rasz_pl wrote on 2022-12-14, 02:30:
meh, nothing wrong with h81. Asrock h81m can even overclock K CPUs.
Yes, it can, but so can H81 and B85 boards from Asus, MSI, and others. However, the small VRMs on those cheap H81 boards are your limiting factor. It doesn't matter how much cooling the CPUs have, the VRM itself will throttle power delivery long before the CPU reaches its limit. But really, what's the point of OCing a SB, IB, or HW CPU for XP? There aren't any appreciable gains.
Official driver support for XP ends at Ivy Bridge, as said. In terms of usefulness for XP, going from Ivy to Haswell doesn't net you anything, also as already said, and using tweaked unofficial drivers to get everything working isn't worth the hassle. Finally, for that specific board, I'd say don't bother because I've used it and think there are much better options. Few fan headers, no USB 3.0 front panel header, just really not worth it. If you're dead-set on a low-end FlexATX Haswell board, the MSI H81-E34 or ASRock B85-DGS are much better options.
For WinXP on Intel, the 6 and 7 series boards will be your best bet because they'll give you the best mix of old and new. The ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 board I use has USB 3.0, PCI slots, and a floppy drive controller. I used a standard WinXP install CD with AHCI drivers on a floppy and did a perfectly normal OS install. No tricks, no driver slipstreaming, no after-the-fact driver changes. I don't know of any Haswell board that has PCI slots or floppy support ( not saying none do ). Speaking of slots, you'll want to stick with full ATX boards if you want more than one PCI slot. Again, not saying there aren't any, but I don't know of any mATX boards have more than one PCI slot. Drop in a cheap i3, maybe even Celeron, and you'll be good to go. For graphics, a GTX 750 Ti can be had for under $50 and doesn't require an auxiliary power cable so it should work with any power supply you have.
