trying that, when and if I find a likable video encoder software that’s quicksync accelerated. Also, the intel video is supposed to handle HD content really well, but I haven’t tried it. The Intel NIC works like a charm. Onboard sound is just fine for onboard sound. My only real complaints are that there’s only two SATA 6 ports, so no RAID 5 in mode SATA 6. And you can’t use RAID and AHCI modes simultaneously. It’s one or the other. BTW if you have a hard-drive with cherished data on it and attach it, enable RAID mode in BIOS and then boot up it might just wipe that drives partition in the blink of an eye! Happened to me once. Luckily, there wasn’t anything valuable on there. Just be careful with that.
The only glitch is that the system becomes slow and then unresponsive when doing large file transfers to an old WD Mybook external drive when using the Firewire port. Have to look into that. Windows 7 is…
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|Nice Board; Don’t Worry About BIOS CPU Temperature,
I am a first-time computer builder, and I am using this board with an Intel i5-2500k processor (no overclocking, but the “k” version also provides better graphics for just a few extra dollars). Despite complaints from some people about cramped layout, I had no real trouble with that. True, the stock heatsink/cooling fan comes very close to one of the memory slots, but since my memory chips don’t have any fins, that was no problem. And I’m sticking with the onboard graphics, so I’m not populating the board with add-on cards. Of course, some pins/headers are miniscule (e.g. for front panel lights and power buttons), but that’s standard fare on any board.
My memory chips are rated at 1.35 volts, and they are working fine with this board. So far I’m running 8 gig of memory, but I’m about to double that for less than 50 bucks.
The BIOS reports a 65 degree temperature for my i5-2500k chip, and this stands in marked contrast to the 25 degree temperature that my installation of Intel Desktop Utilities indicates with Win7. But the disparity is well explained on Intel’s website. In BIOS mode, no power-saving features are invoked, whereas Windows applies power-saving measures that result in substantial cooling. 25 degrees at idle with the stock cooler strikes me as just fine.
The DZ68DB’s BIOS supports UEFI, which you’ll need it you are installing a hard drive larger than 2.2 TB; in that case, the drive will need GPT rather than MBR partitioning. By default, UEFI is disabled in this board’s BIOS, but since the hard drive I installed is “only” 1 TB, the default setting was fine.
The board doesn’t come with much documentation; various PDF files can be downloaded from Intel’s website. Although the documentation does not mention Windows 7 Professional as being supported by this board, it is in fact supported (as confirmed by an email from Intel, plus the fact that I’m running Win7 Pro myself).
Update (11-27-2011):
Although this board’s chipset allegedly supports 1.35v memory, the “support” appears to be relatively minimal. 1.35v memory will work, but I suggest going with 1.5v memory. (For more on this topic, see the comments below).
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|Stable with 1.25V DDR3-1600 RAMs and FreeBSD 8.2R,
I chose this motherboard to upgrade my old office desktop composed of Pentium 4 + Intel D945GTP motherboard. So far, it’s been stable and been working without any issues.
I installed only FreeBSD 8.2R (no Windows) but every device was detected correctly and there seem to be no problems with the drivers. The only driver that does not support hardware acceleration is X.org. FreeBSD’s GPU driver for Intel Core i is still under development though their new patch seems to work under 9.0-RC. Instead, ‘VESA’ (generic) driver is available and x.org is running at 1920×1080 on my desktop. I sometimes watch YouTube, but with Core i5-2500K its CPU usage is very little even without enough hardware acceleration.
BIOS settings are mostly default except for the RAM voltage. I installed G.Skill Sniper Low Voltage 1.25V DDR3-1600 2*4GB RAMs and set the BIOS voltage 1.35V. The machine has been very stable.
Anyway, I am happy with the stability of this motherboard, which is most important for my job.
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