Asus A7V is certified junk...buyer beware

[kamaboko]

I wanted to post this so that possible A7V buyers will stay away from this board. It has been nothing but a pain in the ars from the word go!!!! Avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid!!!!

A few goodies to share with you.
1. Had to remove the CMOS power supply for five hours before the board would allow me to power down holding the power switch button. (Never had to do this with an Abit) Prior to that it would power up and remain so until I had to pull the plug.
2. Current beep indicates that my DRAM is not detected. My DRAM works just fine in two other boxes.

I'm using a Duron approved case, everything is seated fine, yada yada yada. You get the point. This isn't my first computer, nor is it 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.

Two thumbs down on this product! :-(

 

[Plester]

sounds like 1 or 2 out of 100 have problems, unlucky you.

 

[Doomguy]

If you think because you get a bad board the product is the junk then you're a dumbass. Its the best duron/tbird board out.

 

[pdo]

This thread sadden me cuz I have one on the way. And Doomguy you don't have to be so hash. A kindler, gentler words would have been fine.

 

[jonnyGURU]

So you got a bad one, but I really have to wonder after reading this line:

Had to remove the CMOS power supply for five hours before the board would allow me to power down holding the power switch button.

What does your CMOS have to do with being able to power down, and if the goal is to clear the CMOS; since when does it take more than 15 seconds to clear a CMOS if you pop the battery AND unplug it. Yes, unplug since the P/S on an ATX system offers a constant 3.3V to the system board rendering the act of merely popping the battery.

Look, The A7V is not my favorite Socket A board either, but at least have a valid argument before deeming an entire product line as bad. Seriously. At least when I bad mouth Abit, I have 5 times as many bad Abit boards than I do Asus boards to back my claims.

 

[kamaboko]

JohnnyG,

Yes, I know it sounds odd having to take the CMOS battery out the way I did. It's usually a snap to fix this. Hey, I'm not the only person having this problem. Got to deja.com and type in "A7V no boot." Scads of people are having the same issue; no boot, no video, etc. Mobo's are not that difficult. This one however, is a pain in the ars.

Anyway, I'm not here to argue. Consider this my review of the board . . . free speech and all.

 

[jonnyGURU]

If you go and search for "A7V no boot", yeah, you get a bunch of people with dead A7Vs. :Q

Guess what? If you type in "Cat Died" at dejaNews you get a bunch of people with dead cats. That doesn't mean that cat's have a tendency to DIE all of the time.

 

[ToBeMe]

But Wait.......I have 5 times as many bad Asus's..........."Best board out for Duron/T-Bird"???????? Ha.......go do some reading! "1 or 2 out of 100"...... LMAO!!!!! look, they all have good ones & bad ones.....Jonny has a lot of bad Abits according to him, I, and many people I work with have no luck with Asus???? Go Figure! It's all a "Crap Shoot"! I'll stick with Abit......Never had problem 1 with one yet! Everyone of us is entitled to his/her own opinion this is, and shall remain mine unless something changes, Jonny's is different, kamaboko's is too.....so what! I bet what I say won't change an "AntiAbit" persons mind just as they won't change mine! Abit has ALWAYS treated me right and right now, with the KT7-RAID they have earned the highest overall reviews of any KT133 board made......the KA7 was a good board for me but the B/M's SUCKED! who knows, next time it may be Asus or whoever.....I'll stay with Abit! I'll try them all (because I can) but my personal systems always include an Abit MoBo!

 

[Shudder]

I've been reading posts since January when I originally was looking for a new motherboard to replace my K6-2. I had an Asus P5A so I thought I might stick with them. Glad I didn't. I read a TON of problems with the K7M. Didn't get that and glad I didn't. When the ViA chipset came out, lots and lots of people were having problems with the k7v. Last week I was looking for a Socket A MB and I still read a ton of problems with Asus's A7V or whatever it is. No thanks.

I don't really overclock so I didn't need to spend the extra $$ on the Abit, but if I would have I would have had no problems getting the Abit and I certainly would take it over the Asus board.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Actually ToBeMe, you have ONE non-working Asus board and three working Abit boards, right?

That means you have a 100% higher failure rate with Asus and a zero failure rate with Abit! Right?

Anyhoo... I can't go out and say that all Abits suck because of my one bad one. If I get 5 back out of 100 sold, then I base my judgement on the 5 that come back. I am willing to realize that that means there are 95 of those 100 that work fine.

It sounds like a lot of the prejudice towards Asus is "I have one bad one, they all must suck". If you go into a town and your car breaks down and you go into a bar and it's full of rednecks, does that mean the town is full of rednecks?

Also remember, people that have something bad to say tend to bitch the loudest. Hell, just listen to me!

And shudder, there's no problems with the K7M or K7V. That's just crazy. As I said, people that bitch are the loudest. There's probably MORE PEOPLE OVERALL that have the K7M and K7V then any other slot board out. Unfortunately, this means there's more bad ones out to. Fact is: there is NO perfect board. They ALL have failure rates.

I do have to say that if you want a solid socket A board, my money is on the MSI. VERY low RMA rate and rarely a BSOD!

