Finished setting up my K8N-E last night, with my Newcastle 3000+.
So here's my mini-review.
The good:
- no motherboard-related issues whatsoever! (no issues of any sort for that matter, heh)
- 100% stability at stock speed from initial installation
- running 2 x OCZ PC3200 rev 2 @ 400mhz @ 2-3-3-6 (mfr's specs) with no problems
- tried up to 205mhz htt with 1:1 memory; ran fine, as expected. was a hot day so didn't try any OC'ing
- memtest86+ ran 2 passes with no probs; WinXP SP1a installed with no probs
- turned the computer on and off about 20 times over 3 days now; no signs of anything deteriorating, no DOA-ness
The bad:
- the location of the headers for the power LED, power switch, HDD led etc. is really bad IMHO. might just be because of my case
- the 2 USB headers seem to be custom made to work with the PCI bracket USB ports; i don't know how to make them work
with my Xaser Tsunami's front-panel USB (ditto for FireWire).
- bundled IDE cables are flat, not rounded
- never much liked AMI bios, preferred that other one (Phoenix?)
- BIOS rev 1004 is a bit of a clutter; overclocking options are spread out over 3 screens rather than consolidated into one
- Hardware Monitor (BIOS) doesn't list V_dimm
- is there a way to disable the Silicon Image SATA BIOS completely? I won't be using it
The strange:
- when BIOS CPU settings were left at default ("Auto"), V_core is set to 1.55v? is that right?
(at auto, Vcore said 1.536 - when I manually lower to 1.5, Vcore said 1.488)
- ASUS "Post-Speech" is amusing, seems a bit gimmicky though. I was startled when the computer first turned on
and a woman's voice said "Computer is now booting into Operating System!"
- ASUS "Instant-Music" is *definitely* a gimmick
Will update this with a final assessment after I play with it a bit more, and of course, try overclocking.