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My First Colo Server On ASUS CUV4X

As this motherboard is very much dated, so is this article. I purchased this motherboard in 2000 so while by now some of the performance numbers and hardware specs seem less than impressive, the system actually performed surprisingly well at the time.

When I was setting up my first collocated server, I chose the ASUS CUV-4X PC133 motherboard equipped with a 700 MHz Pentium III processor running on a 105 MHz bus yielding around 734 MHz. Because my server was located about an hour’s drive from my home, I chose to stay within these safe limits. I ran the computer prior to collocation without a single glitch for about 6 months at 7x140 MHz on effective speed 1 GHz. The memory was set up to run at 4/3-bus speed around 180 MHz. Of course, when I prepared the server for collocation, I decreased memory speed to 105 MHz, and, to sweeten the deal, I included a 7200 RPM 100 GB hard drive and increased memory to 512 MB. The board and the system ran flawlessly both as my workstation and as a colo server.

ASUS CUV-4X Motherboard

This motherboard is an overclockers’ dream come true. Support for HSDRAM - the high speed DRAM from Enhanced Memory Systems - allows you to clock your memory at a different frequency than your bus. The motherboard can accept 1.5 GB of memory (or 1 GB in revision CUV4X-C) and an AGP card running at 4x speed. The independence of PCI slots allows for multiple concurrent PCI data transfers to memory and CPU. The motherboard supports VCM/SDRAM, a.k.a., the 64MB Virtual Channel Memory. This NEC technology allows for up to 50% speed improvement with a 30% power consumption reduction for installed memory.

The motherboard runs on the VIA VT82C695Z (the so-called VIA Apollo Pro 133Z) system controller and VIA VT82C686A PCI chipset. You get two ATA/66 IDE connectors. The primary IDE is color-coded blue. You get one AMR slot, one ISA slot and one onboard soundcard.

The Overclocking Paradise

The nicest feature of this motherboard is its wide selection of bus speeds: 66MHz, 68MHz, 75MHz, 80MHz, 83.3MHz, 100MHz, 103MHz, 105MHz, 112MHz, 115MHz, 120MHz, 124MHz, 133MHz, 140MHz and 150MHz. This wide selection should provide more than enough wiggle-room for experimenting with your CPU. The bus speed and multiplier can be set either by the dipswitch on the board or in the BIOS setup.

Final Thoughts

For a one-processor workstation this motherboard is awesome. You will be able to tweak immense power out of your otherwise boring CPU. As I mentioned before, I ran my CPU at 40% over its nominal speed for about a half year and I never even touched the voltage. If you are thinking of an older system purchase, be on the lookout for this very special motherboard.