A7N8X - My tale of woe

[SFang]

I had the same pop sound two years ago when my PSU died. After I open it, I found one circuit components breaking off inside. Keep using the damaged PSU will damage your MB and CPU, be aware!

 

[Tab]

I wonder if Evan is having any problems? Maybe you guys should look at getting a epoX board.

 

[TourGuide]

Tabb,

I am SERIOUSLY considering that very thing right now.

 

[Pjotr]

Did you all read the manuals?

Did you connect the CPU fan to the correct fan pins to make sure the motherboard doesn't think the CPU fan is dead?

Similar things?

 

[TourGuide]

Yes, yes, and yes.

 

[Palek]

What I don't understand then, is why all the reviews of the A7N8X have been very positive so far... Every hardware site is raving about this motherboard. Even the pre-production samples fared quite well in all sorts of test. What on earth could be wrong with the retail board that so many people have problems installing it? I wonder if all the failed boards are coming from the same initial batch of shipped boards that happened to have some weird bug...

 

[TourGuide]

What I don't understand then, is why all the reviews of the A7N8X have been very positive so far... Every hardware site is raving about this motherboard. Even the pre-production samples fared quite well in all sorts of test. What on earth could be wrong with the retail board that so many people have problems installing it? I wonder if all the failed boards are coming from the same initial batch of shipped boards that happened to have some weird bug...

I am asking myself that VERY SAME question!! It would appear to me that this first batch of boards has some memory timing issues with Corsair sticks in particular. I can only pray that a BIOS update fixes this sh*z. Even the Epox boards have had end users reporting the same issues. But you look at the latest Firing Squad review and it is practically GLOWING!! I mean WHAT GIVES??!!

I find it hard to believe that they had no issues at all, when SO many others have had them.

I am hoping and praying that the next board I get works like it is supposed to. If not, I'll have to go back to the drawing board and think seriously about what my options are.

 

[zahpod42]

Was anyone able to fit a Thermalright SK-7 HS on this MB? One review I read said that there was no way that an AX-7 would fit.

Thanks,
zahpod

 

[SFang]

Well, personally, I love this board. Very stable, and fast. I have an Antec 430W True Power PSU though. Try change a PSU to see if it change your luck. Best wishes.

 

[neddog]

SFANG..... or anybody

I just put together a system with this mobo.... along with a 2400 with two sticks of 3200 corsair ... problem is i cant seem to get it to recognize the 2400 as anything but a 1800 xp.. what do i have to change? Can you tell me what the default multiplier is sposed to be set at?

thanks in advance

NeDDoG

 

[Chris431]

"What I don't understand then, is why all the reviews of the a7n8x have been very positive so far... Every hardware site is raving about this motherboard. Even the pre-production samples fared quite well in all sorts of test. What on earth could be wrong with the retail board that so many people have problems installing it? I wonder if all the failed boards are coming from the same initial batch of shipped boards that happened to have some weird bug... "

I'm another satisfied a7n8x owner. Those with problems post, most without problems don't post. 0 installation problems. Very stable. Received my m/b several weeks ago ".c" bios. Athlon 1600+xp o/c'd to 1628mhz, Corsair xms3200c2. Upgraded from BH6, 600mhz celeron (oc'd to 900). I'd recommend this board to anyone considering a new socket A board. I used an Epox k7s5a for a week or 2 (about a month before the a7n8x hit retail) but it didn't like my multiple video card setup resulting in frequent lockups. So far the a7n8x has ran extremely stable.


NEDDOG - Sounds like the board defaulted to 100mhz fsb. Change it manually to 133mhz & you should be set.
re: Can you tell me what the default multiplier is sposed to be set at? The default multiplier is most likely correct as I assume your able to boot into an OS. You can't change the multiplier without unlocking the CPU (or at least from my experience....it won't lock up but it will stop at the CPU post/info). The default multiplier is 15 which accounts for my hypothesis that your fsb is at 100mhz (15 x 100fsb = 1800xp (1500mhz); 15 x 133fsb = 2400xp (2000mhz)).

It's been a few weeks since I received the board so I'm not 100% positive, but I think my board initially booted at 100mhz fsb as well (mine is currently 155/155 which seems to be the limit for this unlocked cpu (10.5 multiplier) to remain very stable).

Hope that helped.

Chris

 

[Adul]

have u tried a different brand of memory to see if it just works.

