ASRock Wolfdale1333-GLAN/M & E5200

[nsherin]

I'm currently running a Core 2 Duo E8400 on an ASRock Wolfdale1333-GLAN/M - details http://http://www.asrock.com/mb/over...3-GLAN/M&s=775. As I'd like to move to having 8GB RAM and also the option to upgrade to a Core 2 Quad at a later date, I'm going to replace the board with an Asus P5Q Pro (and buy the 8GB RAM at the same time).

One of my workmates wants to build a low-cost bu decent system for his parents and has offered to take the ASRock board, plus 4GB of DDR2 667 (4x1GB Kingston ValueRAM modules) that I've already installed on the board.

He'd like to fit an E5200 processor, but we can't seem to find any sign of the E5xxx processors listed on the CPU support list - ASRock > Products > Wolfdale1333-GLAN/M > CPU Support List.

I've flashed the BIOS to the latest version already and am bit surprised at not seeing the E5xxx series listed, as the board will take faster CPU's such as the E8400.

Does anyone know if an E5xxx series CPU will work on this board?

Many thanks for any advice,
Neil

[Shielder]

The thing you've got to watch with some of the E5xxx Processors (especially the E5200) is that they use odd .5x clock multipliers. In this case, the E5200 uses a 12.5x and I found - after buying a E5200 when it first came out I might add - that many low to mid-end motherboards (including many mATX boards) at the time didn't support .5x multipliers. Did find one after a bit of searching though.

Since the E5200 is a Wolfdale chip and the ASRock motherboard is advertised as supporting Wolfdale processors, your workmate may be lucky and may find that it will work fine. But that isn't a guarantee, unfortunately. If you can find out whether your board uses .5x multipliers, then he should be able to go ahead with the chip he wants, otherwise it's a case of either a new board to go with the chip or a different chip.

EDIT: I ought to add that it was in the BIOS that I found out that the original board I wanted to use didn't support .5x multipliers - that and the fact it wouldn't boot up at all!

[nsherin]

Thanks - unfortunately, within the BIOS, there seems to be no option to set the multiplier, only the freqeuncy.

I did e-mail ASRock this morning, so hopefully will hear back from them soon with a response.

[nsherin]

A quick update!

Never did get a reply from ASRock support, but my work colleague got his system built and the E5200 was correctly identified by the BIOS and works fine, so that's a result!