Official Asus A8N-SLI Premium Thread

J1nxy · 10 Oct 2005 at 10:37

The ASUS update seems to refuse to see this board at the moment. Just download the BIOS file stick it on a disk and then use the inbuilt update utility in the BIOS. Think is ALT-F2 from the top of my head.

My board came with 1007, flashed to 1009.01 beta and the board is rock solid and very fast. Likes my Corsair XMS 2GB kit unlike the DFI SLI DR board...

I had the restart and shutdown probelms other people have had. Cured this by a total revuild of the system using a slipstreamed XP PRO SP2 with all the Nvidia drivers built in.

Steve

Aram · 10 Oct 2005 at 13:32

Thanks for the replies, probably would've helped if i'd mentioned that this is my real concern:

9zap said:
thers been a few peeps saying about maxtors drives not loading TBH

With the old drive i'm using now I've not had a single problem so am assuming the drive is the problem from a compatability point of view and really wanted to know if newer drivers etc had solved the aparant maxtor problem or if i'd be better just going for a different manufacturer?

n.b. i've tried 3 different SATA cables and 2 different power leads with the maxtor - oh yeh and connected the speakers and get no sound! Really loving this board so far

tutu · 10 Oct 2005 at 15:17

I have a Maxtor 300gb with NCQ and it works fine. Follow the suggestions above.

drunknmunky · 11 Oct 2005 at 00:20

Hi

Looking to get an A8N-SLi Premium

Can anyone please tell me how many 3 pin fan headers there are on the motherboard?

Ken · 11 Oct 2005 at 01:48

1 CPU
2 Chassis
1 Chipset
1 Power

ted34 · 11 Oct 2005 at 11:54

J1nxy said:
The ASUS update seems to refuse to see this board at the moment. Just download the BIOS file stick it on a disk and then use the inbuilt update utility in the BIOS. Think is ALT-F2 from the top of my head.

My board came with 1007, flashed to 1009.01 beta and the board is rock solid and very fast. Likes my Corsair XMS 2GB kit unlike the DFI SLI DR board...

I had the restart and shutdown probelms other people have had. Cured this by a total revuild of the system using a slipstreamed XP PRO SP2 with all the Nvidia drivers built in.

Steve

when you say shutdown and restart problems is that, that it takes ages to shutdown. The boot up was slow but after reinstalling nvidia drivers that was fixed.

ted34 · 11 Oct 2005 at 12:05

Aram said:
Hopefully this is the right place for a little help, I just spalshed out on:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-111-AS)
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS)
Leadtek GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-065-LT)
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB 6L250S0 SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-021-MD)
Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU - Black UV (CA-005-HP)

Came with BIOS 1005 and I've not done any overclocking or other messing about, just used all the standard stuff as provided in the boxes (I'm also actually using the AMD stock cooler atm)

Put everything together and it worked 1st time, XP Pro installed fine and I though (foolishly) all was well. Then I started installing the provided drivers and it all went horribly wrong....constant hanging at the XP loading screen on bootup, boot disk errors, blue-screening, total refusal to re-instal XP (would hang @ 10 -15% of file copy stage) - generally falling over like a no swearing bloke on an icy evening

I played around with the ram, PSU and everything else and finally got it working by using an old ATA100 80GB IDE HD - seems stable atm but I want to use my new SATA drive god damn it! I can't (yet) be 100% sure the drive isn't at fault but as i'm far from an expert can anyone offer any suggestions or do maxtor drives just not mix with this mobo?

Also are the provided drivers ok or is it worth seeking out others (and if so which ones)? - I'd really prefer not to flash the BIOS tho (it scares me)

i had problems similar to that but not as bad. i sorted it by installing in certain orders.
1/ Windows
2/ nvidia drivers (not including audio or ide)
3/ Virus scanner and virus updates
4/ Windows updates
5/ Realtek audio driver
6/ Marvell drivers and other drivers (graphics card etc)

Basically i used the microsoft driver for hard drives rather than nvidia.
Both my hard drives are seagate sata (120gb and 300gb). Both drives are on the nvidia sata controller - havent tried the silicon one but that might help if still having problems after trying the microsoft driver

Rudeboy · 11 Oct 2005 at 12:46

ted34 said:
i had problems similar to that but not as bad. i sorted it by installing in certain orders.
1/ Windows
2/ nvidia drivers (not including audio or ide)
3/ Virus scanner and virus updates
4/ Windows updates
5/ Realtek audio driver
6/ Marvell drivers and other drivers (graphics card etc)

Basically i used the microsoft driver for hard drives rather than nvidia.
Both my hard drives are seagate sata (120gb and 300gb). Both drives are on the nvidia sata controller - havent tried the silicon one but that might help if still having problems after trying the microsoft driver

I questioned the audio drivers earlier in this thread, but I don't think anyone knew the answer. Is there a physical difference between the nVidia audio drivers and the Realtek audio drivers?

