BIOSTAR to Release BIOS Updates for 600 Series Motherboards with Support for 13th Gen Intel Core “Raptor Lake” Processors

Tsing

The FPS Review
Staff member
Joined
May 6, 2019
Messages
12,614
Points
113
BIOSTAR has confirmed that it will be releasing new BIOS updates for its 600 Series motherboards that include support for 13th Gen Intel Core "Raptor Lake" processors.

Go to post
 
Ugh. Just reading the name "Biostar" makes me cringe.

I have never before in my life used such pure unadulterated garbage as the motherboards from Biostar.

I would never again touch their products even with the proverbial 39.5ft pole.
 
I have used a few for budget builds, and they are still going after many years in service. I wouldn't build a high end build with them, but that's just me.
 
Zarathustra said:
I have never before in my life used such pure unadulterated garbage as the motherboards from Biostar.
Click to expand...
Our ITX case review rig uses a board that Dan reviewed and.... can confirm.

Niner51 said:
I have used a few for budget builds, and they are still going after many years in service. I wouldn't build a high end build with them, but that's just me.
Click to expand...
That's my sentiment based on the above board. It works. Overclocking (or any tuning whatsoever) is a roll of the dice, with features either missing or broken, and the RGB lighting is nearly impossible to control, due to the limitations in the BIOS and Biostars' software just straight up crashing the OS.
 
Niner51 said:
I have used a few for budget builds, and they are still going after many years in service. I wouldn't build a high end build with them, but that's just me.
Click to expand...

The one Biostar board I have used in recent memory (Haswell era, so maybe not that recent anymore), a MicroATX board was not even suitable for budget use.

I tried it because I needed a cheap motherboard in what was essentially a cheap Haswell Celeron based HTPC/streaming box hooked up to a TV.

So many of the basics just didn't work. PWM fan control was a big fail, CPU sleep states didn't work, etc. etc. After fighting with it for a week, I just gave up and returned it, and vowed to never buy Biostar again, even for budget stuff.
 
Last edited:
I actually had one awesome Biostar motherboard, using an nForce 2 chipset. I ran my Athlon XP "Barton" 3200+ in it. That was my very last 32-bit system and last single-core system. The last time I used it was in 2007 when my nForce 4 system with Opteron 165 crapped out. I brought it outta retirement to have a temp PC. It is NOT fun trying to do 3D rendering with 3DS Max (for a college course) on that thing. UT3 didn't run so well either. I didn't even bother trying Crysis. Luckily a few months later I built an X38 system with a Core 2 Duo "Conroe" (forgot model and speed). Anyways, that nForce 2 board was the only Biostar product I ever used, and pretty sure that whole system still works fine. Maybe I should fire it up and check.
 
Niner51 said:
Forgot all about ECS. They were definitely lower tier.
Click to expand...
was it them or Abit that had the neon green PCB's for their motherboards back in the Athalon 3200+ days. Single core 64 bit CPU POWA!!
 
Last edited:
Grimlakin said:
was it them or Abit that had the neon green PCB's for their motherboards bath in the Athalon 3200+ days. Single core 64 bit CPU POWA!!
Click to expand...
I was a big Abit fan back in the day and used their boards quite a bit, but don't remember any neon green ones from them. ECS I never used due to their less mainstream offerings. DFI was always big on brights colors with their LAN party line.
 
Grimlakin said:
was it them or Abit that had the neon green PCB's for their motherboards bath in the Athalon 3200+ days. Single core 64 bit CPU POWA!!
Click to expand...

Yeah, back then I was definitely an Abit fan, but I think I may have used ECS or Biostar back then as well, and I don't recall being as offended by the boards at that time.

Not sure if they went downhill, or if my expectations changed.
 
DrezKill said:
Back in the day I was into DFI's LANParty series of boards with UV-reactive components cuz I used blacklights in my PCs.
Click to expand...
I had one as well paired with a Q6600 if I remember right. Was an awesome board.
 
DrezKill said:
Back in the day I was into DFI's LANParty series of boards with UV-reactive components cuz I used blacklights in my PCs.
Click to expand...
Just for reference, this is the look we are talking about?

1658504901429.png

I ask, because I don't remember this at all. Maybe because I was always focused on performance first, and scoffed at aesthetics. I didn't even have my first case with a window until ~2015 or so, and only then because none of the cases I was shopping for came with a solid side anymore :p
 
Niner51 said:
Forgot all about ECS. They were definitely lower tier.
Click to expand...

Fry's always had Athlon XP's on sale with those ECS k7s5a (or something like that) cheap azz mobos. They worked, but talk about bargain basement. Still I remember you could get a mobo + cpu for like $150. I built a ton of those systems for people. I specifically remember the audio output on those things being horrible and picked up all kinds of electrical noise. Sound card required.
 
Burticus said:
Sound card required.
Click to expand...

I feel like that was pretty much the case for 100% of motherboards until the mid to late 2000's

I used a discrete sound card in every system up until I finally pulled my venerable X-Fi Titanium HD out of my current build when I installed my 6900xt in October last year. Granted, for the last 8 years since I got my first Schiit USB DAC, I was only using it for the occasional line in recording work.

I haven't really relied on "on board" audio since the PC bleep-bloop days back before I got my first sound card (a Sound Blaster AWE32) in 1994.

