Official DO's and DON'T for ASUS A8N-SLI (PREMIUM)

[lopri]

apesoccer, I know your pain. ASUS just can't seem to get their vcore stable. I'm hearing the new A8N32-SLI has also the vcore problem with X2s. Curiously it doesn't seem to affect single core procs. While I still think I made a right choice between this board and DFI - because I *actually* use SLI and the space between 2 PCI-E slots matters - but I just don't understand why ASUS can't get this fixed.

Another stupid thing (probably intentional), is what's the point of making an *enthusiast* board with all the bells and whistles, and limiting its vcore to 1.5V? (Depending on the BIOS it could be 1.45V!!) Yeah.. so they can advertise it as "OC-friendly" and when a user actually tries to OC, s/he gets frustrated because s/he can't use any of those OC features..

Anyhow I'm settled at 250x11 now with my X2. My cpu wants to go a bit higher but I can't let it because of the dancing vcore. I don't want my system to crash.

lop

 

[michal1980]

i didn't ask for help.. yet, but i'm sure my boards going back.
besides the rear usb not working. and the on board sound only allowing front audio, instead of a 5.1 setup up.

the board just locks up... randomly

i've ran prime95 x2 for 24+ hours, memtest for 12+ hours, with no errors.

actually played cod2, bf2, civ 4, for like 4 hour spans of time. but then all of a sudden i hear a loud SCREECCCCCCH through my speakers and everything just locks. just a good old fasion hard lock.
at first i thought it was any audigy 2zs problem, so i pulled that but still happens

heres the setup.

opty 170
pqi pc3220 ram (not cert for the board. maybe this, but its running 3-4-4-8 @ 2T w/ 2.7V to make sure its stable.
2x1 gb.
asus premum board.
evga 7800gt co mod w/ zalman 700f cu
9500 zalman hsf
wd 400yr harddrive.
p180 case
enermax liberty 500watt psu.

hmm think thats it.

 

[lopri]

It's very unlikely for a sound card to cause such lock-ups.

1. What's your clock? (HTT & Multi)
2. What's your vcore?
3. Is your system getting stable power? (Check the ASUS Probe)
4. Those 1GB sticks don't necessarily scale with voltage. However I'd say it's safe up to 2.8V. Try different voltages for your memory. (2.6V~2.8V)

 

[michal1980]

Originally posted by: lopri
It's very unlikely for a sound card to cause such lock-ups.

1. What's your clock? (HTT & Multi)
2. What's your vcore?
3. Is your system getting stable power? (Check the ASUS Probe)
4. Those 1GB sticks don't necessarily scale with voltage. However I'd say it's safe up to 2.8V. Try different voltages for your memory. (2.6V~2.8V)

the reason i thought sound card is the loud screch sound right when it locks up, and the sound continues, evil, ear pirecing sound, so i went to the creative forums and theres a long thread about nforce4 chipsets locking up with creative cards... so i pulled the card, but it still does it, even running onboard.


everything is running stock.

so opty is running at 200x10 , htt= auto, so i'm geussing a 5x multi
ram is running @ stock, so 400 mhz
vcore = 1.36 (upped it from 1.35, but the range is 1.344-1.366)
3.3= 3.34
+5 = 5.00
+12=11.90
cpu idle temp 37
mb dle temp 37
video idle temp 37
all fans are running at like 7v so very silent,
temps never hit over 50


as for the build, outside of pulling the creative card and then installing onboard i went.

xp prow/sp2, -mobo drivers - windows updates, - video drivers, -install sound card.

 

[lopri]

weird.. everything says "I'm normal" but still the lock-ups.. are your volt rails stable with no fluctuations? (Not the vcore, but the 12V, 5V, 3.3V rails)
Yeah.. it could be the motherboard.

Wait. htt=auto? Try setting it mannually at x4 or x5? I know it's frustrating..

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: snufulufugus
Well I may have tracked down the issue that is causing my spontaneous reboots - the power supply. Seems there is an issue with the Antec NeoPower line of PSU's when running with Asus A8N-SLI motherboards.

What a random thing.... to have an incompatibility problem with a PSU. I found many many people on both the Asus forums and a coupla overclocking site forums who are experiencing this exact problem with a NeoPower/A8N setup. I figure this is not the best place to post regarding power supplies, but can anyone recommend one that doesnt have this issue?

