Intel® Desktop Board D975XBX2VV2

This board is a pre-production experimental product. It is roughly equivalent to a FAB C retail board. Production boards are FAB E. It does support Conroe CPU’s, 800MHz PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM, changing the FSB speed, and CPU voltage. It has been modified so the latest BIOS can be installed without damaging components that were changed after FAB C.

Specifically, components related to changing the voltages of the RAM, FSB, and chipset were removed (used for extreme overclocking). The board part number in firmware has been changed to reflect a Retail board with 8-channel audio; this allows the audio driver to install properly.

Limitations:

The BIOS lists options for changing the voltages of the RAM, FSB, and Chipset.

DO NOT CHANGE THESE SETTINGS FROM THE DEFAULT

The components to enable the voltage changes were removed to facilitate installing the latest BIOS, and you might be changing settings of other components on the board. You can change the frequencies to overclock.

The secondary SATA RAID controller is not present, but all 8 SATA connectors are. Only the black connectors work, and are connected to the 975 chipset. The chipset SATA controller supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5

Specifications:

Processor Socket / LGA 775
Chipset / Intel® 975X
Integrated Graphics / No
Form Factor / ATX
Memory - Maximum Supported / 8 GB
Memory Frequency (refer to TPS for configuration requirements) / Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 MHz
Audio / Intel® High Definition Audio (Sigmatel STAC9274D)
S/PDIF / 2 digital audio out connectors (1 coaxial, 1 optical)
LAN Controller / 10/100/1000 LAN
USB Connectors / 8 USB 2.0 (4-Front, 4-Back)
PCI slots / 2
PCI Express x16 / 3 (1 electrical x16 or x8, 1 electrical x8, 1 electrical x4) Supports ATI Crossfire
PCI Express x1 / None
SATA (ports) / 4 SATA2 with ICH (black) RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5
PATA (ports) / 1 Port, 2 Devices
IEEE-1394a Ports / 2 (1-Front, 1-Back)
TPM / No
Intel® Matrix Storage Technology (RAID) / Yes
Hyper-Threading Technology Support / Yes
Instantly Available PC / Yes
Supports Intel® Viiv Technology / Yes

Setup tips:

Power supply: The board has a 2X4 connector for the 12V AUX CPU power. If you don’t have a power supply that has a 2X4 connector (most have 2X2) then you can purchase this adapter for about $4. Google it, as shop.intel.com is gone. Alternatively, you can plug your 2X2 connector into the center 4 pins like this:

It’s not designed to fit that way, but you can force it in and it will work. DO NOT PLUG a 2X3connector into the motherboard. That connector is for PCIe graphics cards and the 12V and ground wires are reversed. You could destroy your motherboard, CPU, and Power Supply

The board also has a 24pin ATX power connector. If your power supply does not have a 24 pin ATX connector, you can plug your 20pin connector into the board like this:

XP installation tips:

  1. Install XP
  2. Service Pack 3
  3. Chipset drivers
  4. LAN drivers
  5. Windows Update (twice) (Caution: IE7 in Windows Update now. Choose CUSTOM to not install it)
  6. Graphics drivers
  7. Audio drivers
  8. Application software