ASUS A8N SLI Premium - Please list your most stable config

[sjfphoto]

I've been reading a lot about this motherboard (I have it on order). There seems to be quite a few issues with various components and configurations.

First let me list my plans and needs:

Hardware:
A8N SLI Premium
AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ CPU
4-5 hard drives - 2 in a mirrored RAID for the OS, that other 2-3 for data
2 GB memory
Dual ATI Video cards - non SLI - the faster one in slot 1 and the slower AIW in slot 2
2 external FW drives for backups
2 Optical drives
6 UBS devices
Multicard reader

Specific Parts on order (Can be returned):
-A8N SLI Premium
-AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ CPU
-1 GB (2 pcs 512) DDR (400) PC-3200 OCZ Platinum Revision 2 (OCZ4001024ELDCPER2-K) (2 kits)
-Sunbeamtech NUUO-550W Power Supply
-Silverstone TJ06 - Probably will have to be returned since it mounts the mobo up-side-down and this may effect the chipset pipe cooling.
4 Western Digital 250 GB SATA-II with 16m cache
ATI AIW x600 Pro
Sony DRU-810 DVD burner
Sony DRU-720 DVD burner (I have already)
Mitsumi FA404A/M-Black 7-in-1 USB 2.0 Media Drive w/ Floppy drive
2nd faster ATI card (either x800 or x850 based)
May add a Sound Blaster later but the onboard sound will be OK for now


I do more photoshop and multitasking than gaming, very little gaming. I have to use 2 video cards to support my color calibration software. I may want to overclock this rig but not necessarily important - Having that flexibility, however, is nice. I wil be doing some audio and video encoding. I usually run about 5-15 things at once, sometimes lots of instances of IE running at once.

I want the fastest RAM I can get (2-2-2-5) for a reasonable amount of money.

I want this sucker to be as quiet as possible.

I want Front (or side) USB and FW Ports.

My main concerns from what I'm reading is the memory, video card, RAID/hard drive configuration and power supply.

I may swap out the OCZ memory for the 2 GB (2 pcs 1GB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/Heatsink (Twinx2048-3200C2) Kit.

I plan on mirroring 2 of the WD SATA-II drives for the OS. The other 2 - 250 GB drives with not be setup in a RAID config. I may add a 3rd 250GB drive, either PATA or SATA I.

So after that long winded explanation of what I want to do, my questions are:

What have you found that doesn't work or has given you the most grief in your system?
Does anyone use the Sunbeamtech NUUO-550W Power Supply?
What Power Supply are you folks finding to be the most reliable and quiet?
What memory have found to be the most reliable and overclockable at the lower timings?
Any other recommendations (be nice ;-) ?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Steve

 

[daniel1113]

I just built my system with the following parts:

eVGA GeForce 7800 GTX KO Edition 256MB Graphics Card
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard
OCZ Gold Edition 1GB DDR500 SDRAM (x2)
NEC ND-3540A DVD Burner (x2)
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 Express / SLI
Koolance PC3-725SL Case (Lian-Li PC-V1000)
DVICO FusionHDTV5 Gold Plus HDTV Tuner Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX (from the old system)

Everything has been extremely stable so far (about a month old now). The only issue is some stuttering while playing Xvid/Divx videos, but I haven't been able to figure out the source of this problem. I am pretty sure its the codec or dual-core processor.

To answer your questions, all of the components I chose worked well right out of the box. I didn't have any of the standard compatibility problems that seem to come up during most builds. I would recommend the PC P&C 510 Express power supply, and the SLI version if you are even remotely considering an SLI setup in the future. I don't overclock my system at all, so I can't help you there. As for the noise, I have a water cooled setup, so everything is extremely quiet Otherwise, I am not sure how noisey some of these components really are.

Good luck with the build.

 

[t0mn8r]

I have this mobo and it is very stable.

I advise against RAID for OS. Just get a RAPTOR disk for boot and RAID the rest. OCZ memory is very stable for me when O/C 10%.

12218 3DMARK05
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HTH

 

[caz67]

I built the system in my sig. I have never had any issues at all, with my setup. It's beautiful and quiet, the loudest part is the PSU fan.

The gaming performance is outstanding as is the multitasking that i do.

 

[sjfphoto]

Originally posted by: t0mn8r

I advise against RAID for OS. Just get a RAPTOR disk for boot and RAID the rest. OCZ memory is very stable for me when O/C 10%.

12218 3DMARK05
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HTH

Just curious... Why would you advise against it? I've been mirroring my OS drive for a while now without problems. The performance hit is worth having the redundancy.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[virtualrain]

I have built the system in my sig and have the following additional tid-bits to share...

You should be more certain about whether you intend to overclock or not before you buy your RAM. I think you should overclock since the added performance is nearly "free" if you are willing to invest the time and buy the right components. Don't buy components and then decide to overclock later, you will be disappointed that you didn't buy the right RAM for the job. Look into overclocking now, if you decide you might want to do it, so you understand the key factors. Your 4400+ will probably 2.6GHz without much effort, but you will need to pick RAM that will run at either 260 MHz (using a 10x multipler for your CPU) or 235-240MHz. Getting DDR500 RAM will be the way to go in either case. OCZ probably your best choice... their support is outstanding.

