IS there any happy A8N-SLI owner?

[mrscintilla]

my gosh, there are monstrously long threads filled with complains about this not working, that not working, gotta-rma-it, and blah, blah. Is there any working, successfully-overclocked, sataII-running-fine, no-freaking-problem-at-all a8n-sli owner? Alternatively, if you have rma'ed to ASUS, are you at least a happy customer with their rma service?

 

[SkyBum]

I just shipped my second A8N back for RMA today.

First time RMA was with Monarch and went without a hitch (aside from the fact that the replacement board had problems). This second board had non-working ethernet and firewire ports and some issues with the PCI slots. My experience as far as working with ASUS to get an RMA started was painless, hope the return side of things goes as well. According to the RMA email I recieved from ASUS, the replacement board will ship 5-10 days after they receive it. They also had an option to cross-ship boards but that involved paying for the replacement board in advance, with a credit issued once they had verified the defect.

From what I've seen and heard, I believe them to be a solid company who backs up their product well. I'll know for sure in a week to ten days.....

 

[bap4201]

The reason why you only see posts with problems is because the MANY owners of this board with no problems do not come to forums like this to post. Of the posts that you see here, MANY of them are the USER NOT the manufacturer! You need to read between the lines with these message boards. For example I saw a thread on here that said "A8N-SLI Problems w/ mobo" or something like that. When you read the thread towards the end, the guy forgot to plug in the 4 port plug from the psu!

Having said that, I have had zero/nada problems with this board, and I'm not surprised at all. After all, it's an Asus! It was the EASIEST installation I've EVER performed! Everything went together straight out of the box. Within 3 hours of getting this in the mail, I was gaming using SLI mode, and getting benchmarks that I've NEVER experienced that high! This is the BEST and FASTEST motherboard I have EVER OWNED, and I've owned MANY boards! I also believe that this is the BEST motherboard available on the market today.

So to answer your question, YES there is a happy a8n-sli owner, and I couldn't be happier or more satisfied. And believe me, there are many, many more.

 

[pac1085]

Yes, extremely happy with the board. No problems with it, overclocks great. The only thing im so-so about was the price

 

[bkzshabbaz]

I am not happy, because I cant get my hands on 6800GT's or Ultras, and im stuck with a 6600GT =(
Its like Asus releases such a nice board, but theres no cards to go with it

 

[Cy6nUsX1]

---I just breathed a sigh of relief. I know it is typical of a forum to be about 95% problem oriented but these A8N-SLI threads were running near 100% problematic. Glad to hear that you are enjoying your boards! I can't wait. Mine is due Monday.

I ordered the XFX 6800 GT, PCI-E,from computerHQ just after our New Years Eve party at about 4am 1/1/05 for $489..the price has since risen and I am not sure they are in stock anymore but take a look...BTW my card is due Monday with the MB.

 

[Insomniak]

I agree with Bap, only one or two of the problems I've seen in here have not been PIBKAC. Most everything I've seen has been user error...the few non-user-error problems I've seen have to do with SLI mostly, and that's not a surprise to me, and the same reason I don't plan to run SLI for several months...give them a chance to sort out the BIOS...

Anyway, I have an A8N-SLI Deluxe on the way, should get here monday or tuesday from ZZF....I'll let you know what happens.

 

[Nyati13]

I plugged mine all together, and it started up on the first try. No problems at all with the hardware. I did have an issue with the Nvidia Firewall software conflicting with something else, so I uninstalled that.

 

[bap4201]

Originally posted by: Cy6nUsX1
---I just breathed a sigh of relief. I know it is typical of a forum to be about 95% problem oriented but these A8N-SLI threads were running near 100% problematic. Glad to hear that you are enjoying your boards! I can't wait. Mine is due Monday.

That's great and I wish you best of luck w/ the install! Yes, previous to this board, I owned the MSI Neo 2 Platinum, and I went through 3 of them. But just go and read the msi forums, and you will notice that there are MANY threads w/ problems on the neo2. But there are many many more happy users of the neo2, and i was one of them (finally after the 3rd board). Reading some of these forums makes you more confused and scared to make a purchase.

The Asus A8N-SLI is a top of the line board, from a top of the line manufacturer. When making a decision on purchase read the reviews (there is not one negative review of the asus a8n-sli that I can find and all that I've read are VERY positive) then check the forums. But read between the lines, draw a conclusion, purchase the board and pray for the best!

 

[avey]

I am a very happy owner of this board. The only issues I had during install really has nothing to do with the board it self. I originally bought two Giga-Byte 6600GT cards to run SLI. Issue was that they weren?t SLI certified so the Forceware driver wouldn?t let you enable SLI. I ended up returning them and got two ASUS 6600GT cards. Be carefull of the cards you buy if you want to run SLI. Just because they have the connecter up top dose not mean they will work in SLI.

Other then that the board runs great.

