PC Chips M810 LMRT Micro ATX Review

Overall Rating

Cheap, everything is built in.

Stability, upgrade issues, general bad quality.

Okay, here's the low down on this board. PC Chips (A.k.a Amptron, a.k.a. PC 266 and many more) is a generic company. You're getting what you pay for. Basically this board was designed with the purpose for mom & pop computer shops to produce a decently spec'd machine for under $250 to sell for about $350. Unfortunately, PC Chips being cheap as hell in order to supply us with a board this cheap uses subpar parts. Basically, the board doesn't have what it takes to be a good board. Your common problems with it will be conflicts with video cards and processors, incapable RAM, and lock ups. The AGP slot problem is so bad it's deserving of special attention. This board is VERY picky about which cards it will use and why. In many instances changing to AGP 1X or 2X on the baord will resolve some issues. The board is also very nit picky about Powered By ATI cards made by third parties. ATI cards themselves typically work, to some extent. Lastly many, of these boards had one big boo-boo in the onboard sound. They reverse soldered the leads in the mic jack, meaning only stereo compatable mics will work, without a bit of splicing with the right wires. But those are the problems you're likely to encounter. Some of this is prone from cheap capacitors to lack of chipset cooling, to poor chipset placement. Really, this is a board to buy for Grandma so she can e-mail and send pictures. Don't expect much else from it. What this board can do and what it's capable of varies from revision to revision and in some instances from board to board. Any chance of over clocking this board is slim and limited to the voltage route. And for those of you looking for TV out from the onboard video (as implied in some places) are going to be dissapointed. Though the capability is IN the chipset, it requires a special daughter-type of card that no one (SiS, PC Chips, a third party) has bothered to produce, and with the board's quality it's not shocking. This is not the saving grace a lot of people have thought it to be. The sad part is that this board is still on the market. Some revisions even include a soldered on OC'd Duron, and one has RAM solder in. if you're looking for a cheap AMD board, this'll work for e-mail and surfing as well as workstation applications. A home user looking for movies, music and Games is better off going the lines of Asus, or another well reputible company. If you already have this board and need solutions give google a search with "m810", and you'll grab up some nifty resources on how to fix the problems you probably are having. Then again, some fixes only work on some board, and other only on certain revisions. I hear the modem work rather well, though I've never tested it myself. If you want counter strike, MP3's, and chatting, it'll do you. If you want GTA3, DiVx, and voice chat, look elsewhere. Besides, DDR boards and chips aren't running much more expensive, these days.

Members' Comments onMagus's Review

• jill on 2nd Jan 2004

  You are right on in your review! I saddly own this board and was surfing looking for a fix for the freeze ups when I came across your review.HELP!

• geoff04 on 4th Sep 2004

  It's a cheap one so the expectation should not be high. I bought it 3 years ago for $400. System stability is fine unless you try some overlocking. I changed the heat sink and CPU fan just recently because it's too noisy. Bios battery may need a change also because it can't remember the IDE setup sometimes. Overall, it's a good trade-off between money and performance and quality.