I and others have found that you can sacrifice timings for memory bandwidth (MHz) and come out ahead... You certainly wont loose anything if you run 250MHz RAM at 3-3-3 timings compared to 200MHz RAM at 2-2-2 timings.

If you are not overclocking, still look at OCZ's Platinum 2-3-2-5 2GB dual-channel kit. It doesn't overclock at all but is one of the fastest 2GB kits available.

There is lots of OCZ info available on the forums at www.bleedinedge.com.

Don't spend a lot of time worrying about power supplies... I chose mine based on cable management and connector availability to keep my case clean. With the amount of stuff you will be installing in your case, just make sure you have enough power and connectors for the job.

The best HD performance will be to run a striped RAID array as you probably know. A pair of Raptors in this configuration is untouchable. If you want data redundancy as well, run four in a RAID 5 array. Don't buy what some folks say about RAID not offering much advantage... It is noticably better IMHO. I use my Raptors in a RAID array for pretty much everything (OS, apps, My Docs, etc.) and offload large media files onto another pair of larger, slightly slower disks.

 

[INM8]

When i built mine (3 months ago) i just installed all my stuff (x2 4400+, 2x 512mb ddr433 Kingston Hyperx, 7800gtx) and everything worked perfect right from the start. Its rock solid stable and i have had no problems with it. I will probably take a look in the bios and try to optimize the setup now now, but the default\autodeteced settings worked fine for me even though some settings (eg. memory settings) seem to be set a bit conservativly.

I leave this pc on almost 24/7 and the only lockups iv had have been caused by Mediaportal (pvr software which doesnt like this pc) and nvfirewall (i have got it working right now, use the yukon ethernet controller and you will be right).

 

[papaHesch]

Sjf,

I do some amateur video and photo editing (plus heavy gamming) and your rig looks good. A couple of points that I have benchmarked, I would up your memory to 4gigs. Photo and AV editing software is about the only place you see an advantage with over 2 gigs on the desktop. Of course on this board you will to use a 2T CMD memory timing but that is every nf4 board besides the dfi lanparty boards which some people can get 1T with 4 sticks. The CMD is probably the most important memory timing as for performance but the extra memory of 4 gigs will noticeably help with the apps you are using. I would also save your money on the OCZ platinum unless you want to OC this computer. I would go with Patriot LL memory or equivalent mid range memory and spend the extra on more memory. The Patriot memory gives you 2-3-2-5-cmd-1 and the tRCD=3 setting can hit 2 but it is a little bit of pot luck. Setting tRCD from 3 to 2 will maybe give you a 3% memory performance boost on benchmarks which is not much. I tend to lean towards Patriot just because of the price vs. performance is great. There is better but not much.
No problem with the mirrored array for the OS. You will see some slight increase in read performance on STR but not really noticeable in the real world. You will have redundancy, which is your concern. As far as raid o vs. raid 1 you will see some difference (slight increase in STR) in performance especially in boot up time with two drives. I have this setup (two 15K.3 u360 drives on a separate channels on a two channel pcie 256MB cache raid controller) with a separate 15K.3 u360 drive as the page/temp. Benchmarks are solid but I agree with virtualrain in that in real life it feels much faster. Either direction you go I would try and off load as much of the OS minus the page file to separate drive configuration. Basically separate everything out (OS, Page, and Apps). If you are willing to buy one more drive I would consider, if redundancy is important, using raid 5 with three drives left after the two for the OS used for mirroring. Basically you can loose one drive and rebuild the array. If you go this route defiantly get an off board raid controller with its on memory and CPU. Thus, taking it out of the CPU cycle of your main CPU. I tend to play in the SCSI world but there are several really nice SATA raid controllers. I would go to storagereview.com for more information. If you want to stick for 4 drives with mirroring I would do the following: 2 for OS with mirroring (get the raptors virtualrain mentioned); 1 drive for page file (on a separate partition) and general storage; and 1 drive for application installation and temp.
Your PS should be fine but you might also consider something with a little more power if you have the money with all that hardware. PC Power and Cooling 850 is awesome but pricey and a little noisy. If you are looking for quite I would also look at the Enermax liberty 650 and the Seasonic S12. Both great supplies and efficient. Seasonic has some quality control issues lately and Enermax usually is rock solid. They both have 120mm fans and are very quite. They also tend to have very stabile rails at any load.


Hope this helps,
papah

 

[t0mn8r]

sjfphoto,
Sorry, didn't make myself clear. I meant stay away from RAID 5. RAID 0 is very good but no redundancy. My RAID 5 speed tests (such as they were) it took > 8 hours to format 973 Gb (4 x 250 Gb array) and transfer times of "evaluation" content was at about 13% of RAID 0.

 

[jdogg707]

Avoid RAID, except possibly RAID 1. For a consumer desktop, even one where minor A/V editing occurs, it will be pointless. If you need proof of this, read the Anandtech article which comes to the exact same conclusion.