I used the standard nVidia 6.66 drivers and this seems to be powering the audio just fine, but I wondered what the difference is?

Sumanji · 11 Oct 2005 at 21:23

Hey,

I don't know the difference, but the nF4 audio drivers didn't work for me, I had to use the Realtek ones!

And does the 1009.001 Beta BIOS support any extra memory dividers?

Cheers,

Suman

drunknmunky · 11 Oct 2005 at 23:34

Ken said:
1 CPU
2 Chassis
1 Chipset
1 Power

So only 2 headers for controlling case fans?

Ken · 11 Oct 2005 at 23:40

drunknmunky said:
So only 2 headers for controlling case fans?

According to the manual the chipset and power headers are identical to the others in terms of the fans they support so I guess you could use the chipset and power fan headers for case fans.

Edit:Asus Q fan function is supported using the CPU and Chassis 1 fan connectors only.

Chipset fan is synchronised with the CPU fan.

Why don't you just get a fan controller such as the Akasa AK FC-03 Fan Controller Pro?

slaterss · 12 Oct 2005 at 06:27

I have the FC-03 Fan Controller Pro and can highly recommend it. I use it with my Antec P180 Case Fans - so I can control the case fans easily - i.e. lower the speed when the machine is not under heavy gaming load.

Also you can change the facia colours to match your case

ted34 · 12 Oct 2005 at 13:27

Rudeboy said:
I questioned the audio drivers earlier in this thread, but I don't think anyone knew the answer. Is there a physical difference between the nVidia audio drivers and the Realtek audio drivers?

I used the standard nVidia 6.66 drivers and this seems to be powering the audio just fine, but I wondered what the difference is?

im sure if i installed them now then i would be ok but at the time nvidia drivers were causing problems. its realtek chip for audio anyway so would have thought realtek driver be better but then it is only audio so i doubt it will make much difference anyway. im just having constant problems with nvidia drivers - think will go for crossfire as next board.

is anyone getting slow shutdowns? have tried the win xp speed up guide and has helped boot up speed but not shutdown speed - any ideas?

J1nxy · 12 Oct 2005 at 19:15

yes I had very slow shutdown and this was fixed by rebuilding the os from a slipstreamed cd with the Nvidia SM Bus, raid and ethernet drivers along with SP2 slipstreamed in.

Steve

Rudeboy · 13 Oct 2005 at 09:32

Might be worth a go with the Realtek audio driver then and see what that does, although my system is running fine so I may just leave it.

Just out of interest, what setting are people using to change the CPU voltage for overclocking? I tried changing the CPU value in the jumperfree settings page to 1.5v and looking at CPUZ my CPU voltage is still displayed as 1.44v. Also tried loading ITE Smartguardian to confirm it, but this gave way out figures for some of the readings and no figures for some of the others. Is Smartguardian compatible with these boards, or only with DFI's?

Exorcist · 13 Oct 2005 at 10:02

my board is detecting my 4400+ at 2864mhz and my corsair pc3200 as some weird case settings which arent correct, how do i fix this?

Rudeboy · 13 Oct 2005 at 12:28

Exorcist said:
my board is detecting my 4400+ at 2864mhz and my corsair pc3200 as some weird case settings which arent correct, how do i fix this?

Are memory and CPU settings set to auto or have you some kind of manual setting in there?

Exorcist · 13 Oct 2005 at 15:23

for some bizarre reason it fixed itself and i hadnt done a thing.

now i dont know whether to install the mobo driver or the cpu driver first :confused:

Rudeboy · 13 Oct 2005 at 15:36

I'd do mobo first and then CPU afterwards. At least that way the CPU driver isn't at risk of being overwritten by the mobo drivers.

J1nxy · 13 Oct 2005 at 18:20

Yeah I agree, motherboard drivers always first.

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