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

[oow]

wanderer I actually did that but then once i boot into windows I do not see the drives. Plus where do I confirm that the drives have been detected by the bios? You know the screen that comes up after the asus splash screen showing the slilicon screen with crtl+s, well when you disable silicon in the bios that screen no longer shows up so how do I know if my drives have been detected? And it doesnt seem like they have because under configuration manager in windows none of the drives show up

 

[Capt Caveman]

The Silicon Image controller is a RAID controller. I do not believe it can be used for connecting non-raid drives.

 

[oow]

wow. u gotta be kidding right? that can't be right.

 

[wanderer27]

Hmm, the manual is a little confusing on this. I'm under the impression that you can use non-RAID on these, but I can't seem to verify it.

You do have the option of using the external SATA adapter that came with your MB though. You can add two Drives with this.
You'd have to run the SATA cables back into the case for internal Drives - perhaps not the prettiest thing, but it is an option.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: oow
wow. u gotta be kidding right? that can't be right.

A8N-SLI Premium Specs

I believe it may be possible to update the bios of the Silicon Image Controller to be non-raid but I can't remember where I saw it.

 

[oow]

how can the serial ata controller only be setup for Raid? That just seems retarded as hell. I remember I had a IC7-Max 3 board before this and I was pretty sure I ran serial ata drives in regular mode on its red connectors which where not the intel onchip connectors and I am sure it had the same silicon image controller except maybe it was a different one.

But wow, so if you do not want to run raid then those ports are pretty much useles?? That silly pci bracket card just has ports on it that you have to run a serial ata cable from to either the nvidia or silicon ports. All it does is let you plug in drives from the outside so you do not have to open the case to plugin serial ata drives. Doesnt really do anything for my case.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: oow
how can the serial ata controller only be setup for Raid? That just seems retarded as hell. I remember I had a IC7-Max 3 board before this and I was pretty sure I ran serial ata drives in regular mode on its red connectors which where not the intel onchip connectors and I am sure it had the same silicon image controller except maybe it was a different one.

But wow, so if you do not want to run raid then those ports are pretty much useles?? That silly pci bracket card just has ports on it that you have to run a serial ata cable from to either the nvidia or silicon ports. All it does is let you plug in drives from the outside so you do not have to open the case to plugin serial ata drives. Doesnt really do anything for my case.

If you have that many SATA drives, you can either update the bios of the SI Controller as I mentioned before, get a pci SATA card or get adapter to run them thru the IDE controllers. And yes, I've used other boards where there was a non-raid SI Controller.

 

[oow]

if I can really upgrade the bios of the si controller any idea what to search for in google or any clues as to where I might be able to locate it? Thanks for your help so far dude I really appreciate it

 

[CpuDesigner]

In searching through this thread, I neither found anecdotal information on nor anyone using either Opteron 170 or 175 with the A8N-SLI Premium motherboard. What (Bios) compatibility issues, if any, does the Asus A8N-SLI Premium board have with Opteron 170 or 175 ?

Anyone successfully using either of the processors on the Premium motherboard ?

Thanks!

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: CpuDesigner
In searching through this thread, I neither found anecdotal information on nor anyone using either Opteron 170 or 175 with the A8N-SLI Premium motherboard. What (Bios) compatibility issues, if any, does the Asus A8N-SLI Premium board have with Opteron 170 or 175 ?

Anyone successfully using either of the processors on the Premium motherboard ?

Thanks!

The A8N-SLI Premium has no issues with Opteron processors that I'm aware of.

There are a large number of people using Opterons in the other forums.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: 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.

*edit*

1011.001 BIOS seems to have resolved the issue.

 

[CpuDesigner]

Great, looks like Opterons will work in the A8N-SLI Premium motherboard. I hope the bios on the motherboard will boot a 175...as I will not have any other s939 processor.

Looking through the manual, there appears to be a mode for the x16 slots labeled ?multi-monitor, RAID or LAN setup? (pp. 6-9, Table 1) where the primary PCIe x16 slot is in x8 speed (8 lanes) and the secondary x16 slot can be in x8, x4, x2 or x1 (the spec sheet indicates a x16, x1 default mode for the x16 connectors, which is in conflict with this table). Anyone ever try/hear of this working ?

The reason I ask this question, is that I will migrate the system I am currently building into linux box some time next year and may consider using an x8 RAID controller if this mode works.