 

[zahpod42]

Can anyone please tell me if a Thermalright SK-7 fits on this motherboard? If no one has tried this, which heat-sink are you guys using on your A7N8X?

Thanks,
zahpod

 

[etowngeek]

********UPDATE********


Get this....both sticks of ram (Brand new) are DOA. I plugged in the headphones and the lady voice from the bios told me that the board had failed the memory test. I thought ok. I go over to my dad's house and put both of them into his IT7 board. Same crap. No post, no boot. DEAD!!! I aksed him to let me borrow one of his Mushkin PC2100 CAS222 sticks (512mb) and VOILA!!!! SHE BOOTS RIGHT UP!!! PRAISE THE LORD I HAVE A SYSTEM AGAIN!!!!!

I called newegg and I should have 2 "new" sticks that work this morning. I think this board kicks ass so far. My only gripe, and this is either A driver deal or BIOS thing, is that the 2 NICS do not play nice together. I cannot get them both to work at the same time. They will both pull an IP but cannot ping anything from either one. Very weird. I looked in the connections and XP said that they were both "bridged". That did not sound right to me. I unbridged both of them, rebooted, disabled the 3com and have been fine ever since. My board is a REV.1004 wiht a 1001.C bios. Any pieces of advice??

 

[neddog]

Chris431


Thanks for the reply... ok I see what you are saying... I will check again tonight when I go home.. however, I am sure I had set the FSB in the BIOS to 133.. maybe not

NeDDoG

 

[TourGuide]

Well boys,

I bailed on ASUS. I got an email from Newegg saying that the A7N8X was out of stock and would not be in until like the 10th or so. I immediately called and said, give me the EPOX 8RDA+. I've heard more good things about that mobo than bad, so I am looking forward to giving it a spin.

I'll post my experiences in another thread. Thanks for everyone's help and ideas. Much appreciated.

 

[David12345]

I just bought a 2800+, Corsair XMS3200, ATI 9700.


It would not boot. Nothing. I got it to boot by resetting the cmos jumpers (power down, take out battery, reset jumper). Then it booted.

Installation is fine. Then, I get a "delayed write failure" while I'm installing drivers. "lost data - cannot write to c:\$mft - please save this file elsewhere" On reboot, it goes into an unmountable boot volume and then it dies. Reformat. Repeat. "delayed write failure." repeat about 10 times and 2 days until head is sore from pounding into brick wall.

It is now up and stable for about 10 hours. What I did was uncheck the write cache on disk. I don't know if this was the problem or not, or why it would solve anything. But I am terrified of rechecking that and reformatting this thing yet again. This can't be the problem, but I'm afraid now to do anything.

Possible causes:

1. Computer bios is forcing the drive to run at a higher speed UDMA 6 vs UDMA 5. Anyone know how to check the IRQ or bios for this?

2. I/O or IDE controller on this board is bad. How do I check for that?

3. I'm cursed and only 1 well hidden part out of 100 possibilities is bad. I should just pay up and buy a Falcon machine and junk all the parts. Think I should sacrifice a memory stick to the computer gods?

 

[David12345]

BTW - I third the notion that the "pop" was a PSU. I've had my 180W or some cheapo power supply go bang... (fyi - never add nice new power hungry parts to a 4 year old cheapo pre made box). The PSU couldn't handle the stress of new video cards, more ram, cdrws., etc........

 

[David12345]

I use a Vantec Aeroflow on this board with a 2800+ cpu. Runs 36-40c.

 

[Pjotr]

I get everything installed. The fans spin the green light comes on aND that is freaking it!! NOTHING I have tried makes any difference. Different ram, processor, agp video card, pci video card, jumpers, and clearing the CMOS. the board is just dead. This is the first time I have recieved anything DOA from newegg. Makes me wanna cry.

Well, I finally got this board, it's a beauty, runs really fast... for 12 hours... here's my post from another forum after it DIED:

I can't even clear the CMOS to get into the BIOS! In reply to all that can't clear CMOS: I have the exact same problem after saving BIOS after some moderate changes. Saving BIOS doesn't always work, it is very buggy it seems. My post elsewhere:

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe/GD, BIOS 1001E 27 Nov, rev 1.04, received the board yesterday.

TwinMOS 2x256MB PC3200 with TwinMOS chips. Athlon XP 1800+ Tbred-A factory unlocked. Taisol copper base cooler, 4800 rpm fan. Enermax 350W PSU.