 

[Engineer]

I have bought 1 Biostar, 2 Abits and 1 Asus (A7V) in the past 4 years....Other than a few driver and BIOS problems in the beginning (specifically with TNT cards), I've gotten all boards stable within a few weeks time. Obiously, with all the combinations of hardware, software, and inexperience (not suggesting anybody, just a generalization) out there, problems will arise. Good luck to all! Final note: Asus A7V with proper cooling has been a wonderful board so far!

Good Luck!

P.S. System specs:

Asus A7V with 1GHz Tbird running on standard settings

256 Megs NEC PC100 Memory

30 Gig Maxtor DM40+ on ATA66 IDE

Plextor 8/4/32A IDE burner

Toshiba 40X IDE reader

Creative GeForce GTS2 32DDR card running at stock speed

Sound Blaster Live MP3+

3Com NIC (popular one, don't remember number!)

Generic Case with 300W Top-Power PS + 2 extra 80mm cooling, 2 extra 92mm cooling, Alpha PAL6035 with 23CFM Sunon fan, and one Nidec Blower cooling MB. Full load running RC5 24/7 = 44 to 48C depending on room temperature.

 

[ToBeMe]

Jonny: Actually as to what I have in my pssession right now......you're right! I should have stated more clearly......I had a few older Asus boards for Pentiums, 2 K7M's and 1 K7V that either gave me fits, or, I just didn't like plus I have built several systems with Asus boards because of customer preference.....a few have been fine....i.e. no bitching customers but overall my success is much higher with Abit, thus, my undieing prejudice! I'm open to all but always end up back with Abit.....well, maybe not so open to Asus! Hey, at least I'm honest about it!

 

[Citadel]

Well, I recieved a dead A7V too. I am disappointed but this is the first ASUS board in five that I have had any problems with. I hope that ASUS figures out the problem because it appears a more than normal of A7V owners are not receiving a good product.

 

[Dyflam]

I'm not so sure that there are as many bad A7V's as there are people who have problems with setup. It's not intuitively obvious, at least to me, that there's not a problem on initial power up... comes on for about 3 seconds and then shuts down. I thought at first I must have f'd something up.

 

[jonnyGURU]

A lot of people are bitching about the SB Live! not working in the A7V. Turns out that if you just set Slot X (X=Slot that SB Live! is in) to IRQ-5/ISA and it will then work. The Promise card sometimes wants IRQ5, but it needs to be available for SB Emulation (something that can not be disabled in the SB Live!)

 

[bonkers325]

amen jonny

 

[Diagnonsense]

I would have to say that ..yes..this board is very tyring when it comes to setting up...it took me several tries to get it right. I only have one problem left that I know of and I hope I can get some answers here concerning it. When I try to use media player it locks me up?? I had a lot of problems with IRQ's and SBLive and all I have read here..the 3 sec power thing...but I finally got it working (and I have to say..it is a fun computer now) by setting the PNP option in the BIOS to "no" and doing the IRQ 5/reserved for legacy deal for the SB card..and THEN doing a fresh install of Windows 98 and starting from scratch that way. Everything turned out great except the Media Player??? AND I NEED THAT! I am also interested in overclocking my Athlon 800. I read somewhere about having to repair some cuts on the chip with a pencil dealy and also about having to do something similar to the MB with the pencil dealy...and help?

Athlon 800
128mb ram
sblive
adaptec 2940u2w
9.1gig seagate barracuda
yammy 8-8-24 burner
matrox g200 millenium

 

[nate hancock]

I'm with you .paldo, I have an A7V and Duron 650 on the way. Makes me nervous, this is my first sysytem though I have some experienced friends to help me out. Let's stick together and see if we can get these things to work!

 

[derekjr_1]

Can anyone say MSI K7T PRO? My opinion is this board is the best. Noboy has problems with it and it is just as fast as Abit or Asus and doesn't cost as much! The only problem for techies I guess is no multiplier setting, but who cares since AMD is not going to let us overclock in the near future, and MSI is going to probably release a new bios with a multiplier, then it would get the best reviews and would definetely be the best board if you don't need RAID (then abit of course)... Just my opinion though!

 

[jello]

Hmm... maybe I'm just lucky. The a7v is the mobo I got, first computer I've ever put together. Other than the floppy power shorting out somehow the first time I plugged it in (fixed w/o problem in about 5 minutes) I have had 0 problems with the board. Currently running my duron 600 @ 800 w. SBLive, GeForce ddr, cheap-ass nic card, maxtor 30gig. I'm quite satisfied.

 

[Mem]

Derekjr_1,Lets just say I`m very,very happy with my MSI K7T PRO ,so stable I cannot believe it sometimes.

 

[jonnyGURU]

I'm with you on that MSI board.

Those suckers are flawless. Sure there is no ATA100, but the Promise PCI card works sooooooo nice!

 

[loweyson]

What do you people do with all these motherboards, consume them for breakfast with milk and sugar ????

Anyone who has recently bought an a7v is likely to have had or will have problems at some point, it's the same with most things said to be ibm pc compatible, they're just the little qirks you have to resolve, so far there have been Undetectable SBLive, Missing IDE's, High CPU Temperature, Voltage Drops and Lack luster windowz, all of which have been solved in some form or another. I gotta say sounds like yours was brought to you off the back of smokey joes lorry, or you were just unlucky.