Just to put in my own comment, but not to thread crap:
I am NOT a happy owner. I only say this for an idea of issues that might crop up, but I dont want to make a new thread that looks like i'm asking everyone for help.
I started to get a bad feeling when putting on the a64 requires an inordinately large amount of torque to rotate the arm that locks the HSF down. But when I did the first boot everything was okay. After I got all my drives hooked up I decided to go ahead and give it a boot. I had to spend some time trying to fix Inaccessible Boot Device errors from XP because I decided to transfer the old installation over to this all-new computer. Once that was eventually overcome, I ran into a new issue - after some time I start having an issue where the video signal will just drop out. I dont know if the computer stops in whole or not, but the restart and power switches don't work at that point. It did stay on long enough once to all the new parts configured, then the video went blank. Another few times XP would stay up for maybe 20 minutes max and I was able to run the Source stress test that comes with CS: Source at 1280x1024 and got 80 FPS average, which I was pleased with. Eventually the video outs became far more frequent and the computer developed a habit of also rebooting. At this point I tried clearing the CMOS, following the instructions with the manual just to make sure I did it right, and after that, the board wont boot at all. It gets power and when the switch is hit all the fans will power on, including the video card fan, but no boot codes at all, it just will sit there. I have now at least gotten it to the point where it will reliably boot, though at least 50% of the time no video signal comes.
I'm at an impasse for what could be the problem, but I highly suspect, due to the variable nature of the issues i'm having, that it is the A8N-SLI. Granted the times it will stay up the longest are after it has been sitting cold for awhile, which lends itself to a heat issue, a fact which is also supported by the fact that the a64 HSF doesn't get very warm and the HSF on the video card hasn't yet seemed to get warmer than ambient. It is one of the 6600GT's that have an axis of rotation that I accidentally disturbed, but thermal contact seems decent, but not very good. I'm almost positive it's not the RAM because it went through about 75% of a memtest86+ with no errors (ended early because the video blanked out and system rebooted). It's not a power issue because i'm down to running nothing but the bare minimum and an optical drive with a bootable linux distro. It's probably not CPU because I think the errors would be accompanied more often by a reboot then instead of a hang.
So, sorry, a short post turned into a long one, but in my experience I think there's pretty big problems with at least my A8N-SLI - I've accepted this is an RMA board - though every batch will have a defective product, but at least it seems like more people in this thread are alot luckier.
I am NOT a happy owner. I only say this for an idea of issues that might crop up, but I dont want to make a new thread that looks like i'm asking everyone for help.
I started to get a bad feeling when putting on the a64 requires an inordinately large amount of torque to rotate the arm that locks the HSF down. But when I did the first boot everything was okay. After I got all my drives hooked up I decided to go ahead and give it a boot. I had to spend some time trying to fix Inaccessible Boot Device errors from XP because I decided to transfer the old installation over to this all-new computer. Once that was eventually overcome, I ran into a new issue - after some time I start having an issue where the video signal will just drop out. I dont know if the computer stops in whole or not, but the restart and power switches don't work at that point. It did stay on long enough once to all the new parts configured, then the video went blank. Another few times XP would stay up for maybe 20 minutes max and I was able to run the Source stress test that comes with CS: Source at 1280x1024 and got 80 FPS average, which I was pleased with. Eventually the video outs became far more frequent and the computer developed a habit of also rebooting. At this point I tried clearing the CMOS, following the instructions with the manual just to make sure I did it right, and after that, the board wont boot at all. It gets power and when the switch is hit all the fans will power on, including the video card fan, but no boot codes at all, it just will sit there. I have now at least gotten it to the point where it will reliably boot, though at least 50% of the time no video signal comes.
I'm at an impasse for what could be the problem, but I highly suspect, due to the variable nature of the issues i'm having, that it is the A8N-SLI. Granted the times it will stay up the longest are after it has been sitting cold for awhile, which lends itself to a heat issue, a fact which is also supported by the fact that the a64 HSF doesn't get very warm and the HSF on the video card hasn't yet seemed to get warmer than ambient. It is one of the 6600GT's that have an axis of rotation that I accidentally disturbed, but thermal contact seems decent, but not very good. I'm almost positive it's not the RAM because it went through about 75% of a memtest86+ with no errors (ended early because the video blanked out and system rebooted). It's not a power issue because i'm down to running nothing but the bare minimum and an optical drive with a bootable linux distro. It's probably not CPU because I think the errors would be accompanied more often by a reboot then instead of a hang.
So, sorry, a short post turned into a long one, but in my experience I think there's pretty big problems with at least my A8N-SLI - I've accepted this is an RMA board - though every batch will have a defective product, but at least it seems like more people in this thread are alot luckier.
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