Asus A8N-SLI

Message

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 3:30 pm

Anyone in the UK managed to get hold of one of these yet??? I can't wait for mine!

And you USA people - think of yourselves as lucky. You get all the stuff before us! Not fair!

R!tman · Post by **R!tman** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 10:44 am

I am looking forward to getting one of those too.

dsb · Post by **dsb** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 1:41 pm

You might try this long running dedicated thread in anandtech:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... TMP=Linear

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 1:42 pm

I have it on my desk right now

GREAT overclocker

315 x 8.5
rock stable

The onboard SATA isn't supported by the kernel in 2004.3, but it is supported by some experimental livecd's such as lxnay's Reiser4 thingy... Solution for me was to put the drives on the silicon image controller

R!tman · Post by **R!tman** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 1:56 pm

racoontje wrote:The onboard SATA isn't supported by the kernel in 2004.3, but it is supported by some experimental livecd's such as lxnay's Reiser4 thingy... Solution for me was to put the drives on the silicon image controller

Thanks for the tip. I only knew Redeeman's reiser4-livecds.

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 2:07 pm

Yeah but reiser4 is really really broken om AMD64 anyway

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:26 pm

Nice one!

I can't wait to get my hands on this bad boy!

Yeh I was imagining I'd have to use the Silicon Image controller as well - seeing as the nforce one probably isn't supported yet. Are both the gigabit lans working yet?

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:51 pm

They are supported, just not in the standard kernel on 2004.3.

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 6:31 pm

By the way... racoontje... are you in the UK? And if so, where did you get the board from?!

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 6:41 pm

mattjgalloway wrote:By the way... racoontje... are you in the UK? And if so, where did you get the board from?!

Belgium. Basically told my supplier that either he got me the board today or I would find a new supplier.

God, I love negotiation with an upper hand.

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 10:42 pm

Hehehe!

Maybe I should try that! Although I don't think it'd work - noone over here in the UK has any yet!

dsb · Post by **dsb** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:37 pm

mattjgalloway, I think a few Europeans have boards from that anandtech link I posted dedicated to A8N. Last I checked that forum was 28 pages, lots of good first hand info. In fact, I've decided to wait it out a little bit, I was talked into price too high, especially froogle turns one up $70 less than newegg. Also, seems just a couple of problems that I want to be sure thats not a manufacture problem or user problem. But, having said all that, I'm still watching this board (i mean mobo) like a hawk, because I just might turn and move my shopping cart right on through the checkout line!

I am still however, interested in your detailed write up and pics that you said in another post! I will certainly do the same, if and when I decide to jump in!

edited to say, that prices are now fluctuating daily; newegg has gone up since this morning by $6 however, atacom has come down quite a bit from their original over price. Apparently, alot of movement on this inventory item. Some additional reviews came in to newegg. Newegg went out of stock and wasnt expected to resupply until 1/4 but are now back in so I'm wondering if they had a couple of returns, hmmm?

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:53 pm

Hehe,

Yeh my write up of my install process should be good. I've got some of it done already as I've installed the PSU and 1 HDD into the new case. It's looking sexy already! Just waiting for the board!

thechris · Post by **thechris** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:54 pm

after getting my asus a8v i'd never buy another asus mobo. nothing but trouble so far. not that i have good luck with electronics, but its the first mobo that had real issues from the start.

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 7:53 pm

Exact same crap here. ASUS used to be quality. I'm afraid that some of the big guys at ASUS that were afraid quality was going down the drain in favour of price who founded DFI were right...

DFI is aimed at overclockers, and the fancy UV PCI slots may look like it's totally riced up, but at the end of the day, what parts are capable of running way out of their spec? Right. Quality stuff.

scharkalvin · Post by **scharkalvin** » Sun Jan 02, 2005 8:26 pm

after getting my asus a8v i'd never buy another asus mobo. nothing but trouble so far. not that i have good luck with electronics, but its the first mobo that had real issues from the start.

What kind of problems are you having with your A8V?
I'm starting to get mine up and running (with Athlon64 3400+ s939).

My first attempt to configure and install a kernel gives the following
message on boot:

#failed to set system clock to hardware clock.
your time source seems to be unstable or some device is hogging interrupts.
#error problem stating needed services
"bootmisc" was not started

otherwise the kernel DOES come up.

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Sun Jan 02, 2005 9:55 pm

I can't boot from anything that's on the nForce SATA

I'm returning it the day after tomorrow.

nukem996 · Post by **nukem996** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 12:27 am

I know on my ASUS A8V I could not boot at first. I had to change some things in the bios to get it to boot. After everything works perfectly with this mobo. I would definatly get another ASUS board. Try playing with the bios a little before giving up.

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 9:25 am

Yeh I heard that the nForce SATA chipset is set to RAID as default, and the Silicon Image chipset is set to normal (BASE) by default, so you have to change the nForce option before it will boot properly from it. It's the same on my Giga-Byte mobo. Just a little tinkering will make it work!

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 11:24 am

But I can't figure out how... Does anyone else have this mobo? It doesn't work, both with NVRAID enabled and disabled.

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 11:39 am

How about the boot options? I know on mine I have to set the boot device to be SCSI and then the SCSI device to be SATA. I don't have that board, yet

, but I guess it'll be similar to by current one for booting from SATA

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 1:56 pm

Well, I'll try that, but I doubt it'll work.
BRB.

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 3:43 pm

Nope. Board definately broken!

paulisdead · Post by **paulisdead** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 4:25 pm

mattjgalloway wrote:How about the boot options? I know on mine I have to set the boot device to be SCSI and then the SCSI device to be SATA. I don't have that board, yet , but I guess it'll be similar to by current one for booting from SATA

If you're on the nforce sata it'll actually show the drive in the bios, and in the section for the order of booting hard disks, they will be an option. I didn't try the sil image, but I think it'd be the bootable add in cards option. Newer mobos with sata integrated into the chipset can see the drive in their bios, and using a sata drive on the chipsets sata doesn't slow your boot down with the post for the add in card. At least till a newer driver comes out, though, you'll want to use the silicon image unfortunately.

I was very disappointed in the overclockability of this board and went back to something similiar to what I had before, except did the K8N Neo2. Kinda wish I had went back to the gigabyte K8NS Ultra, but I don't feel like swapping boards again (I work in a computer store so I can play with a lot of hardware), and 2.5ghz on a 3200s good enough. On the Asus I couldn't even hit 2.3ghz with this chip, which I know can do 2.6ghz. There's a lot of debate as to whether the PCI E and PCI locks actually work on this board when overclocking. If you're not overclocking you're probably fine with this mobo, if you can deal with the problems already mentioned in this thread.

R!tman · Post by **R!tman** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 2:56 am

Does the Asus A8N (SLI) support hardware mixing with its onboard sound system?