PC Chips M810 LMRT Micro ATX Review

Overall Rating

Price, easy install, computer in a box. updated drivers

only 2 pci slots directx 8.1 conflicts

I personally have 11 computers at my house including 3 computers that are being used as file servers and 5 computers that have been automated for online games. The 3 file servers are full of video as i do my share of video editing. I see all these people complaining it would not boot up. I can guarantee not 1 of these people who complained about the boot up problem ever read the owners manual. If they did, They would know upon shipping of this board the jumper setting is set for BIOS FLASH. Once the board is installed, Power it up to 5 seconds, Flash the BIOS, turn it off and change the pin settings from 2-3 over to 1-2 as it says in the manual. You can not miss the big oversized letters that say NOTE: board is set to BIOS FLASH. change jumper setting from pins 2-3 to 1-2.
Like i said, 8 of my 11 systems are these boards. the 5 boards that run a automated game are running 24/7. I might reset (reboot) the computers once a week or every 2 weeks. i have one that has been running for 6 months with no reboot! Another would have been running the same amount of time but I had a 60 gig hard drive crash on me. The only complaints I have about these boards is there is only 2 PCI slots and the OB (OnBoard) devices conflict with directx 8.1 but the conflict can be solved by putting in a cheap sound card. These boards were NOT designed as "Gamers" boards. They were designed for everyday office use and work well for their applications. For file storage servers, Mail servers, Office data entry, Web serfing, Small business web hosting and personal accounting they are fantastic for their price, for audio editing, video multimedia or high end graphic games this is not the board for you. For value I give this board a 10 out of 10. For the facts it only has 2 PCI slots and the directx 8.1 conflict I drop my final score down to 8 out of 10. Maybe in the next generation they can add an additional PCI slot and correct the directx conflict. You add a sound card to correct the directx 8.1 conflict, you have 1 PCI free, you blow your onboard USB by overloading, You do not have any PCI slots available of any other additions such as a raid card or scsi adapter. very limited that way. you use the board as a hardware firewall on your network you have no PCI slots available because you need 2 network cards for the pass through. 1 more slot would be nice. If PC Chips is reading this I could use a few more boards with more PCI slots to ummm test. winks.