The x4 PCIe slot is also a bit confusing, the spec sheet indicates ?1 PCI-E x4 (x2 mode)? which I believe indicates 2 lanes, while the manual appears to describe the function for the second x16 slot under the heading ?PCI Express x4 slot?.

Any enlightenment will be appreciated!

 

[CpuDesigner]

Anyone have info on this ?

 

[JohnTheLuck]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
If you have that many SATA drives, you can either update the bios of the SI Controller as I mentioned before, get a pci SATA card or get adapter to run them thru the IDE controllers. And yes, I've used other boards where there was a non-raid SI Controller.

According to your signature, you should be using the Silicon Image RAID controller. Are you experiencing some REBUILD task? At a few occasions, without any reasons, I had the "RAID Group reduced" message, causing the rebuilding of the RAID set. What can cause this?

When updating the BIOS of the A8N-SLI Premium, is the SI BIOS updated at the same time, or it is a different update?

Thanks,

JTL

 

[Karaktu]

Is anyone getting tearing and/or "disappearing" graphics at high HTT ? My system is rock-solid at 2.7GHz (1.45v) and 245HTT, but in 3DMark05 some of the models and shading whack out with my 7800GTX (which is running stock). I tried adjusting the HTT and chipset voltages, but it didn't make any difference.

Wondering if I have a hardware issue or it's just drivers. I'm using the latest official Nvidia drivers from their web site.

 

[RideFree]

Originally posted by: oow
how can the serial ata controller only be setup for Raid? That just seems retarded as hell. I remember I had a IC7-Max 3 board before this and I was pretty sure I ran serial ata drives in regular mode on its red connectors which where not the intel onchip connectors and I am sure it had the same silicon image controller except maybe it was a different one.

But wow, so if you do not want to run raid then those ports are pretty much useles?? That silly pci bracket card just has ports on it that you have to run a serial ata cable from to either the nvidia or silicon ports. All it does is let you plug in drives from the outside so you do not have to open the case to plugin serial ata drives. Doesnt really do anything for my case.

If you are going to use the Sil for JBOD, there is a utility to "concantenate?" and it this setting that allows you to use the drives individually and not in raid.
(I'm going by memory, - concantenate - may not be the specific word in the Sil BIOS but it should get you on the right track.
(Obviously, that is after you press (is it) F4 or {CTRL S}? at the boot prompt.)

 

[Karaktu]

Same tears with an x800XT, so it's obviously something to do with the chipset/PCI Express. Anyone???

Originally posted by: Karaktu
Is anyone getting tearing and/or "disappearing" graphics at high HTT ? My system is rock-solid at 2.7GHz (1.45v) and 245HTT, but in 3DMark05 some of the models and shading whack out with my 7800GTX (which is running stock). I tried adjusting the HTT and chipset voltages, but it didn't make any difference.

Wondering if I have a hardware issue or it's just drivers. I'm using the latest official Nvidia drivers from their web site.

 

[SDSOCAL]

Hello all,

First post here. Looking for any help I can get. My system specs are in my sig.

Anyone else successfuly install all the Nforce drivers (tried with and without the IDE drivers and never with the firewall), but when I install the Nvidia display driver (81.98) and or others I get a BSOD after it goes through the screen adjustments (the flickering). Will reboot and then acts as if no driver was ever installed.

I have gone through almost all posts in this thread and tried all the different suggestion and still no luck in avoiding this issue.

Thanks.....

BIOS 1008

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

SDSOCAL

I'm running the A8N-SLI Premium,, eVGA 7800GT, and an Opteron 165 (server version of the X2) with the 81.98 video drivers and the 6.70 chipset drivers just fine. No IDE drivers or firewall.

1011.001 BIOS though.

 

[wongnog]

Originally posted by: CpuDesigner
Great, looks like Opterons will work in the A8N-SLI Premium motherboard. I hope the bios on the motherboard will boot a 175...as I will not have any other s939 processor.

I had no problems posting with an Opteron 165 and this motherboard which I just bought this week. It came loaded with 1008 bios and it just didn't have the proper name for the chip (said it was unkonwn AMD dual core or something like that) but I then used the built in bios flash (press Alt-F2 on bootup), inserted a disc with beta BIOS 1011.001, and then it properly recognized it as Opteron 165.