Because of this evidence I think I'll call the egg in the next day or two to get a RMA, but I need to select a replacement first.

Same situation here, it reboots soon after being started and using a Seasonic PSU gets rid of these problems.

 

[michal1980]

Originally posted by: lopri
weird.. everything says "I'm normal" but still the lock-ups.. are your volt rails stable with no fluctuations? (Not the vcore, but the 12V, 5V, 3.3V rails)
Yeah.. it could be the motherboard.

Wait. htt=auto? Try setting it mannually at x4 or x5? I know it's frustrating..

ya the 12 5 and 3.3 lines are vary stable compared to v-core.

tried lowering the htt to 4 and 5 still the same thing.

a crackle in sound and the game locks. ran alot of 3dmark05 last nite to try to burn in the video, temp with the zalman on it barely hit 50 degrees.

ughhh, i'm thinking its the board because new random stuff keeps happening.

like the boot voice lady, for a long time didn't appear, even with it on, then all of a sudden i hear post completing booting operating...

and then windows loads. ughh

 

[Barrakooda]

hi all, having dramas tried to updated gfx drivers now things are a bit knackered.Please bear with me if this seems a bit off topic.

This system was just put together and everything updated.However firewall was installed and it seemed to corrupt every driver i downloaded (tried about 20 or so).I read earlier posts relating to firewall and not to install it but not till after .I ran driver cleaner after uninstall, but now after numerous attempts i cannot install drivers & now cannot uninstall drivers at all.Tried system restore but no go.

Question i need to ask is can i repair system using XP cd or would it be better to reformat( of which i have had no experience).seems that this firewall has stuffed everything, did not install active armour at all.This is a new system build put together by someone else(i was there but bios a bit confusing for a newbie.Help would be appreciated thx.

 

[imported_benk]

Originally posted by: welfarebum

For anyone who cares... PROBLEM SOLVED.

Maybe you should go through and edit your previous posts for the benefit of readers who may not get this far in the thread. A simple **EDIT-Problem was later determined to be AMD CPU** would have kept me from worrying for the last two pages of posts, since I have an A8N-SLI Premium on the way.

 

[servin247365]

on the memory you just have to put both stick in the two right slots to fix the problem with this board.

Jordan

 

[lopri]

Barrakooda, reformatting and reinstalling is the only way to eradicate problems in your case.

 

[Barrakooda]

Thanks Lopri thought as much.

 

[michal1980]

my problem fixed. but by a removal of my asus priemun, and install of a dfi expert.

i only fault the asus board problems a little, the rear usb ports not working, and on board sound not working was the asus board.
the lock ups are due to memory. while the pqi passed mem test on the asus board.

when i was installing my dfi expert, i kept locking up. tired one stick, and it would lock up memtest at test 2.

removed, and put in the second stick, and passed. played a total of 6 hours civ4, and 4 hours bf2 today, with my creative audigy 2zs gamer, with NO lock ups, the ram is getting return and some OCZ is on the way to replace it. thanks for the help guys

 

[Speedler]

My Setup:
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
AMD X2 4400+
2X1GB Micron Ballisix 2GB Dual Channel
Seasonic 600W Power Supply
XFX 7800GTX

When I am powering it up with a video card, CPU, motherboard and RAM.

The power cables (ATX 12 and the 20 pin) is both connected. I've triple checked the polarity of the power switch pins, as well as tested it with a potentialmeter (sp?), the switch was working and hooked up. But, I can never get the system to come on (no fans or any signs of life).

What's odd about this is the sb_pwr LED..It starts off dim, and then starts blinking (Alternating between dim and bright), there is nothing in the ASUS manual about what this means?

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[wanderer27]

There's something different about connecting power when using the 20 Pin instead of a 24 Pin. I can't remember right off what it is, but I've seen it on thread here somewhere.

Other than that, just make sure you have the 6 Pin power plugged into your GTX, and I'd go ahead and plug in the 4 Pin (Hard Drive type)
power connector to the EZ-Plug by the PCIex slot.

