Hello there, long time since I was writing on these forums (have been lurking for many years).
I am trying to find the best nF4 board for me. I Have been to many forums, seeking info on the pros and cons of the boards, in order to get a better picture on which board is the best (for me that is).
And now I woud very much appreciate any help in selecting one of the motherboards I have been looking at.
I have the following criteria that must be meet;
- Very low noise, or the possibility to replace chipset fan with passive cooling. If it in the end has to be a fan to cool the chipset, it must be very quiet, and there must be plenty of replacements (so far I have never got a board that I have bought for myself that has had a fan that has run well for long or at all at noise levels I tolerate).
- Very low chance of running into any issues.
- I do not care much about the SLI function, but it is still nice to have for the future.
I intend to use the following with the motherboard I am going to choose;
OCS 520W Purestream PSU
2 x Corsair CMX256a 3200LL 2-2-3-6 Timings @ 200 Mhz (I guess I will have to run memory on these slower timings).
2 x Corsair CMX512 3200XL 2-2-2-5 Timings @ 200 Mhz
Sapphire Radeon x800xl
Seagate 200GB Barracuda V PATA
Seagate 120GB Barracuda IV PATA
IBM Deskstar 80GB PATA
Nec 2500nd DVD -rw/+rw
Samsung Syncmaster 957MB
PS/2 keyboard
USB mouse (Logitech Wheelmouse)
USB HP Laserjet 1010
Windows XP Pro SP2
I would appreciate comments on the things I have found about the issues, pros and cons regarding the motherboards I am choosing between, to better alow me to select one. And updates or error corrections would also be appreciated. Anything that will help me decide between these three boards.
What I am looking at is;
DFI nF4 Lanparty Ultra D
Pros:
- Good support through forum.
- Stable and fast.
- Sli selection (although that wont work due to newest chipsetdrivers) is done with jumpers.
- Good overclocker.
- Very silent chipset fan (magnetic levitation) that can be speed adjusted.
Cons:
- It has some problems with TCCD memory modules, and at the moment you have to flash to a beta bios in order to run more than one stick.
- It is a bit tricky to get the bios configuration perfect so that you get a stable system, due to an extreme amount of tweakablitiy (both a pro and a con).
- Seems you require somewhat higher VDDimm setting to get most memory sticks to run fully stable.
- And some have reported CPUs running a bit hotter on the DFI boards than other manufacturers nf4 boards.
- Its chipset and its cooling fan are placed exactly behind the first PCIe x 16 slot, so that it is not easy to find a replacement that fits (if you need to)
- SLI will not be possible through modification in future versions of this mobo (not a big priority for me).
Asus A8N Sli
Pros:
- It has SLI with slots that are further apart, allowing for better cooling of the installed cards. Further, the chipset is situated between these slots, with enough room to be able to use a replacement of some sort, if you need it (Zalman for example).
- It does not skimp on the features side of the board, and a lot of users seem to use this board.
Cons: It seems it also have some issues. From what I can gather;
- SATA discs (Maxtor Diamonmax and WD Raptor mainly) might suddenly drop from the system, requiring shutdown and cold boot.
- It seems to sometimes have problems detecting new hardware and reallocating IRQs, requiring you to clear CMOS in order to get the board past the post.
- IRQ assignment for PCI slots are rigid and must be followed. NCQ seems to work rather poorly (or not at all) for some users (seems that is quite common on nF4 boards at the moment).
- Seems chipset fan tends to have a very short lifspan.
- Seems set memory frequency in bios results in a higher frequency when checked through software. Although only one user seems to have reported this so far, so I would appreciate confirmation on this.
MSI Neo4 Platinum/SLI also known as MSI K8N Platinum SLI
Pros:
- Has onboard Creative SB Live 24, which is better than most onboard sound solutions. Which means that you are not required to buy an addon sound card immediately.
- Chipset is placed behind the second PCIe x 16 slot, which means it wont interfere with the first slot. And if you do not care about running SLI, you could excange the default cooling solution with something else.
- 2 x GBLan (nvidia and Marvell).
Cons:
- Seems to have some slight issues with certain USB devices. Sometimes resulting in that the computer wont post, and sometimes freezing during booting from operating system.
- Seems that it does not like some PS/2 keyboards and mice, resulting in a failure to post successfully. Some users have succeeded in just using USB keyboard and mouse to get around this.
- Motherboard software is unable to read chipset temperature. Something that might be of a great importance if you are going to overclock.
- Seems with current bios, there is a problem overclocking over 220 HTT through bios, though it works through software in windows. Supposedly this will be solved with a bios issue.
