Title: *Official* - AsusTek A8N32-SLI Deluxe thread

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: zanta
Capt Caveman,

You don't see a problem with this board an an Antec P180 case, do you? It is my first build and I think the Lian cases are the only ones that you seem to have to install the board inverted. Is this correct? Just want to minimize problems due to my first build.

Thanks

No, you won't have any issues. The P180 sets-up the motherboard normally that allows the heatpipe to work properly.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Where is it available for $250? Outside of Mwave and Newegg lastweek who only received a few of the boards, I haven't found anyone else that is supposed to receive any boards til at least the 17th.

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
I am really interested in hearing about personal (non-expert) reviews ie. performance/bugs. Pre-Ordered from xpcgear earlier this month. The guy i talked to on that day said " They will be in on the tenth" and I asked " That would make delivery on the forteenth right?" " If you choose three day shipping" so I did. Called them today to see what thier stock was......and well, its non-existant. They say " ASUS is making very limited quantities, first come first serve". WTF? I'm not sure im buying that load of garbage. How can a top board maker only produce limited quantities? Another option which I hope is not true, is that they are selling them at $250 somewhere until they are readily available for everyone and the prices drop down to the Pre-Order price. Again I hope I'm wrong, but I'm also wondering whether it was worth it to pay $50 less.

The Surgeon is out to lunch.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Well, you are right....It's LISTED as $250, not exactly for sale for that, but that price won't go down when they are in

And to add to it....IF anyone had them FOR SALE, they would EASILY SELL for $250

The Surgeon

 

[wuwoze]

To Capt Caveman,

I know what you mean. In A8N-SLI Premium, you can enable 1+2 and 3+4 and control their raid setting.

But not with A8N32-SLI Deluxe, there is no control on SATA3 and SATA4. I cant find SATA3 and SATA4 in the entire BIOS setting.

Go http://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/soc...2-SLI%20Deluxe/E2280_A8N32-SLI_Dlx.pdf and go to page 85. You will see only configuration for SATA1 and SATA2.

I can only guess that the BIOS program is not ready.

 

[imported_situman]

right click my computer
manage
Disk management
activate the disk drive.

 

[squonk]

Woot ZALMAN CNPS9500 fits---> Im on my way. The 7800 GTX's are the single slot KO editions with AC3 cooler from EVGA. I also have 2 Asus double slot 6800 Ultras and 2 Double slot EVGA 6800 Ultras. If your using a double slot card in all honesty even though the Audigy 2 ZS fits in the middle slot it is simply too close to the top Video card fan for my tastes. I also stuck in 2 6800 GT's from PNY (the non Powered ones just to compare and the 1 slot cards are fine to use the middle pci slot for something???. The others are just not usable. I'm ok with that cause I only use the Audigy 2 and nothing else. Ok Im off will be building both boxes over the next two days. Wish me luck LOL (----> Wonders if the little stack cool 2 fan will draw air down to the top video card if double slot video and mounted properly LOL)

 

[wuwoze]

To situman,

Thanks for the suggestion. But it didnt work. Usually it will come up by itself.


To squonk,

Good luck to you. Let us know the result. Are you going to raid? If so, can you please try to put another drive on SATA3 and SATA4 and see if it is recognized?

Thanks.

 

[QuixoticOne]

I just finished building my A8N32 X2-4400 / 7800GT box, and
I found that the "middle" PCI slot would be preferable as the first to use
for any PCI card if you have a SLI pair of single-slot-wide PCIE cards,
but that it would be possible to also use either the first or third PCI slots too,
though there'd be only around 8 millimeters clearance between the front of the
7800GT and the added PCI card, but I think that'd be enough to work OK.

Also I have an Audigy II ZS and it's slightly shorter than my XFX 7800GT so
the flexible SLI connector ribbon would just go right over the top of such a sound card
if it were positioned in one of the PCI slots in between the SLI 7800GT's... so that'd work
fine.

I've had no significant troubles building the system so far. ASUS PROBE II reads about
45C idle in WinXP without Cool'n'Quiet active for my
X2-4400 and Motherboard temperatures in an Antec Sonata case with active thermally
controlled PSU and case fans (7800 GT, Antec TP II 480 PSU, X2 4400, four hard drives).

I didn't install the NVIDIA IDE driver yet since I've heard about some problems with
it in other threads and some people said they got good results just with the Windows
IDE driver.. Maybe that's OK maybe not, I haven't tested enough to find out.

