A8N32 - my experience.

[t0mn8r]

All,
Thought I would share my XP regarding this mobo.

I changed from an A8N-SLI Premium to the A8N32.

First off the good news:

Pretthy easy to install. Stable with 10% OC on FSB. Relatively low heat for mobo and CPU. Great performance. I was able to transfer my Sil RAID set to the nVidia RAID without losing any data.

I did not install the FW or C&Q. I did install the AMD driver as well as the multi CPU fix.

The bad news:
No room for any cards because I have to run 2 coolers for my 7800's. When benchmarking it shuts down without warning.

:-(

I know it's heat because when I BM with a cold machine it finishes. Have to continue looking around for some VGA cooling solution (without drowning the whole case in water or liquid nitrogen).

3DMark05 score went from 12218 to 12814. Not too shabby.

HTH

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Update

So many requests....


I fitted a pair of Zalman all copper VF700-Cu(AICu) and temps dropped by 20C. No more shutdowns and cards are idling at 48 and 47 respectively.

No more shutdowns.

Moderator:
Sorry, perhaps this belongs in the cooling section. Please don't hurt me....



Load temps are 58 and 55 which is > 20c cooler. Time for some OC'ing and BM I think.

From the top:

solofly:
The motherboard only has a limited amount of PCI slots (3). The SLI slots have been moved out by one slot so the second card sits near the bottom of the case obstructing the last slot. I had double wide cooling fans in the obstructing all of the slots.

No good.

After using the Zalman I have one (1) available shlotski (Polish invention, same guy who invented the jetski).

Xpage:
2 probs:
1. No camera (only phone camera)
2. Being a n008 don't know how to post pics...

:-((

Dingetje:

The BM do show a difference of about 600 3DMark05 using same S/W setup.

Dragon41673:
You mean CPU core?

What monitoring program would you want me to use?

BIOS setttings are standard except for a 10% O/C on FSB.

Leonardi:
There was only one additional fan and I installed it.

Phew.

End of update.

 

[solofly]

Originally posted by: t0mn8r
The bad news:
No room for any cards because I have to run 2 coolers for my 7800's. When benchmarking it shuts down without warning.

Help me understand this better...?

 

[Xpage]

pics! i want to see how much space you have witht he board. thx

 

[dingetje]

why did u change from premium to 32...they should perform just about the same?

 

[Skott]

I'm guessing he's using after market card coolers(fans). Squonk said he got two eVGA 7800GTX KO ECS3 cards and a Audigy2 ZS card to all fit on his and those vid cards are two inches thick each and are factory overclocked to 490MHz. For those wanting to DIY overclock a vid card using a 3rd party fan wont be able to. At least running two cards anyway. Not if you want to also run a extra pci card or two. Personally, I could live with just a 490MHz overclock card but thats just me.

 

[Dragon41673]

t0mn8r - could you please let us know what selections you have in bios for vcore on the board with your X2. Also please ramp that thing up to 1.5 and 1.55 and check with a monitoring program to report back what the real vcore reading is. A LOT of us are waiting on an answer to that question because of the vcore issue with the A8N-SLI's

 

[Leonardi]

I'd like to know if you installed the optional fans that come along with the board. I know they are intended for people who use watercooling solutions, but I read some review that mentioned that people should install them regardless to prevent overheating (which I found very odd, since the whole idea behind the board is the fanless design).

 

[MoFoEd]

Anyone know if this mobo is compatible with the Opterons 1xx's, I am definitely getting the board but also getting the Opteron 170.