Asus A8N-SLI Premium Questions

[Ramblingkey02]

I just placed my order for a A8N SLI Premium. I have a list of questions after reading various forums, and seeing conflicting claims, that i'd appreciate some help with. My components are in my sig.

1. SLI, switching between dual and single card use, and specifically using 4 monitors on this system. Has anyone donw 3 or 4 monitors using 2 PCI-E cards? Can I run a PCI card alongside the PCI-E card to run more monitors off this mobo? Is it true I don't have to manually switch the SLI card under the GPUs on the Premium, but still need to remove the SLI bridge?

2. Which Bios is the newest stable bios?

3. I'm looking at a XP-90 heatsink with a panaflo 92mm fan. Is this sufficient cooling power for a mildly OC'ed box, and should I buy a 3 to 4 pin converter now for the panaflo fan? I understand on this board this fan can't be plugged into the cpu fan pins because it has wrong number of connectors, is that true? Also some were saying go with the XP120, but it looks like over kill for a 3700+ San Diego. Yes Artic Silver 5gram will be applied.

4. While I'm running a small single GPU now, my ENERMax Noisetaker 600w which has 18 off both 12V rails, will be underpowered if I move up to dual 6800GT cards in SLI?

5. What software should I use to see temperature readings, should I buy a fan control and thermometer reading panel for a pc that will be very mildly OC'ed? Sandra Soft? More importantly, does the Mobo come with temp readers somewhere, this is always implied, but not stated.

6. ON the Deluxe forums' posts, people were having problems connecting a SATA HDD as master, and IDE HDD as Slave, and getting windows xp to boot, because the mobo is trying to give the IDE HDD a lower letter drive designation. i.e. IDE slave as c: and SATA master as d:. Is this a problem on the Premium board?

If you happen to have any answers to these, I'd much appreciate some help. The components should be here by Friday. I'll be hunkered down building and testing this puppy all weekend.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Welcome to the Forums. Looks like you'll have a very nice set-up.

Answers to your questions:

1. I currently run dual monitors but am only using one video card. In the bios, you can change the ai selector setting to single video card / dual video card or auto. You can just set this auto b/c there is an Asus software utility called AI Selector that you can run from Windows. Even w/ the bridge on, if you put it into single-video card mode, you'll then be able to run 2,3 or 4 monitors from the two video cards, thru control panel or nview.

2. I currently run bios version 1006.002. I can't tell if there's any differences between this and 1005(installed bios). I did flash my bios to the newest beta version 1006.004 but had lots of stability issues and thus flashed back to 1006.002

3. The 3pin cpu fan power connection on the mobo works fine. If you're panaflo has a tachometer(not all do), you may want to go with the three pin and plug it into your motherboard. But a four-pin molex will be fine also.

A XP-90 and Panaflo fan will be fine. The differences between the XP-120 and XP-90 is only a couple if any at all in temps. The real reason to go with a XP-120 is being able to use a 120mm which will be quieter than a 92mm pushing the same cfm.

4. Your psu will be fine using two 6800GT's in SLI mode.

5. Asus provides a program called Asus Probe that will monitor your temps. There are also a number of other programs that you can download like Speedfan, Everest and Sandra.

6. I'm running a SATA RAID 0(boot) and IDE RAID 1 on my system and had no issues during set-up or using it. I think what you need to do is leave the jumpers on your hard-drive to auto(or whatever it's called, where the system will detect it).

When I set-up my system, I left my IDE hdd disconnected when I created my SATA raid and installed Windows. Afterwards, I connected the IDE hdds and created a RAID from them. Not sure what would happen when you have all plugged in from the beginning.

I think a lot of the issues that you get from folks with drive issues are user error. You just need to make sure that everything is configured properly.

Originally posted by: Ramblingkey02
I just placed my order for a A8N SLI Premium. I have a list of questions after reading various forums, and seeing conflicting claims, that i'd appreciate some help with. My components are in my sig.

1. SLI, switching between dual and single card use, and specifically using 4 monitors on this system. Has anyone donw 3 or 4 monitors using 2 PCI-E cards? Can I run a PCI card alongside the PCI-E card to run more monitors off this mobo? Is it true I don't have to manually switch the SLI card under the GPUs on the Premium, but still need to remove the SLI bridge?

2. Which Bios is the newest stable bios?

3. I'm looking at a XP-90 heatsink with a panaflo 92mm fan. Is this sufficient cooling power for a mildly OC'ed box, and should I buy a 3 to 4 pin converter now for the panaflo fan? I understand on this board this fan can't be plugged into the cpu fan pins because it has wrong number of connectors, is that true? Also some were saying go with the XP120, but it looks like over kill for a 3700+ San Diego. Yes Artic Silver 5gram will be applied.

4. While I'm running a small single GPU now, my ENERMax Noisetaker 600w which has 18 off both 12V rails, will be underpowered if I move up to dual 6800GT cards in SLI?

5. What software should I use to see temperature readings, should I buy a fan control and thermometer reading panel for a pc that will be very mildly OC'ed? Sandra Soft? More importantly, does the Mobo come with temp readers somewhere, this is always implied, but not stated.

6. ON the Deluxe forums' posts, people were having problems connecting a SATA HDD as master, and IDE HDD as Slave, and getting windows xp to boot, because the mobo is trying to give the IDE HDD a lower letter drive designation. i.e. IDE slave as c: and SATA master as d:. Is this a problem on the Premium board?

If you happen to have any answers to these, I'd much appreciate some help. The components should be here by Friday. I'll be hunkered down building and testing this puppy all weekend.

 

[Ramblingkey02]

Capt my Capt! I can't believe I got so lucky as to find someone who could answer all those questions, so fast. That about alleviates my final fears, it's time to dig in to this bad boy.

One point of clarification, the software monitors temp, but what instrument actual samples the heat? Where are the thermometers? Do I have to buy them, are they integrated into the mobo?

Again, thanks for the pointers.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

The CPU temperature sensor is integrated into the CPU itself .

 

[Ramblingkey02]

Thanks for the help. My equipment has arrived, and is running stable at slight overclocking speeds.

BUT I have no sound!

I've tried in order tried, default winxp sp2 audio drivers, nvidia audio drivers (whql cert 71.81), AC97 850 drivers (both the one that came with mobo cd, and the one d'l-ed at the Asus global website.

I'm starting to think my mobo's foxconn audio connections are DOA.

I've went through every location available in win xp to change audio volume/mute, eveything is at 100% volume. Have tried 3 speakers/headphones.

If anyone has some advice as to what to do next, please let me know.

Also, I have a creative audigy 2 zs card, that HAS NOT been installed yet, nor any drivers installed. Any advice on whether I should DOA RMA this mobo soon, any troubleshooting advice, etc, would be appreciated.

 

[McPudd]

 

[McPudd]

Opps
Hi Ramblingkey02:
Try these drivers.
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dla...neid=5&famid=12&series=8&Software=True
Follow/read the readme link on the same page ( http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/ac97readme.pdf )
and AC97 850 is mentioned.
These appear to be the latest Realtek drivers for the AC97 850,

I don't have this mboard yet but soon should.
So far from reading here and other places, the consensus seem to be that where possible, one should install and update drivers from the chip manufacurer
and use Asus just for the software utils they alone provide.
ie Cool and Quiet from AMD, chipset drivers (except for IDE where MS's are supposedly better) from nVidia and audio drivers from Realtek.

BTW, the same Realtek drivers are also available here. Lokks like using Realtek's is fairly common.

wdm_a374.exe
Realtek AC'97 Drivers 3.74 WHQL
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Realtek_AC97_Drivers_d4400.html

Happy trailz,