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*** Official ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4) Thread ***

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Originally posted by: TheNiceGuy
Puds- WTF? I specificaly bought 2 drives for data integrity on the 2nd in case the first fails. They also happen to be the new RAID NCQ Seagates (pain to track down here and more expensive). Was it a waste of $? I having one 'safe' data disk is more important to me than a slight increase in load times - if I MUST choose.
Click to expand...

RAID1(mirror) is definately the safest bet, if you keep critical info on your machine, but you should still develop a backup routine even for a RAID1 array. And you only have 1/2 the disk space with RAID1

Personally I prefer RAID0 for a couple of reasons:

1. You get twice the disk space and a performance boost (especially for large file loads and video editing)

2. As I stated above, you should backup all critical data regardless of which type of array you use. I use a 250gb IDE drive for this purpose but you could do the same with a DVD or CD burner. And I beleive the security issue has been blown out of porportion by the RAID0 nazi's. With the MTBF(mean time between failures) rates on quality hard drives in the hundreds of thousands of hours, the likelyhood of a drive failure is much more remote than the raid nazi's would have you beleive

But in the end the choice is yours! The ulimate in security, or a performance boost and twice the space.

 
Thanks a lot for help with single 'non-detectable' SATA hd thing!
Truth is i found this solution myself few hours after i posted my message.
I simply read manual carefully and discovered my single HD is connected
to red Sata-Raid! So much for relying on supposed proffesionals who
assembled my system.
 
Originally posted by: sunday99
So far my A8N-SLI has been without issues. Have not yet started overclocking.
I have one question, that I'm sure is stupid. When my comp is booting up, I get a message about the Silicon RAID controller asking if I want to go to setup. This lasts for 30 seconds or so, and annoys me everytime. I have 1 WD 74GB Raptor plugged into the Nv controller. I've tried disabling the silicon controller, but it does nothing. Any tips are appreciated. Overclocking results soon to follow =)
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I get the same thing, with Raptor and Seagate on the nvidia controller-non raid. Have to press the space key after the message shows, then it resumes boot.
I see the 1003-005 beta bios is no longer on the Asus site.
 
Originally posted by: BigHurt
Originally posted by: Jim Bancroft
Don't know if this is the best price right now, but allstarshop.com has the board for $231 here. Not cheap, but I thought I'd mention it because newegg is asking $275 at the moment.
Click to expand...

Chumbo.com ships the 7th of January with free 2 day shipping for $201.99.
Cheapest ive found so far. 🙂
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Ebay has listed quite a few A8N-SLI boards ranging in price from 198 - 299 using Buy it now. Prices will continue to creep lower (IMHO) as MSI, DFI, Gigabyte, ect. come out with their boards. I would guess in 3-4 months you will be able to pick one up for 160 bucks or so.

I jumped in for 201 from Novapc.
 
Mine just arrived - now I've got to wait on my PCI-E 6800GT from Chumbo (they say 2-3 weeks). Or is there a place that has 6800GT's in stock at a reasonable price now?

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback on this board. :thumbsup:
 
Hey all,

My A8N-SLI Deluxe arrived this morning and the 3500 90nm Winchester is already running very well, very cool. I've dabbled with overclocking on here so far with limited success. The best overclock I managed was 238x11 = 2618. I've tried to read as much as I can of the couple threads about the A8N, but if there is anything I could try out that might help in anyway then I'll be glad to try.

ajmiles
 
Originally posted by: Robor
Mine just arrived - now I've got to wait on my PCI-E 6800GT from Chumbo (they say 2-3 weeks). Or is there a place that has 6800GT's in stock at a reasonable price now?

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback on this board. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...


Im on the same boat as u Robor...
I bought a 6600GT just to hold me over though. I dont think i can take the agony of having a system sit in my room just because it doesnt have video cards. But, I decided to buy some 6800GT's from another dealer. I read some of Chumbo's reviews and they seem alittle shady. I think i'll wait until a reseller that has a very good return rating has them in stock.
 
Have built my system and have had almost no problems. Could not get a new hard drive to work but I think it is the drive. Did not flash the bios yet. CS-source is awesome. Due to the broken drive have not set up a RAID. Running off an old ide drive for now.

The ASUS splash and RAID setup pauses are irritating but I can live with i

Thanks to all for the help.

Scott

🙂

PS - How do you post pictures to this site?
 
Where do you turn off the "set up a raid array" that appears during boot up in the bios? Just don't want to turn off the wrong thing.

Thanks,

Syd
 
Issues.

I have my mobo up and running. Quik specs

3200+ 90nm
Thermaltake Silent Booster cooling
1 GB Geil DDR500
6600GT Asus
2 X 36gb raptors on raid 0 --on Silicon sata
480 watt Thermaltake
Audigy 2
NEC 3500 DVD burner
Thermaltake Xaser 3 case.