I am trying to find the best nF4 board for me. I Have been to many forums, seeking info on the pros and cons of the boards, in order to get a better picture on which board is the best (for me that is).
And now I woud very much appreciate any help in selecting one of the motherboards I have been looking at.
I have the following criteria that must be meet;
- Very low noise, or the possibility to replace chipset fan with passive cooling. If it in the end has to be a fan to cool the chipset, it must be very quiet, and there must be plenty of replacements (so far I have never got a board that I have bought for myself that has had a fan that has run well for long or at all at noise levels I tolerate).
- Very low chance of running into any issues.
- I do not care much about the SLI function, but it is still nice to have for the future.
I intend to use the following with the motherboard I am going to choose;
OCS 520W Purestream PSU
2 x Corsair CMX256a 3200LL 2-2-3-6 Timings @ 200 Mhz (I guess I will have to run memory on these slower timings).
2 x Corsair CMX512 3200XL 2-2-2-5 Timings @ 200 Mhz
Sapphire Radeon x800xl
Seagate 200GB Barracuda V PATA
Seagate 120GB Barracuda IV PATA
IBM Deskstar 80GB PATA
Nec 2500nd DVD -rw/+rw
Samsung Syncmaster 957MB
PS/2 keyboard
USB mouse (Logitech Wheelmouse)
USB HP Laserjet 1010
Windows XP Pro SP2
I would appreciate comments on the things I have found about the issues, pros and cons regarding the motherboards I am choosing between, to better alow me to select one. And updates or error corrections would also be appreciated. Anything that will help me decide between these three boards.
What I am looking at is;
DFI nF4 Lanparty Ultra D
Pros:
- Good support through forum.
- Stable and fast.
- Sli selection (although that wont work due to newest chipsetdrivers) is done with jumpers.
- Good overclocker.
- Very silent chipset fan (magnetic levitation) that can be speed adjusted.
Cons:
- It has some problems with TCCD memory modules, and at the moment you have to flash to a beta bios in order to run more than one stick.
- It is a bit tricky to get the bios configuration perfect so that you get a stable system, due to an extreme amount of tweakablitiy (both a pro and a con).
- Seems you require somewhat higher VDDimm setting to get most memory sticks to run fully stable.
- And some have reported CPUs running a bit hotter on the DFI boards than other manufacturers nf4 boards.
- Its chipset and its cooling fan are placed exactly behind the first PCIe x 16 slot, so that it is not easy to find a replacement that fits (if you need to)
- SLI will not be possible through modification in future versions of this mobo (not a big priority for me).
Asus A8N Sli
Pros:
- It has SLI with slots that are further apart, allowing for better cooling of the installed cards. Further, the chipset is situated between these slots, with enough room to be able to use a replacement of some sort, if you need it (Zalman for example).
- It does not skimp on the features side of the board, and a lot of users seem to use this board.
Cons: It seems it also have some issues. From what I can gather;
- SATA discs (Maxtor Diamonmax and WD Raptor mainly) might suddenly drop from the system, requiring shutdown and cold boot.
- It seems to sometimes have problems detecting new hardware and reallocating IRQs, requiring you to clear CMOS in order to get the board past the post.
- IRQ assignment for PCI slots are rigid and must be followed. NCQ seems to work rather poorly (or not at all) for some users (seems that is quite common on nF4 boards at the moment).
- Seems chipset fan tends to have a very short lifspan.
- Seems set memory frequency in bios results in a higher frequency when checked through software. Although only one user seems to have reported this so far, so I would appreciate confirmation on this.
MSI Neo4 Platinum/SLI also known as MSI K8N Platinum SLI
Pros:
- Has onboard Creative SB Live 24, which is better than most onboard sound solutions. Which means that you are not required to buy an addon sound card immediately.
- Chipset is placed behind the second PCIe x 16 slot, which means it wont interfere with the first slot. And if you do not care about running SLI, you could excange the default cooling solution with something else.
- 2 x GBLan (nvidia and Marvell).
Cons:
- Seems to have some slight issues with certain USB devices. Sometimes resulting in that the computer wont post, and sometimes freezing during booting from operating system.
- Seems that it does not like some PS/2 keyboards and mice, resulting in a failure to post successfully. Some users have succeeded in just using USB keyboard and mouse to get around this.
- Motherboard software is unable to read chipset temperature. Something that might be of a great importance if you are going to overclock.
- Seems with current bios, there is a problem overclocking over 220 HTT through bios, though it works through software in windows. Supposedly this will be solved with a bios issue.
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