If you had a 24 Pin connector, I'd also tell you to make sure you had the 4 Pin plugged in by the CPU - with your PSU though, I'd suggest digging through some of these threads for the proper configs.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Rig here

(Rev 1.02 mobo) (1009 BIOS)

Perfectly stable at 245 x 9 (2.2GHz, 4x HTT multi, 5:6 divider). Everything works great.

The system is 16 hours prime stable at 300x8 (2.4GHz, 3x multi, 2:3 divider), but the NVIDIA network adapter goes all wonky on me and refuses to pull an IP or receive any data. The Marvell Yukon works just fine though.

 

[wanderer27]

I know on mine the first LAN port was a little tempermental. I had to wiggle it a little and reset it - don't force the plug all the way in, just til it
clicks and lights up.

It's been fine ever since.

I never even tried the Marvell/Yukon port (why are there two LAN ports anyway?).

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
I know on mine the first LAN port was a little tempermental. I had to wiggle it a little and reset it - don't force the plug all the way in, just til it
clicks and lights up.

It's been fine ever since.

I never even tried the Marvell/Yukon port (why are there two LAN ports anyway?).

It lights up just fine and Windows shows the cable is connected (bios correctly detects the length as well), it just doesn't work (pulls a automatic private address)

It doesn't work if I manually assign the IP either.

 

[wanderer27]

Drivers installed (with it plugged in) and BIOS enabled ?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Using the NVIDIA 6.70 and yes, it's enabled in the BIOS.

It still works just fine I drop the HTT back down.

 

[wanderer27]

I'm confused, I didn't know it stopped working because of OC'ing.

Only thoughts that come to mind in this situation are your OC values, and a long shot of setting your PCI Bus (not PCIex) to 33.33 MHz instead of tracking the CPU or HTT (default).

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
I'm confused, I didn't know it stopped working because of OC'ing.

Only thoughts that come to mind in this situation are your OC values, and a long shot of setting your PCI Bus (not PCIex) to 33.33 MHz instead of tracking the CPU or HTT (default).

The PCI Bus is locked @ 33.33.

That's really the only reason I'm baffled as to why it stopped working.

It doesn't really bother me though. I don't have any PCI cards hogging the bandwidth and I only have a 100Mb router

I do remember there was a glitch where the PCI lock didn't work if the memory was at 400Mhz though.

Perhaps that's it. Back in a sec.

*edit*

No go.

Clockgen has the PCI bus @ 33.34

Besides, the NV adapter isn't even on the PCI bus.

 

[wanderer27]

I figured the PCI bus would be a long shot, but you never can tell where they'll pull a clock reference from sometimes.

Another long shot would be an IRQ conflict, but you don't really look to be running anything that I see right off to cause that.

Only thing coming to mind is if your Hypertransport is too high - HT Mult * HTT >1000. Even that is a reach.

I'll have to think about this one for awhile . . . .

 

[oow]

ok how the bloody hell do I use serial ata dvd-drives or single harddrives on the red siil serial ports. when I enable the silicon controller in the bios and plug in any drives (dvd or hd, NONRAID) my PC does not boot into windows and the bootup screen for the silicon shows the drives listed but a "non valide device" under it . when i disable the silicon controller drive it boots but none of the drives plugged into the silicon ports are detected. if i plug these drives (dvd or hd) into the black nforce ports all is well but I have four harddrives already taking up the nforce ports and I need my other serial ata dvd drives and dvd-rw serial ata drives to plug into the red ports and work. I am all out of ideas. Otherwise my System is rock solid

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: oow
ok how the bloody hell do I use serial ata dvd-drives or single harddrives on the red siil serial ports. when I enable the silicon controller in the bios and plug in any drives (dvd or hd, NONRAID) my PC does not boot into windows and the bootup screen for the silicon shows the drives listed but a "non valide device" under it . when i disable the silicon controller drive it boots but none of the drives plugged into the silicon ports are detected. if i plug these drives (dvd or hd) into the black nforce ports all is well but I have four harddrives already taking up the nforce ports and I need my other serial ata dvd drives and dvd-rw serial ata drives to plug into the red ports and work. I am all out of ideas. Otherwise my System is rock solid

You need to turn off the Silicon Controller in BIOS. If you're not using RAID, I'd turn off NVRAID as well, the Silicon you need to disable is in the same Menu - Onboard Device Configuration I believe.