A8N SLI (not deluxe) trouble.

[Preko]

Hi.
I have seen alot of talk about the A8N-SLI deluxe mother board ,
not so much about the vanilla one.

I have it and I'm currently amazed that the BIOS updates are very rare for this board compared to the deluxe version.
Also I'm having lots of trouble getting my MAXTOR SATA (6y160m0) diamond 9 160gb to work with it.

So, to my questions:

1. Bios updates, any one with more info on why they aren't updating it along side with the deluxe version ? How much difference is there actually?

2. Why why why does my MAXTOR drive give me disc corruption ?
I have the newest nforce 6.39 and the beta 1002.003 bios, but in windows it still gives me i/o errors when i try to check it with my disc checking programs such as EasyRecovery Professional and Norton PartitionMagic 8.0. These programs should be able to not report these errors if the disc is working properly.
Also the disc dissapears from windows after a while.
This seems more like a issue with the hardware and hopefully the bios.
Anyone with more info on this issue ?

Cheers
P

 

[coyrls]

I've got the same fustration about BIOS releases. This is the reply I got from ASUS:

"Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting ASUSTek UK Technical Support Department.

The BIOS for the two boards are written together now, so all changes made to A8N-SLI Deluxe will also apply onto A8N-SLI, it is just that A8N-SLI Deluxe has been made earlier, thus has higher version number even if they have the same change. Hope this can help to clearify the question further.

For any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.

regards,

ASUSTek UK Technical Support Team"


This of course is rubbish..... you only have to look at the dates the BIOS's were posted on the Website .... the release BIOS for the non-Deluxe was posted last year! I replied but they have not got back to me so I'm going to log another call.

You don't say what Maxtor dirve you're using. It won't help you, but I haven't had any disk corruption problems.

 

[John]

wrong post, sorry

 

[fORM]

Don't buy Maxtor drives

 

[coyrls]

I've got another answer from ASUS:

"Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting ASUSTek UK Technical Support Department.

What we meant to say is the beta BIOS, not the release BIOS.
We only make beta BIOS into release after it has been fully tested by our quality testing. There should be a new version due to release for A8N-SLI basic soon.

For any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.

regards,

ASUSTek UK Technical Support Team"

so perhaps there will be a proper release update for the non-deluxe version soon!

 

[Preko]

Nice. Hope the bios will arrive soon.
About the maxtor drive, it's quiet hard to "exchange" the drive and it should work even if it's a MAXTOR.

 

[sharpnsmart]

I am running that EXACT same harddrive (Maxtor 160G SATA) on the Nvidia SATA on my A8N-SLI Deluxe and it's worked flawlessly for 3 weeks now.
I've used both the 1002 and 1003 bios.
I guess the moral is, dont use beta bioses.
Most of the time when I read about problems with this board, I see that the poster is using a beta bios.

 

[Preko]

Well I think the moral is that ASUS seems have a bios update priority for the deluxe version boards.
The only reason I use the beta bios is because it's the ONLY bios that is available except the original one (version 001) and it's from nov last year.
My hd didn't work with that bios either.

I hope ASUS pulls there act togehter and support both boards at the same time.
I'm beginning to think the boards alot more different than ASUS tells us.

 

[coyrls]

Well I think that's one of the points, for those of us with non-deluxe boards, there hasn't been a release of the BIOS since the initial 1001. That said I'm running with a non-deluxe board and the 1002.003 BIOS with the 120GB version of the same drive SATA Diamond Max 9 and I don't have any problems

I don't think there is much difference between the 2 versions BTW, the things that the deluxe version has are "add ons" to the NF4 SLI chip set, i.e. additional 4 SATA controllers, additional Gb Ethernet and additional Firewire, so the non-deluxe version is a cut down version but with the same core NF4 SLI chip set.

 

[MeatHead88]

I'm having issues with my DiamondMax 9s also.


sharpsmart, u using that as a boot drive? and is it the DiamondMax 9(6Y*****0) model or a DiamondMax 16(4R****0) or DiamondMax 10(6B****0)?

 

[coyrls]

Originally posted by: MeatHead88
I'm having issues with my DiamondMax 9s also.


sharpsmart, u using that as a boot drive? and is it the DiamondMax 9(6Y*****0) model or a DiamondMax 16(4R****0) or DiamondMax 10(6B****0)?

The 120GB drive that's working for me is a boot drive and is a 6Y Model (6Y120MO). The only thing that I can think of that people might be doing differently is the power. As you know you have two options for power to this drive, a legacy 4 pin power connector and a SATA power connector. I'm using the SATA power connector. Is it possible that people having problems are using the legacy 4 pin connector? I've no theory about why this should matter, I'm just trying to think of possible differences in usage.

 

[MeatHead88]

Originally posted by: coyrls

Originally posted by: MeatHead88
I'm having issues with my DiamondMax 9s also.


sharpsmart, u using that as a boot drive? and is it the DiamondMax 9(6Y*****0) model or a DiamondMax 16(4R****0) or DiamondMax 10(6B****0)?

The 120GB drive that's working for me is a boot drive and is a 6Y Model (6Y120MO). The only thing that I can think of that people might be doing differently is the power. As you know you have two options for power to this drive, a legacy 4 pin power connector and a SATA power connector. I'm using the SATA power connector. Is it possible that people having problems are using the legacy 4 pin connector? I've no theory about why this should matter, I'm just trying to think of possible differences in usage.

Right, I'm using the SATA power connector....Maybe I'll try the other one...

 

[sharpnsmart]

I'm using a Maxtor SATA 160G (6Y160M0) as the boot drive (it's the only harddrive in my system).
It works flawlessly.
I am using the regular molex power connector.

 

[ahurtt]

The regular A8N non-deluxe version has probably only just started appearing for sale. Of course ASUS marketed their deluxe SLI version first so they could milk all the money they could out of the market with the higher priced board for impatient "gotta have that nForce 4 board no matter what the cost" people. Give it a little more time, they will straighten it out just like they did with the Deluxe version. Give it some time for more people to start buying it and "beta" or "market" testing it for them and the fixes will start coming out.

 

[coyrls]

I guess another theory (about failing drives), is that if you're using a Molex to SATA power convertor, it could be the convertor that's at fault.