Originally posted by: pfile
thank the gods for this thread. i read so much bad stuff about this board on newegg, and i guess it all boils down to RAM compatibility, which seems to be a solvable problem. thanks wanderer27 for all your posts.
i've had an athlon XP 3000+ on an abit nf7s running flawlessly for about 1.5 years in my home theater PC. recently i got the idea that i really needed a faster processor, and that i should get a dual-core one.
in the best of all worlds, i'd get a core duo (mainly because the power consumption is so low) but i cant find any mobos for it yet.
the 4200+ X2 on the ASUS mobo seems to be the next best thing. i dont plan to overclock at all, but after reading this thread i've still got a few questions.
- my HTPC is in a silverstone case, which is of course has the mobo mounted horizontally. is the heatpipe going to be ineffective in this configuration?
- anyone have experience running linux on this motherboard? at least when i was bringing up the athlon XP 3000+ system, FC2 had problems with the motherboard SATA and i had to disable the onboard SATA controller completely.
- it seems like there are a lot of driver problems under windows XP. how about win2k?
- does the latest official BIOS clear up the auto memory timing problems, or does that continue to be an issue?
- is the antec sonata 380W truepower PS definitely too wimpy or just maybe? how about the silverstone fanless 400W supply?
thanks!
Intuitively I'd think a horizontal MB would be better than an inverted MB, but not as good as the intended mounting. I don't know first hand, and I can't say I've even seen anyone mention that they have a horizontally mounted MB - so I'm totally guessing here.
The thing with the SATAs I believe you're encountering are actually the RAID functionality.
The NVRAID is obvious that it controlls RAID function on those ports. The Silicon Controller however is not, but it is actually for RAID on the Silicon ports. Poorly labeled/documented, but that's what it is. Actual SATA port control (non RAID) I believe is under the individual or IDE control menu - don't remember exactly right now, but it's a sub-sub menu you have to dig a little to get to.
I would think Linux or W2K should work fine as long as you can find the Drivers you need. For the Microsoft stuff, just make sure not to install the IDE or Fireware from the Chipset Driver package (NF4).
I'm running 1007 BIOS, and have no ideal what the newer versions are supposed to fix. Since I'm not and haven't had any issues I haven't really worried about the updates.
I can't remember exactly, but I think the 380w Truepower may be a bit low on the 12v side of things. With a Dual Core, and depending on you Video Card, I'd look for something a little beefier - especially if you're considering doing SLI.
Oh, and thanks for the Kudos
Glad we could all help on here.