2008-04-12

SILICON MB P35

Silicon4me SIL-P35 is based around Intel's highly successful P35 Express and ICH9R chipsets. It supports Intel Celeron D, Pentium 4/D/XE and Core 2 Duo/Quad processors running on an 800/1066/1333 MHz FSB. The four DDR2 Slots can be filled with up to 8GB of DDR2 1066/800/667 memory. In terms of integrated goodies, the board has a Gigabit network card, three IEEE 1394 ports, 10 USB 2.0 ports, six Serial ATA II channels (Four via the Intel ICH9R with RAID, two thanks to the SATA2 controller) and of course a 7.1 channel High Definition audio controller.

The RAID care of the ICH9R is limited to RAID 0, 1,5,10 while the SATA2 chip offers us RAID 0, 1, JBOD.
At the top of the peripheral expansion list are two physical PCI Express x16 slots which support Dual AMD video cards in Crossfire mode (the slot1 has 16 PCIe lanes, the slot2 just 4 PCIe lanes). The PCI Express x16 slot1is really a PCI EXPRESSx4 slot, and along with this are three PCI Express x1 slots (one of which shares a PCI Express lane with the orange PCI Express x16 slot) and two 32Bit PCI slots for miscellaneous devices. If all that sounds complicated just remember; Intel P35 Express supports dual Crossfire video cards, and has room for at least two other PCI Express x1 devices.

For improving your working environment and increasing the longevity of the motherboard itself, the SIL-P35 features a totally silent copper Heat sink based chipset. Secondly, the Silicon4me SIL-P35 uses entirely solid state aluminum capacitors. Nice features, good construction, not a surprise the Silicon4me SIL-P35 retails for Virtually all the Intel P35 motherboards on store shelves have nearly identical features. It is really only on the integrated features and connectors where there is variation. So let's not repeat what we've already said in other reviews.

Instead, let's take a forward looking stance and ask ourselves why we cling to the Parallel Printer port? A Serial port is still plenty useful in networking environments, but parallel? It's time to do away with the Parallel port on the rear I/O, at the very least shift it to a header. The space would be much better served with a few more USB ports, an eSATA port or two, or perhaps a fire wire jack?

Onto use ability; the layout of the Silicon4me SIL-P35 motherboard is fine. Ports and connectors are labeled well, jacks and cables organized nicely.
With easy to access PCIe locks like the ones on the SIL-P35, it doesn't matter if the video card has a large double-slot heat sink, and access is unimpeded. If you have to struggle with a screwdriver to release an obscured PCIe slot lock and get the video card out, you may end up with an electrical short or snapped component. Just a thought, it's not like PCSTATS has had hands on experience with 200-odd motherboards or anything... oh wait! We have. :-)
Bundled in with the SIL-P35 motherboard are a common variety of data cables, a fire wire and eSATA bracket. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, but the SATA cables stands out for a couple reasons. The black one is eSATA-to-SATA, and the internal orange ones are the solid push-to-click variety that locks into the SATA headers positively. Once you have a SATA data cable wiggle lose you'll understand what I'm talking about.
Intel P35 Express and ICH9R Chipsets The Intel P35 Express Northbridge chipset replaces the P965 Express as Intel's mainstream performance core logic part.

The P35 Express handles all LGA775 processors running on 800/1066/1333 MHz Front Side bus (theoretical 10.6GB/s bandwidth), so it is ideally suited towards Intel's 45nm "Penryn" CPU. Along with the P35 Express is Intel's new ICH9R Southbridge. This Southbridge supports RAID via Intel's Matrix storage technology.
With Intel projecting quad core processors to be the mainstream choice, the boys in blue have increased CPU Front Side Bus speeds from 1066MHz to 1333 MHz recently. An increased FSB speeds up data communication between the processor and system bus.

Intel also modified the memory controller in the P35, boosting DDR2 memory support to 1066 MHz and consequently increasing maximum theoretical bandwidth to 17GB/s (in a dual channel DDR3 configuration).
These changes are all incremental; the most significant improvement in the P35 Express chipset has been the inclusion of DDR3 RAM support. Now it is important to make the distinction that Intel P35 Express motherboards can support either DDR3 or DDR2.

By default the Intel P35 Express chipset handles a single 8GB/s PCI Express x16 video cards with 16 PCI Express lanes devoted to it. However, the Silicon4me SIL-P35 has two physical video card slots. There are six PCI Express lanes associated with the ICH9R Southbridge and four of them can be used for a secondary graphics card, thus the second PCI Express x16 slot. It's not as ideal a solution as two video cards receiving a full 16 or 8 PCI Express lanes each, but in this case a dual video card Crossfire set up will see 16/4 PCI Express lanes respectively.