I did see some corruption of downloaded files in both FireFox 1.0.7 and Internet
Explorer when you "Save File" on large executables like, for instance, the NVIDIA 81.85
driver executable. I downloaded that like six times and it always indicated it was corrupt
when I tried to run the downloaded program. Maybe it's the lack of proper IDE drivers
and I should install the NVIDIA ones, maybe it's a bug in Windows IE / Firefox / whatever
where something isn't quite "multi-thread safe" in the programming, maybe it's
something not quite right with my hard drives or I/O mode. Anyway switching to
PIO-4 mode instead of UDMA and installing a local web proxy server between the
browsers and the internet seems to have changed something since I did get good
downloads after that. I'm pretty sure that's nothing specific about this motherboard
and is just a windows / driver / application issue. That's on a 200 MBy Parallel ATA drive.

I found that a Zalman CNPS 7000B-Cu heat sink looked like it would fit quite fine
on the A8N32, though I ended up just using the X2's stock AMD heatsink/fan since
I really didn't know if the Zalman would outperform it much, and I didn't want to risk
breaking the motherboard with a super heavy heatsink on it and then having to
move the computer around etc.


BTW that's a running temperature of about 45C as ASUS Probe II reports for
both the CPU and the Motherboard. I think there may be a degree or two fluctuation /
difference in there, but they're both right around 43-45C idle in WinXP without CnQ
enabled.

X2 4400 CPU at stock speed / voltage
XFX 7800 GT
Creative Labs Audigy II ZS
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Antec Sonata case
Antec TruePower 480 PSU
Four parallel IDE hard discs basically all sitting idle

When I run SuperPI and do a 32 Million digits test it (as expected)
loads the CPU to 50% in Windows Task manager, and runs pretty much
exclusively on one of the two CPU cores with the other being idle.
CPU / Motherboard temperatures remained at 45C during close to 30 minutes
of that test (50% CPU load) also.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Re: Memory, at BIOS default settings it looks like it's running 333 MHz
on my RAM -- four sticks, 3 GBY PC3200 total:
DIMM A1 Kingstion Value RAM 1GBy
DIMM B1 PQI Turbo RAM 512MBy
DIMM A2 Kingstion Value RAM 1GBy
DIMM B2 PQI Turbo RAM 512MBy

Kingston Value RAM model: KVR400AK2/2GR

PQI: PQI3200-1024DAH 2.5-3-3-7

I'll have to memtest it for 48 hours and see how well it runs at 333, 366, 400 MHz, etc.
I don't exect too much from it because of the slow generic memory and mismatched DIMMs.

 

[QuixoticOne]

A8N32 / X24400 pictures with an XFX 7800GT & Audigy II ZS installed.

Also some pictures of the spacing of things with a Zalman CNPS 7000B-CU heatsink
and the stock AMD X2 heat pipe heatsink on the motherboard.

http://photobucket.com/albums/d40/quixoticvegan/a8n32x2/

 

[Skott]

Thanks for that update QuixoticOne. Thanks for the pics as well.

 

[NoStateofMind]

yes ty very much. I do have a question tho, do you think (or anyone for that matter) that you could install on this board a Zalman 9500 in a Antec P180 case (concidering the graphics duct)?

appreciate the replies :-D

The Surgeon

 

[wuwoze]

My case is Antec P160. Probably P180 has longer width.

CNPS9500 can fit on my A8N32-SLI Deluxe, and they together can fit into my P160.

 

[soggy sock puppets]

hey all, this topic looked like the best place for me to start. i'm in the process of building a new box, and the last time i put a computer together was five years ago, but the more i kept reading into recent hardware advancements the more i got excited about building a computer all over again. i all of a sudden feel like i'm 12 again, and the geek in me is finally waking up after a feeble attempt at college. so, basically, get ready for the noob fireworks.

from what i can tell so far is that the A8N32 might have the longest technological life for the amount money i want to spend. i was originally looking at A8N Premium, but after reading the AnandTech review the Premium lost it's wings and the A8N32 called to me in a way that would make nuns blush then poop theirselves. (his review moved me more than the bible, ok)

so that said, my only real question, so far, is how an ATA150 hard drive will work with a SATA II interface? i'm very adament and curious how a clean WD Raptor will run on this new mobo.

