P2B Modification Guide

The Intel 440BX chipset is widely considered a classic due to it's excellent reputation for performance and stability. Recent advancements in PC technology  have left the 440BX well behind in the performance stakes, but few, if any, later mainboard chipsets can claim to surpass the 440BX for stability.

The Asus P2B series of mainboards were among the better designed implementations of the 440BX chipset, and as a result have a well earned reputation for longevity and reliability. They have also proven to be highly upgradeable, and many P2B owners find the performance of their P2B-based system to be quite adequate, despite it's age, after installing CPU and other upgrades. However, PC technology has now reached the point where the P2B series, as delivered by Asus, is no longer compatible with modern processors and memory - leading many owners to conclude their next upgrade will have to include a mainboard update because their venerable P2B has reached the end of a long line.
 

These pages are dedicated to those few true enthusiasts who prefer to take a soldering iron to their P2B rather than a screwdriver to it's mounting screws in their quest for system performance improvements. The modifications presented here were developed and tested on P2B variants with the optional Adaptec U2W SCSI chipset, however several of them are applicable to other P2B versions, in particular mainboards like the P2B-D and P2B-L which have unpopulated SCSI chipset locations.
Click on the images to view the details


U-shaped wire Upgrading the P2B-DS Revision 1.04 to Dual PIII Coppermine processors @ 1.12Ghz (no soldering required)
P2B-S Rev 1.04 FS3 Enabling 150Mhz FSB on the P2B-S Rev 1.04 - and 7 more new FSB/PCI clock settings
P2B-DS Rev 1.06 D03 FS3 Enabling 150Mhz FSB on the P2B-DS Rev 1.06 - and 7 more new FSB/PCI clock settings
R50 Increasing RAM voltage on the P2B-DS (any revision) for improved memory reliability at higher FSB settings
Vtt Jumper Decreasing signal voltage on the P2B-DS Rev 1.06 for improved Tualatin processor compatibility
tB1 Microcode Adding Tualatin tB1 stepping microcode to the P2B BIOS 
S370-DL Vtt Connection Adding Tualatin processor support to the S370-DL Slot-1 adapter
Slot-T R3 Modifying Slot-T adapters to enable dual PIII (Coppermine) and PIII-S (Tualatin) processor support on the P2B-DS
UPDATE
P2B Tualatin Benchmarks
Benchmarking Tualatin processors on the Asus P2B Series
CPU Temperature Sensor Making processor temperature sensors
P2B-AE Modification
Adding Tualatin processor and 150Mhz FSB support to the P2B-AE (Sony OEM) motherboard



Coming Soon...



No Clock Chip ! Updating voltage regulators and clock generators on older revision P2Bs
ACPI Fix Various P2B-DS fixes Asus used to do under warranty
Defective P2B-DS Troubleshooting dead P2B boards


The Ultimate P2B System ? 

 

P2B-DS Dual 1.575Ghz
  • Asus P2B-DS Revision 1.06 D03
  • Fourth FSB jumper added
  • Vio raised to 3.5v
  • Vtt lowered to 1.38v
  • tB1 microcode BIOS update
  • S370-DL Tualatin adapters
  • Vantek CCK6012 1U copper heatsinks
  • Processor temperature sensors
  • Pentium III-S 1.4Ghz processors
(SL6BY 512K 1.45v Vcore)
  • 768Mb Corsair PC150 C2 RAM
Dual 1.575Ghz Boot

Interested in building a similar system but not confident of your soldering skills? Modified mainboards are available on a sale or exchange basis.

Email for details.

Last updated October 27th, 2005

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