A8N Defection Question

[apathypuff]

Second time poster, weeklong lurker

My friend is building my computer, and he just got the board in the mail today. My question is this: Is this a bad run of this board, bad architecture, or what? Have I seen a lot of "my SLI set up is problematic" threads (and heard whispers of widespread problems, recall, etc) or am I nutty?

It's the last thing that really concerns me, I don't want to be fixing my system in 6 months. Thanks

edit: Furthermore I ordered from ATAcom (and got ripped off, of course) and this concerns me more. Terrible reseller rating.

 

[Matthias99]

1) These things have been out for like a week. There's no way anyone is going to be able to give a reasonable estimate of reliability in that kind of time frame, with so few total owners out there. In addition, people with problems are more likely to complain than ones that don't have problems, especially with a brand-new product.

2) These are a brand-new chipset, and I don't think *any* new MB chipset has ever launched without a few hitches or issues with the first-generation boards. So, no, it wouldn't greatly surprise me if there were a few minor issues (which may be possible to correct with BIOS/driver updates). It's kind of sad, but these days basically the first wave of people buying a new hardware product are signing up for a beta testing program.

3) That said, I haven't seen a huge rash of "my SLI setup is problematic" thread. Though I suspect we will, with all the newbies posting about "D00D! I want to build a monster SLI system with an FX-55 and shit!" threads lately. But I'm no so sure these will be from defective hardware.

Personally, I'm not buying anything NF4-related until the retail boards have been out for a while and any problems or defects become apparent and have a chance to be corrected. *Especially* SLI, which brings its own set of potential issues to the table.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I've have had my A8N-SLI for about 2 weeks. I love it so far!
It's very fast and stable and overclocks like mad.

I'm running a winchester 3200+(2000mhz) @ htt 266.4 x 9.5 = 2541.9mhz
4x htt multi @1067 fsb

I'm watching cable TV through video capture and burning a copy of "The Fifth Element" on DVD while I'm posting this message. There is no way I would have even attempted this on my previous rig.


I have been reading the posts of people having problems and they fall into the following categories:

1. Sub-par power supplies. Don't even think about using this board with a value range PS. It demands a top Quality PS with at least 20a on the 12v rail. To many people mistake watts for quality, a top quality 450 watt PS will run this board just fine. A crappy 500-600 PS can crash and wipe out most of your stuff. Stay with the top makers Antec,OCZ,Fortron etc...

2. "Noobs" first timers that are learning as they go, and bitching because they can't get a 50% overclock. When they don't understand the basics of overclocking, like dropping the HTT multi from 5 to 4, or trying to run their cheap ass RAM 1:1 at 250FSB with tight timings and no voltage increase.

3. Driver problems with WndowsXP SP2, these will be fixed by updates and should be expected with technology this new. Several people have reverted to SP1 and eliminated these problems until driver updates are available. I am running SP2 and luckily the drivers for all my hardware are working fine.

4. People upgrading their mobo, but not refomatting their hard drives(never a good idea)
Please!! take the extra time to backup your stuff, reformat your boot drive and do a clean install of Windows!!