New Egg specs so far:
(comments and suggestions are encouraged)
----------------------------------
A8N32-SLI Delxue
Athlon X2 4200+
Corsair XMS 1GB
eVGA 7800GT
WD Raptor 74GB = compatiable with A8N32?
WD Caviar 250GB SATA/3.0 = SATA II?
Asus DVD-ROM (E616A)
NEC DVD Burner (3540A)
Kensington 64365 (slim keyboard)
Logitech MX510
Asus Atlas A-45GA ATX12V 450 PSU
Antec P180 Silver
-------------------------------------

this setup barely pushes 2k, discluding a couple flat screens that i might get for fairly cheap, but i'm still concerned with how the whole system will balance out as far as an Asus PSU, only 1GB of Corsair RAM, and the Raptor go. do you guys see something i can't?

chuck

 

[Capt Caveman]

Welcome Aboard!

Yes, your raptor will be fine w/ this motherboard or any mobo that has SATA II. SATA II is backwards compatible w/ SATA I. In regards to the 3.0gb SATA drive, don't quote me but I believe the SATA II spec doesn't require 3.0gb transfer rate but if a drive has a 3.0gb transfer rate, it will be SATA II. Hope that makes sense.

Note - it may not be the case with the A8N32 but w/ my A8N SLI Premium, in order to get the Raptor drive to be my boot drive, I had to manually go into the bios and change the Access Mode for that drive from Auto to Large..

Originally posted by: soggy sock puppets
hey all, this topic looked like the best place for me to start. i'm in the process of building a new box, and the last time i put a computer together was five years ago, but the more i kept reading into recent hardware advancements the more i got excited about building a computer all over again. i all of a sudden feel like i'm 12 again, and the geek in me is finally waking up after a feeble attempt at college. so, basically, get ready for the noob fireworks.

from what i can tell so far is that the A8N32 might have the longest technological life for the amount money i want to spend. i was originally looking at A8N Premium, but after reading the AnandTech review the Premium lost it's wings and the A8N32 called to me in a way that would make nuns blush then poop theirselves. (his review moved me more than the bible, ok)

so that said, my only real question, so far, is how an ATA150 hard drive will work with a SATA II interface? i'm very adament and curious how a clean WD Raptor will run on this new mobo.

New Egg specs so far:
(comments and suggestions are encouraged)
----------------------------------
A8N32-SLI Delxue
Athlon X2 4200+
Corsair XMS 1GB
eVGA 7800GT
WD Raptor 74GB = compatiable with A8N32?
WD Caviar 250GB SATA/3.0 = SATA II?
Asus DVD-ROM (E616A)
NEC DVD Burner (3540A)
Kensington 64365 (slim keyboard)
Logitech MX510
Asus Atlas A-45GA ATX12V 450 PSU
Antec P180 Silver
-------------------------------------

this setup barely pushes 2k, discluding a couple flat screens that i might get for fairly cheap, but i'm still concerned with how the whole system will balance out as far as an Asus PSU, only 1GB of Corsair RAM, and the Raptor go. do you guys see something i can't?

chuck

 

[zanta]

QuixoticOne,

I appreciate your post. So, am I correct in assuming that two EVGA 7800GTX KOs and a Creative X-FI ExtremeMusic would be difficult to install on this board? Sorry, I was a little confused.

Thanks

 

[INM8]

I did see some corruption of downloaded files in both FireFox 1.0.7 and Internet

I had that problem with my A8N Premium. Its actually the nforce ethernet controller and the NVIDIA firewall. If you are using the nvfirewall, close it and check if the problem goes away. If it doesnt, start using the marvell ethernet controller. I am using that now with the NV Firewall and it works well. Using the firewall with the nvidia ethernet controller gives me random BSOD's.

 

[Gambler]

I read several complaints regarding Vcore instability with X2 processors on the Premium board. Has this problem been resolved on the A8N32?

 

[INM8]

Well i havent had any instability problems im on my A8N Premium, and i run an X2 4400+, but yes i have heard the same claims you have too. They seem to be true, because many people are reporting the same problem, but i havent encountered it.

The A8N32 is a whole new PCB design. I wouldnt imagine that it will have this problem. Its got an 8 phase power circuit, which should mean, if anything, that this motherboard will be able to supply your CPU with cleaner power than most others on the market.

 

[ChevelleGuy468]

Originally posted by: zanta
QuixoticOne,

I appreciate your post. So, am I correct in assuming that two EVGA 7800GTX KOs and a Creative X-FI ExtremeMusic would be difficult to install on this board? Sorry, I was a little confused.

Thanks

I have this board with one GTX KO and the xtrememusic and it does have enough room to add another for sli. Even with one slot cooling of the KO it still will only leave one usable pci slot. Im running an x2 3800+ @ 30C idle thanks to my zalman 9500 so no compatibility problems there either.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Originally posted by: Gambler
I read several complaints regarding Vcore instability with X2 processors on the Premium board. Has this problem been resolved on the A8N32?