 

[Uglor]

built my a8n-sli deluxe rig almost 3 weeks ago. i had a hard time getting my wireless connection set up, but thats about it. also, flashing to beta bios 1003.005 gave me problems lwith some of my pci cards (audigy2 and Hauppauge pvr-250), but it was remedied by reflashing it back to beta bios 1003.004. i am totally happy with this purchase.

 

[mrscintilla]

all the happiness just brought me to tears of joy. kidding, but it certainly supported my decision to pull the trigger on an an8-sli from micer.com. It will get here early next week. pray all you guys are right.. do you think there will be a revision board (hardware) coming out later like what they did with asus a8v version 2 to fix working pci lock?

 

[bap4201]

Originally posted by: mrscintilla
all the happiness just brought me to tears of joy. kidding, but it certainly supported my decision to pull the trigger on an an8-sli from micer.com. It will get here early next week. pray all you guys are right.. do you think there will be a revision board (hardware) coming out later like what they did with asus a8v version 2 to fix working pci lock?

nope, not at all, no reason to.

 

[century child]

Add another very happy owner of this board. My only complaint is that I could not find any 6800GT's and had to settle for 2 6600GT's, but that's not ASUS' fault (well, I guess it could be indirectly since they are one of the manufacturers who have none on the market). Anyway, the few problems I had and have ironed out, turned out to have nothing to do with the board. One thing that is required with this board, and would prevent many of these problem posts you have seen, is that you have to read the manual. If you do this, you will likely come through the install problem-free as well. Oh, and I almost forgot, don't use a SATA optical drive with it.

 

[Tanclearas]

Happy here as well. I haven't tried SLI yet, but hopefully it won't be a problem.

There have been some minor issues here and there. I and others have problems with command queuing being enabled. I'm not too concerned about that at the moment. It might be a driver issue, or a BIOS issue. Either way, when I had it enabled, the drive benchmarks barely changed. Also, there are some poorly labelled BIOS options (memory settings in particular).

I believe many (not all) of the problems people are posting about have to do with overclocking. This isn't much of a surprise. Overclocking is possible, but you might have to put a little more effort into getting the settings right than you would with other boards. Hopefully this will change with future BIOS releases.

 

[Interfire]

Best motherboard I've owned to date, period. No problems at all.

Cept maybe like the other guys here with the 6800GT issues, but thats not ASUS's fault.

Well maybe... they could have released some 6800GT's along with the board. w00t hehe

 

[hkhawk]

Yeah, all the happy owners are gaming non-stop, they have no time to check in on the forums!

 

[dworley]

Another Happy owner here! I had no problems with install and this technology has far exceeded my expectations - enjoying pure gaming bliss with 100% stability!

My only problem has been that I can not get wide screen resolution 1600x1050 working in games which hopefully will be addressed with a newer driver.

--------------------------------
ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE (bios 1003.005)
Athlon 64 FX-55
512mb X 2 Corsair XMS 3200C2
BFG 6800GT OC x 2 / SLI MODE
OCZ ModStream 520W
Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case
Thermaltake Big Water cooling kit
Arctic Cooling NV5 Silencer (2)

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I've had this board for 3+ weeks and I couldn't be happier

 

[FastEddie]

Still bleeding from the price (wasn't too bad though). Easy to set up, fast, stable, & lots of extras. Asus did a real good job with this board (location of power connector, perifs., ect). My one complaint is that I would have liked to have seen a better audio solution, but this works with both s/pdif coax and tos link out.

Still would like to get my hands on the K8N Neo4 Platinum. Maybe MSI got their Christmas's mixed up, where we all thought the release would be Christmas 2004 instead of 2005.

All in all, the Asus A8N Sli Deluxe gets :beer: :beer: :beer:

 

[AlexBmur]

Incredibly happy owner here. I bought this board knowing there would be some issues because it is cutting edge technology (SLI, SATA II, NCQ). Bt as more bios revisions come out and drivers mature I am sure those that are having trouble will have their issues solved. I have never had a computer build go as smoothly as I did with this board, so I am very happy.

 

[bap4201]

keep it comin guys!

 

[runestone]

Been running mine with amd 3500 and gig of crucial ballistix since xmas day- no real problems.
Using one gt6600 and 2 sata drives(non raid) on nvidia ports, one 100 gig WD that had my backup stuff, on IDE. Bios 1003-005.
The only complaint I have is that I keep getting "cpu fan failure" message on boot. I read in another forum this might be because the board does not recognize the slow speed of the Panaflo 120 L fan on the xp120 heatsink. I thought it was because the fan did not support rpm monitoring.

 

[JMag]

As the days progress I am getting happier and happier with this board. I was intially rather distraught and a portion of me wanted to blame the motherboard. However, as I learned all of my problems except for the maximum 240mhz 1t memory speed have been solved.

This board was also my first a64 build, so I didn't RMA right off the bat. I tested a huge number of configurations and I should have listed to my gut instinct first. At least it was a learning expirience.

Anyway It is working great and stable now.

 

[orlenfrost]

Are there any among the happy users that have Maxtors configured in a RAID?

I am sure I will be happy once I can get mine to work!!!!