ABIT Fatal1ty AN8

[Narkoticz390]

Okay, I'm going to buy a board this week.. actually preferably by the end of the day Monday. At first, I had my mind all made up on the DFI Lanparty Ultra-D. However, OCing is no longer going to be an issue, as I've decided I'm not going to hassle with it. The board will run an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ Clawhammer core.

I've read several threads on the nForce 4 Ultra motherboards, and these seem to be a summary of what I'm seeing.

DFI: Good board for OCing, but having stability issues.
MSI: Great stability, but also having issues with being DOA.
ABIT: Great board, but expensive. Haven't heard of any issues.

I'd especially like to hear from people who are actually USING the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8. Cost really isn't an issue for me.

 

[NokiaDude]

Because the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe is the new hotness.


I looked at that board before. Sure, it's a good OC'er but it's EXPENSIVE and ugly.

 

[Bateluer]

Asus is always the hotness.

 

[imported_llama]

the chipset fan is crap though, thats why the premium board is coming out

 

[gate1975mlm]

ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 is getting great reviews!!!

And it sounds like a very Stable Board! I think this is the board I will be buying.

 

[EndGame]

With boards like the DFI, Asus and MSI people can't see why they should pay the extra money for Fatal1ty's board when they can get just as good/better results with the others. Also, the feature set isn't that great for the price and might as well order a replacement Northbridge fan when you order the board as it will fail.

 

[gate1975mlm]

replacement Northbridge fan? On the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8? what is wrong with it?

 

[EndGame]

Originally posted by: llama
the chipset fan is crap though, thats why the premium board is coming out

I figure you're talking about the A8N "Premium" boards right? LOL! I read nearly every forum out there.......do you have any SOLID evidence that this board is actually going to materialize? There's a guy on X Systems that received an email from Asus 2 weeks ago which stated this guy didn't believe we'd ever see the "premium" boards hit the market.....

 

[EndGame]

Originally posted by: gate1975mlm
replacement Northbridge fan? On the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8? what is wrong with it?

Same thing that's been wrong with them since the IS7/IC7 boards and even before......they are very cheaply made and inevitably will begin to whine and fail, or just fail with no warning. There are many, many threads on this issue here and on all forums......or just do a google search! (i.e.....it's the same basic fan they've used for a LONG time....

 

[gate1975mlm]

Originally posted by: EndGame

Originally posted by: gate1975mlm
replacement Northbridge fan? On the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8? what is wrong with it?

Same thing that's been wrong with them since the IS7/IC7 boards and even before......they are very cheaply made and inevitably will begin to whine and fail, or just fail with no warning. There are many, many threads on this issue here and on all forums......or just do a google search! (i.e.....it's the same basic fan they've used for a LONG time....

So then what would you recommend replaceing it with? And anyway don't all the Nforce4 chipset fans suck?

 

[gate1975mlm]

http://www.insanetek.com/index.php?page=abitfatal1tyan8_1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/print/abit-fatal1ty-an8.html
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/abit-fatal1ty-an8/index.x?pg=1
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=120&type=expert
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/abit/an8/g1.htm
http://www.marnscda.com/review03_19_05.htm
http://www.doomedpc.com/forums/viewtopi...=&sid=32d079461cfc87172dc263dada5188bc

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well let me chime in on this thread since I have a fatal1ty, ultra-d and a k8n neo4 plat. The abit and the dfi are good mb's, both are solid and stable and I happen to like the lights on the abit as it compliments the lights in my case without being gaudy. The msi on the other hand makes me want to pull my hair out and throw things. I've gone through two of them and the last one isn't any better than the first one. Neither were stable even with 600w of enermax dual rail attached to it. Failure to boot issues abounded especially with usb devices attached. My last one boot fine in the beginning and then after a week of use decided that it didn't want to boot anymore with anything attached to any of the usb ports. That is why I bought the dfi ultra-d and it's been a good board so far. The first msi is why I bought the fatal1ty since I was in the process of rmaing it and the fatal1ty became available so I bought one. Abit has always been good to me but so has asus.

 

[EndGame]

From your reviews.....

However, despite this fact, we still wouldn?t call ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 chipset cooler a high-quality one. There are two problems with this cooler. First, the heatsink cooling surface is relatively small. Even though it is made of solid copper, it is shaped as just a plate with the upward pointing edges. The second problem is about the fan, which is also not of the best quality it could be. On the second day of tests it already started rattling. All in all, there is only one positive thing about the chipset cooler on ABIT Fatal1ty AN8: it uses thermal paste and not some doubtful pads for the thermal interface.


Vantec makes a good replacement for the northbridge as does Zalman I believe.......

I simply noted this for your reference.......these fans have a history of failure. Also, the 5 total 40mm fans........smaller fans have a shorter lifespan, they spin faster and wear out faster. As long as you have the settings where all 5 of these with the Oetes are not spinning constantly, the 4 besides the northbridge should be OK, but man, 5 40mm fans......that's gonna be one loud puppy when their all spinng! LOL!

 

[whoster69]

Originally posted by: EndGame
Vantec makes a good replacement for the northbridge as does Zalman I believe.......

Got any models you'd recommend looking into?

I currently have an IC7-G and am looking to upgrade to this board. I replaced the fan on my IC7-G and it's been great since. I don't mind replacing this one if that will make it as problem free.

 

[IntegraGSR]

with the improvements of the athlon 64, the northbridge doesn't get used nearly as much, therefore doesn't create as much head as in the past.. cooling the northbridge is hardly an issue unless you are into extreme overclocking

 

[Tiorapatea]

Originally posted by: IntegraGSR
with the improvements of the athlon 64, the northbridge doesn't get used nearly as much, therefore doesn't create as much head as in the past.. cooling the northbridge is hardly an issue unless you are into extreme overclocking

On the other hand, the fact that nvidia has implemented a single-chip solution with nforce4 (no Southbridge) means that the chip does a lot of work and it does in fact get very hot. Passively cooling the nforce4 is possible even when overclocking but you need to be careful with how you implement this, particularly on the DFI board because its chipset sits directly beneath the primary graphics card slot.

To the OP, I did seriously consider the Abit AN8 and Fatal1ty but, in the end opted for the Asus A8N SLi Deluxe (might have got the A8N-E if I had been able to find a reliable UK supplier). My reasons were:

1. I was disturbed by the corporate issues that Abit has been having. I own an Abit NF7-S Rev2 and I know from this experience and also from the teething problems of nforce4 motherboards that there will be a long-term need for good Bios support (updates). Abit has not been very good at this with the NF7-S (terrible actually but relative to other makers, merely average). I did not want to see them going bust leaving me with a half-baked Bios.

2. I just hate all the OTES stuff. You can switch the fans off in the Bios but that still leaves you with a backplane that is so full of fans that if you actually want any ports to connect anything to you quickly eat up expansion slots in your case.

3. I hate uguru, especially because of the lack of Linux support.

4. The relative newness of the Abit boards meant that, aside from a few reviews, there was very little information available in public forums about any issues that the board might have and how people were working around them. This is not true of the Asus, which has been around a while and is widely owned.

5. Paradoxically, an attraction of the Asus SLi Deluxe is that so much fuss is being made about its supposed limitations as an overclocker that Asus is giving the Bios a great deal of attention. I also liked the fact that as a premium board it is always likely to be better supported in future than the lesser Asus nforce4 boards (just compare the frequency of Bios releases for the non-Deluxe version).