Yes, this board seems to have the best CPU power supply circuit on the market,
assuming it's designed well. It has an 8-phase CPU power supply circuit while most
motherboards havs 3, some have 4, and only one I've ever seen has 6.
The greater number of Vcore regulator phases help the regulators run cooler and help
the voltages remain stable with high current capacity even under rapidly changing
heavy power loads.

In my experience so far it's given a VCORE for my X2 of 1.35 volts as its nominal value.
The readout circuit most commonly measures that as 1.34, and under full CPU load
(two instances of StressPrime 2004) it's reading either 1.33 or 1.34, so it's staying within
better than 0.02 volts of the correct value, including any innaurcuraties of the read-back
monitoring.. so basically within 1% or so, which is just fine as far as I can tell.
I'm running an X2-4400, and that's one of the most power hungry CPUs out there,
though I have yet to overclock it.,

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1133388#post1132614

 

[QuixoticOne]

Originally posted by: zanta
QuixoticOne,

I appreciate your post. So, am I correct in assuming that two EVGA 7800GTX KOs and a Creative X-FI ExtremeMusic would be difficult to install on this board? Sorry, I was a little confused.

Thanks

I don't have the X-Fi or the 7800GTX KO's but I'll try to answer in general terms.

1) If the 7800GTX KO is designed to be a "one slot wide" card including its built in
factory cooler, then you cal fit a SLI pair of those and one normal PCI card of any type
without things being cramped at all as long as the X-FI card is the close to the same
height above the motherboard as or shorter than the 7800's. The height restriction
of the sound card applies because two of the PCI slots are "in between" the SLI
7800GT's and there's a little flexible ribbon cable for the SLI link that has to pass
between the 7800GTX KO's and over the top of the sound card. It is flexible and could
go over maybe another 3mm extra height to clear any cards in between.
You could also add two more PCI cards of any type, though they'll be in the slots
directly in front of the 7800GTX KO's, so that might limit the free flow of their air
intakes a bit, but I think it'd probably be fine and wouldn't cause a problem.

2) If you use 3rd party add on coolers that take up two card slots width, or if the
7800GTX KO ships as a two-slot-wide card (I assume it is 1-slot-wide from the factory
like my XFX 7800 GT), then you have only the choice of using one of the PCI slots
between the 7800GTX KO's. As above, the X-FI would have to be not too much
taller than the 7800GTX KO's so the SLI ribbon cable would fit over it. I assume
this is fine. My Audigy II ZS is a little shorter than my 7800GT, and I think most
cards would fit under the SLI ribbon.

3) If your X-FI is somehow way taller than the 7800GTX KO's (I assume this is
UNLIKELY), then you have only one PCI slot next to the edge of the motherboard
the X-FI could fit into that is not in between the 7800GTX KO's. It would be right next
to the front of one of the 7800GTX KO's, so they'd have to be "single slot wide"
cards and coolers, and it'd be a little cramped between the boards only about 5-6mm of
clearance, but I think that'd still work fine, the 7800GTX KO's were designed to enable
you to use the slot next to them if they made them 1-slot-wide, so the cooling must
be OK in that case that you do put a card in that slot.

So, basically, you're probably going to have no problem with your setup one way or
another. Good luck!

 

[INM8]

has anyone tried running SLI without the bridge? Theres been an option in the drivers to do it for a while but there was a bit of a performance hit with only x8 bandwidth on each card. Id't be interesting to see whether x16 bandwidth on both cards alleviates this problem.

 

[Skott]

Just for a reference the eVGA 7800GTX KO ECS3 video card (This is the 490MHz core) is a one slot card (only actually uses one slot) but its two inches thick due to the extra cooling plates and fan housing. Near as I can tell from pics the ASUS NT7800GTX TOP is about the same thickness (its 486MHz core) as the eVGA but havent heard its actual thickness.

If these cards wont fit in SLI on the A8N32 then the only other option would be to buy two regular 7800GTX cards (430MHz core stock) and overclock them as far as you can safely go. They are good overclockers so you can push them pretty far if you have the cooling ability and power. I have seen article reviews pushing these cards to 500MHz. In fact I read one review where the eVGA 7800GTX KO ECS3 was overclocked to 530MHz successfully and stable. But it has the extra cooling of the ECS3 kit built in to achieve this speed.

Dont forget to make sure your case has a adequate psu and good airflow because you'll need it.

 

[Capt Caveman]

How much space does a Zalman VF700 take up? Even if it takes a up a slot of space, it's open pattern in conjunction with good case ventilation might make things doable. Just a thought.