That was probably the first PC part I ever bought after reading an online review :p
 
Last edited:
Zarathustra said:
I feel like that was pretty much the case for 100% of motherboards until the mid to late 2000's

I used a discrete sound card in every system up until I finally pulled my venerable X-Fi Titanium HD out of my cutrren build when I installed my 6900xt in October last year. Granted, for the last 8 years since I got my first Schiit USB DAC, I was only using it for the occasional line in recording work.

I haven't really relied on "on board" audio since the PC bleep-bloop days back before I got my first sound card (a Sound Blaster AWE32) in 1994.

That was probably the first PC part I ever bought after reading an online review :p
Click to expand...
I could go through the iterations but needless to say I started in the PC DIY area around the same time.
 
Zarathustra said:
Just for reference, this is the look we are talking about?

View attachment 1779

I ask, because I don't remember this at all. Maybe because I was always focused on performance first, and scoffed at aesthetics. I didn't even have my first case with a window until ~2015 or so, and only then because none of the cases I was shopping for came with a solid side anymore :p
Click to expand...
I'm usually only focused on performance and reliability, and traditionally I felt that a focus on aesthetics was something mainly females did. Like you, my tastes usually go along the lines of simple, clean, and professional-looking. I've heard you describe your ideal motherboards, laptops, cases and such before, and in general I agree. However I have two weaknesses:
1.) Clear/transparent/translucent/see-through sh1t.
2.) Blacklights and UV-reactive sh1t.

In the late 90s, I started to see community mods where people installed side windows on their cases. This interested me. I often ran my PCs with one side open, mainly for airflow reasons at the time, sometimes for diagnostic reasons, but I always enjoyed being able to look in and see my hardware. Then companies like VoodooPC started doing some nice sh1t with windows, and I was hooked. Loved the idea. I was hoping we would start seeing PC cases being sold with side windows built in (also I was hoping beige would disappear as the main color for computer cases and switch to something like black). Around the same time I was seeing people throw cold cathode lights into their PCs, and I was down with that too - or so I thought. I got some blue cold cathode lights but realized normal colors like that weren't for me. So I dropped it. But then I saw there were cold cathode blacklights. I thought that was better, but it still didn't grab me.

Then DFI came out with those LANParty boards with the UV-reactive slots and brackets, and that got the gears turning in my head. Now all of a sudden using blacklights did actually appeal to me. Of course I wasn't gonna use such boards if they were trash, but the LANParty series of boards were usually pretty f*cking awesome. Great enthusiast performance/overclocking boards. Their nForce 2 and nForce 4 boards especially stand out in my memories. I had a friend who used a LANParty nForce 2 board (I had built that system), and when the time came for me to build an nForce 4 system (my first 64-bit and dual-core system), I chose a LANParty board. Looking back on my nForce 4 board now, I think the colors are garish. A lot of orange and yellow. Definitely not my colors. I think I cared more about the fact the slots and brackets were UV-reactive, but I was hoping for a color scheme closer to the nForce 2 boards. I wished we could order custom boards where we chose the colors for the UV-reactive components. For a while back then I also wanted UV-reactive fans, but I never found any that weren't cheap pieces of trash, so that never happened.

Regarding see-through stuff, I never got into the acrylic cases. While it was cool that the cases were completely clear (and some were UV-reactive), I was turned off by them due to the lack of EM shielding, and overall they looked kinda cheap and more fragile. So I never used a clear case, nor do I know anyone who did. But I used to see them with display PCs at computer stores like CompUSA and Micro Center. I think getting to see them in person is what really made me go "meh, kinda neat but in the end I don't give a crap."

I also really liked those Western Digital HDDs that had windows in them, so you could see the read/write heads move around over the surface of the platters, which was f*ckings nuts to witness. Never bought such drives myself though. They were more expensive than regular drives, and I think they also didn't have great reliability. Still it was awesome that an HDD manufacturer was selling sh1t like that, so people wouldn't have to resort to modding their own drives. I used to see that a lot in the DIY community. They would do sh1t like close the bathroom door, run the shower and get the bathroom steamy to supposedly push all the particles and other sh1t in the air down lower to the ground (the f*ck?), then quickly take off the top of the drive and throw saran wrap over it. Then at their leisure they would cut out the inside of the top of the HDD's case and install a window in it. Then they would run the shower again, quickly take the plastic wrap off, and put the top with the newly-installed window back on. Success rates weren't very high, people often f*cked up their drives HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. When I found out people were opening their HDDs in non-vacuumed-sealed, non-clean-rooms, I was like NOPE, f*ck all of that, definitely not gonna try that crazy bullsh1t myself. One story I remember reading about was the guy installed the window so that it wasn't really flush with the HDD case top, it was sitting well below it (due to the window's thickness). So when he installed it, the window itself was pushing down on the read/write head, which then carved a canyon into the platter. Yyeeaahh I think that HDD was done.

Huh, looking back through some pics, it turns out I did use blacklights before I had a DFI LANParty board, cuz even before that I was still using UV-reactive IDE cables and SATA cables.

Anyways, here are some pics I scrounged up of my nForce 4 board:

DSC03925.JPG
DSC03926.JPG
DSC03927.JPG
DSC03937.JPG
DSC04328.JPG
DSC06196.JPG
DSC06229.JPG

I thought I had pics of my friend's nForce 2 board, but I couldn't find any. I think it was this board: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1123/2 (Or it might have been the Ultra-B revision). Definitely a more pleasing color scheme than the nForce 4 above.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Become a Patron!
Back
Top