 

[tdevi1]

Hello everyone

I had really horrible problems with this board, ironically i had my system up and running a few weeks ago. My HD crashed and did a full reformat reinstall windows... got it to the point of it logging into windows and it is stable. But....

I have to turn off the SATA Raid controller or else if i stick my X-Fi sound card into any slot, i wont get past POST. This sucks more since i use two old scsi cdr/cdrw and those two are connected via scsi--> pci card, if i stick the scsi pci card in there while sata RAID is enabled. No post either.

No matter what i do i cant get sound from my X-Fi card, i turned off the AC97 onboard sound already.

Tonight when i get home i will uninstall the IDE SW drivers and try reinstalling 6.7 without them.

But does anyone have any clue on the sound issue?

Checked all physical connections but im getting nothing, ran through X-Fi's speaker diag. passed all the tests. Once or twice sometime ago it failed the windows one but changed some drivers and such which fixed that.

Bios revision is 1011.1

Rig is
Athlon xp 3800+
evga 7800 gtx
PC&C 510
X-Fi
segate barracuda on sata
1 drive on pata
1 sony dvd on cdr cable

 

[schriss]

Not sure if anyone mentioned, but:

"There is a bug in this mainboard. The PCI port doesn't get enough power. So you can't use a DVB-S Card with this board. A DVB-S Card need a little bit more power then other cards, because the LNB must be supplied.
Do not use technisat on ASUS A8N boards I have damaged two boards.
Started with blue screen, freeze, and then after a couple of days, no more BIOS boot.
I had the same Problem with 2 different Versions of Skystar2 PCI. One Board got crashed. Black Screen and nothing else. I got a new Board and tried Twinhan and KNC one PCI TV SAT Cards. Always stucked window or bluescreen. After a telefonecall (four weeks ago) with ASUS, the Problem was well known. They told me they are working on it.

It seems PCI 2.3 standard only supports 3.3 Volt add-in cards but can't see any warnings in ASUS motherboard manual about installing 5 volt cards.
Apparently PCI 2.2 supported both 5 Volt and 3.3 Volt add-in cards.
I have ASUS A8N-SLI Premium and have now lost Firewire controller and LAN controller after installing Skystar card.

PCI 2.3 PC works fine otherwise and Skystar card runs happily in PCI 2.1 motherboard as does firewire device.

ASUS not replying to my pleas for help - very disappointing."

http://www.dvbviewer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7761&st=0

 

[dmrfresh]

First Post!!!

I've spent the last 2 nights trying to get my system up and running with varying degrees of success. Thanks to this forum, I figured out why all my large downloads were getting corrupted. I finally was able to update my video card drivers.

I have a new problem, though, and I'm not sure this is related to the MB or not. For some reason, windows only recognizes half of my hard drive's capacity. The bios sees the full shabang. For some reason, windows also thinks its a removeable drive (which may be part of the limitation). Anyone know how to fix this?

 

[schriss]

Originally posted by: welfarebum

BYE BYE FOREVER, A8N-SLI Premium. And BYE BYE, Asus.

I've had my fill. After 2 months of ENDLESS crashing, blue screens, spontaneous reboots, BIOS flash failures, overclocking weirdness, exchanging the motherboard *3* times, swapping out practically all the other hardware, RMAing memory with OCZ, reinstalling windows, trying varieties of every driver, etc, etc, etc... I'VE HAD ENOUGH. I wouldn't even trust this board if I DID get it running.

Noticed TV tuner card in your sig. Did you know that Asus A8N-SLI is NOT compatible with 5volt PCI cards? It is PCI 2.3 compliant, which means 3.3v. Some mobos are backward compatible with PCI 2.1/2.2 5v PCI cards.
So basically, what could be happening, was that you were frying your mobo.

Do a google search for: A8N SLI skystar2
you will find tons of posts regarding this ISSUE and broken motherboards.

Anyway, I have two PCI tuner cards: one is Hauppauge WinTV-PCI and second is Technotrend TT-DVBSat and hopefully both work, there is no smoke coming from my A8N yet

 

[RideFree]

I just got the A8N-SLI premium & an OEM 165 chip for it.
Bolted everything together and installed all the stuff from the Asus supplied driver CD and I can not remember an installation going any smoother. Impressive! Asus engineering is top-drawer!