First, I ran it specced, all fine. Then I set 166 FSB and lower multiplier, worked fine. Tne I ended up with 180 MHz FSB, 9.5 multiplier for 1713 MHz CPU, which I upped to 1.55 V for no reason. This setup worked fine overnight running SETI 100 %. I even had RAM manually set to 6-2-2-2T even though it is CAS 2.5, it ran fine. CPU temp showed 38-40 C, NB temp 32 C. Room temp 21 C.

So, I decide to clock a bit higher FSB, so I change FSB to 185 and lower multiplier to 9. But as has happened several times, the BIOS changes doesn't take effect, it will boot on 180 MHz FSB, I verify with WCPUID too. Then I go into BIOS and it says 185 MHz in BIOS! Weird, I try to change other things, disable QFan, disable Firewire, stuff like that and then save. Sometimes it takes effect, sometimes not. I *think* that sometimes when I save BIOS it doesn't take any time at all and then it didn't take effect. The times that it has taken effect is when Save and Exit takes some 2 seconds before screen goes black.

Now this last time Save and Exit took 2 seconds and after that the board is dead. DEAD DEAD DEAD. It powers on fine, all fans running, green lamp on mobo, AGP card runs, IDE light always on, but no VGA comes on. Nothing. No sound report. I try to clear CMOS, unplug power, take out battery, clear CMOS, no change! I've tried cleaing CMOS a thousand times in different ways, no change. I can tell it is not cleared because I set in BIOS before to automatically power on if power is lost. Whenever I unplug power and then plug it in, it turn on by itself, just like my old setting. I've swapped the AGP card, no change. I've taken out one DIMM, changed to the other DIMM, no change. Disconnect all IDE devices, no change. Removed CPU and everything, clear CMOS for 2 hours again, nothing.

I cannot get this BIOS cleared, I've changed other jumpers, FSB, SATA enable etc, no change. What to do? I will return it.

 

[Chris431]

You are removing the CMOS battery when clearing bios, correct?

I had to clear my CMOS on this board once & was surprised that you had to remove the CMOS battery to clear it (as opposed to simply moving jumpers).

Chris

 

[yodayoda]

Originally posted by: Chris431
You are removing the CMOS battery when clearing bios, correct?

I had to clear my CMOS on this board once & was surprised that you had to remove the CMOS battery to clear it (as opposed to simply moving jumpers).

Chris

i had a problem with my Abit KT7a back in the bad-old-days regarding BIOSes. here is the best way to do it:

1) unplug the computer from the wall
2) unplug the ATX connector from the PSU to the mobo
3) remove the battery
4) close the CMOS jumper
5) go get a snack and wait 10 min
6) put everything back and try it out

it was really freaky--the CMOS was getting enough static charge by have the PSU plugged into the mobo to keep the CMOS settings after a momentary jumper-close. so an EE buddy told me do it this way and it always works.

 

[Coalfax]

Also.. something to remember...

The Corsair 3200 DDR chips have a funky setup, as the board tries to boot them at CAS3 and they wont do that.

You need to put in an older DDR Ram module and boot to the BIOS, change the settings to CAS2 and shutdown. Replace chips around and restart.

Yea, is a known problem and annoying ( and something I'll have to do once my A7N8X gets in.. sigh )

 

[Chris431]

"( and something I'll have to do once my A7N8X gets in.. sigh )"

Not necessarily. I didn't have this problem with my A7n8x & Corsair 3200 (Corsair CMX256A-3200C2). Perhaps I just got lucky but you could give it a try to save yourself the hassle.

Chris

 

[Coalfax]

Well.. they have been saying that its a problem they are -working on-, and also not all the chips have this blunder.

I can hope and pray I suppose, but also will go a a friends to assemble this setup, being I have no DDR chips, and am migrating from an SDRAM setup to this DDR one. Nothing to fall back on

Upgrade hell, here I come.. whee ( once Mwave and Googlegear get my stuff t my door that is heh )

Mobo: A7N8X
Ram: 2x 256 Corsair CMX256A-3200C2
Graphics: Leadtek Ti4200 8x AGP
CPU: AMD Tbird2200+ XP
Cooler: Thermaltake Volcano 7+ ( Arctic Silver away! )

Some assembly required ( batteries not included. )