For any of those who are interested in my opinions of this board, the Foxconn Winfast NF4 Ultra PCI-E S939 Mobo, please read on!
The following is my setup:
Foxconn Winfast NF4UK8AA-EKRS mobo
Newcastle A64 3500+
1 Gig (512 x2) PC-3200 Patriot XBL
eVGA GeForce 6800GT PCI-E
Seagate 7200.8 200Gig SATA II harddisk
Enermax Noisetaker EG495AX-VE SFMA PSU ATX 12V v. 2.0
Chaintech AV-710
In-Win 7in1 card reader in 3.5" bay
Antec 3700 BQE case (not using the stock PSU, obviously)
Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra 90mm heatsink/fan, using Arctic Silver 5
Everything is at stock speed.
RAM set to 2-2-2-7 1T
Impressions of motherboard:
Excellent build quality. My video card runs right over the chipset cooler, but otherwise does not interfere with the SATA cable. The chipset cooler is on the loud end, but certainly not louder than my video card fan (the loudest thing in the system). Everything hooked up rather quickly, and the system booted on the first try.
Idle CPU temp is 30 degrees C, load under Prime95 (max heat torture test) appears to be 42 degrees C. These are the BIOS temp readings, using the included "Super Step" monitoring program. Case temp gets as high as 39 degrees C according to the monitoring program.
One interesting thing about this board is that the serial port CANNOT be disabled at all. Usually one thing I do is disable all legacy devices, but this is not something that can be turned off. I did disable the parallel port and secondary Parallel ATA channel in an effort to conserve IRQ usage as much as possible.
The BIOS allows moderate tweaking of the RAM timings (the usual, including the command rate). I cannot speak to the overclocking ability as I do not overclock, but there appears to be some options in the BIOS for it (although many review sites have pointed out that this board simply does not overclock well).
When everything was all said and done, the only two devices sharing an IRQ in my system under WinXP Pro were the on-board Agere firewire and my Chaintech AV-710. Since I do not really use the firewire, this is not likely to present an issue, and I am considering disabling it anyway.
I am having one issue, but am unsure if it will affect real-world stability. I can run Prime95 for hours and hours on end and it will not experience an error. If I attempt and run 3DMark05 concurrently, then eventually about half-way through the benchmark Prime95 will halt due to an error. I can run 3DMark without Prime95 running in the background and it will work fine. I am still trying to track down what this could be--but otherwise have not experienced any stability issues beyond this. It simply causes one or the other to terminate, but WinXP does not crash (ie catastrophic). Anyone have any idea on this one, or should I simply accept it and move on?
A note on the nVidia 6.39 chipset drivers--I get an immediate BSOD if I attempt to load the Forceware Network Access Manager. I can use the plain ethernet driver in the pack and have no issues, but the second I try and use Active Armor or anything beyond the basic driver, IMMEDIATE BSOD. I understand this is a driver issue, and not a motherboard issue (or at least there is some degree of interaction depending upon the brand as others seem to be doing OK, but many are having the same problems across a great spectrum of nF4 boards).
NCQ. I am using the NCQ ability of the chipset and Seagate drive. FAST. QUIET. I mean it. No problems with NCQ.
One thing to watch out for is to make sure you install XP before you hookup any USB based mass storage devices otherwise XP will fubar the driver letter assignments. I initially ended up with my Seagate as drive H. Not a big deal, but caused me enough consternation that I unplugged the InWin Reader and reinstalled!
Otherwise, this build went smoothly. I like the board. Besides the one stability issue under extreme stress and the flakey nVidia Active Armor utility/driver, everything is going well.
The following is my setup:
Foxconn Winfast NF4UK8AA-EKRS mobo
Newcastle A64 3500+
1 Gig (512 x2) PC-3200 Patriot XBL
eVGA GeForce 6800GT PCI-E
Seagate 7200.8 200Gig SATA II harddisk
Enermax Noisetaker EG495AX-VE SFMA PSU ATX 12V v. 2.0
Chaintech AV-710
In-Win 7in1 card reader in 3.5" bay
Antec 3700 BQE case (not using the stock PSU, obviously)
Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra 90mm heatsink/fan, using Arctic Silver 5
Everything is at stock speed.
RAM set to 2-2-2-7 1T
Impressions of motherboard:
Excellent build quality. My video card runs right over the chipset cooler, but otherwise does not interfere with the SATA cable. The chipset cooler is on the loud end, but certainly not louder than my video card fan (the loudest thing in the system). Everything hooked up rather quickly, and the system booted on the first try.
Idle CPU temp is 30 degrees C, load under Prime95 (max heat torture test) appears to be 42 degrees C. These are the BIOS temp readings, using the included "Super Step" monitoring program. Case temp gets as high as 39 degrees C according to the monitoring program.
One interesting thing about this board is that the serial port CANNOT be disabled at all. Usually one thing I do is disable all legacy devices, but this is not something that can be turned off. I did disable the parallel port and secondary Parallel ATA channel in an effort to conserve IRQ usage as much as possible.
The BIOS allows moderate tweaking of the RAM timings (the usual, including the command rate). I cannot speak to the overclocking ability as I do not overclock, but there appears to be some options in the BIOS for it (although many review sites have pointed out that this board simply does not overclock well).
When everything was all said and done, the only two devices sharing an IRQ in my system under WinXP Pro were the on-board Agere firewire and my Chaintech AV-710. Since I do not really use the firewire, this is not likely to present an issue, and I am considering disabling it anyway.
I am having one issue, but am unsure if it will affect real-world stability. I can run Prime95 for hours and hours on end and it will not experience an error. If I attempt and run 3DMark05 concurrently, then eventually about half-way through the benchmark Prime95 will halt due to an error. I can run 3DMark without Prime95 running in the background and it will work fine. I am still trying to track down what this could be--but otherwise have not experienced any stability issues beyond this. It simply causes one or the other to terminate, but WinXP does not crash (ie catastrophic). Anyone have any idea on this one, or should I simply accept it and move on?
A note on the nVidia 6.39 chipset drivers--I get an immediate BSOD if I attempt to load the Forceware Network Access Manager. I can use the plain ethernet driver in the pack and have no issues, but the second I try and use Active Armor or anything beyond the basic driver, IMMEDIATE BSOD. I understand this is a driver issue, and not a motherboard issue (or at least there is some degree of interaction depending upon the brand as others seem to be doing OK, but many are having the same problems across a great spectrum of nF4 boards).
NCQ. I am using the NCQ ability of the chipset and Seagate drive. FAST. QUIET. I mean it. No problems with NCQ.
One thing to watch out for is to make sure you install XP before you hookup any USB based mass storage devices otherwise XP will fubar the driver letter assignments. I initially ended up with my Seagate as drive H. Not a big deal, but caused me enough consternation that I unplugged the InWin Reader and reinstalled!
Otherwise, this build went smoothly. I like the board. Besides the one stability issue under extreme stress and the flakey nVidia Active Armor utility/driver, everything is going well.