I have no issues on my raid 0, its my storage drive that is bugging.

The problem is when I add in my 160gb storage drive my system gets unstable and crashes when i access this drive. I have no issues in the hardware manager. My DVD is on the primary IDE and when i access it,no problems plays movies, music. But anything on my storage drive crashes system. Anyone got any ideas on this?

The system dectects the 160gb Western Digital...its on the secondary master ide.....it dectects data on it, but crashes os when files are accessed.

 
Originally posted by: syd968
Where do you turn off the "set up a raid array" that appears during boot up in the bios? Just don't want to turn off the wrong thing.

Thanks,

Syd
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In bios>advanced>onboard device configuration. Choose the controller>enable or disable. Disabling the Silicon controller stopped that setup screen here.
Now, if I can only figure out how to disable the phony "no cpu fan" warning.
 
I tried the new beta bios 1003-005 and now my SATA drive is slower than it was before. About 4x times slower. I'm using HD_Speed to benchmark and I used to see 120mb/s or so in burst mode. Now I'm seeing 36mb/s. Not good. Other than that, everything appears to be working normally.
 
I just got all my pieces together for my new rig (listed in sig) and I am being driven NUTS trying to install XP. I think something about my rig is burning out floppy drives - the drive I first put in (from an old computer, thought it was fine) wouldn't respond to the ASUS mobo disk's attempts to write a RAID driver floppy (needed to install XP on RAID). So I went out and bought a new floppy drive (Mitsumi) and at first it seemed fine - made a driver floppy, Windows installed the RAID drivers off of it - but then after it formatted my array, and asked for the disk again, it couldn't read it. When I rebooted, it couldn't even read the floppy the first time around. It lights up, but doesn't seem readable by the system. This drives me crazy - all these top-tier components, and I can't install Windows due to a floppy drive! Could there be something about my rig that's killing floppy drives? This is only my third self-built system, never had an issue like this before. All other pieces (hard drives, video card, optical drives) work just fine. Thanks all, from a board newb.
 
Ok, downgraded to 1003-004 and the SATA scores in HD_Speed are the same.

I noticed in the Hardware Manager under the controllers that there is a speed test there and the SATA drive burst speed shows 120+ mb/s. Odd.....
 
Originally posted by: bwentzel
Ok, downgraded to 1003-004 and the SATA scores in HD_Speed are the same.

I noticed in the Hardware Manager under the controllers that there is a speed test there and the SATA drive burst speed shows 120+ mb/s. Odd.....
Click to expand...

Is your maxtor the Diamondmax, with NCQ?
 
Originally posted by: cableguy3166
I just got all my pieces together for my new rig (listed in sig) and I am being driven NUTS trying to install XP. I think something about my rig is burning out floppy drives - the drive I first put in (from an old computer, thought it was fine) wouldn't respond to the ASUS mobo disk's attempts to write a RAID driver floppy (needed to install XP on RAID). So I went out and bought a new floppy drive (Mitsumi) and at first it seemed fine - made a driver floppy, Windows installed the RAID drivers off of it - but then after it formatted my array, and asked for the disk again, it couldn't read it. When I rebooted, it couldn't even read the floppy the first time around. It lights up, but doesn't seem readable by the system. This drives me crazy - all these top-tier components, and I can't install Windows due to a floppy drive! Could there be something about my rig that's killing floppy drives? This is only my third self-built system, never had an issue like this before. All other pieces (hard drives, video card, optical drives) work just fine. Thanks all, from a board newb.
Click to expand...

I had the same sort of trouble with my floppy, I was about to chunk it and get another. Then one of the members here "Chexi" informed me that floppy's are notorious for not making proper connection because the pins on the cable connector aren't keyed. I unplugged and replugged the cable a few times until it consistently recognized the floppy, and I haven't had any problems since. Give it a try before you go buy another floppy.
 
Thanks man, that's eventually what I did, and slugged through the install. I figured at first I'd shorted the FDD. I mean, even though I bought nice rounded floppy cable, it STILL just says "floppy" on either end - does it actually matter which end goes to the floppy and which end goes to the mobo? I've tried to look this up, and haven't come up with much. Figures - I can set up a RAID array, build a nice new computer, good parts, etc, and I can't get the oldest component to work.
 
Originally posted by: cableguy3166
Thanks man, that's eventually what I did, and slugged through the install. I figured at first I'd shorted the FDD. I mean, even though I bought nice rounded floppy cable, it STILL just says "floppy" on either end - does it actually matter which end goes to the floppy and which end goes to the mobo? I've tried to look this up, and haven't come up with much. Figures - I can set up a RAID array, build a nice new computer, good parts, etc, and I can't get the oldest component to work.
Click to expand...

I believe the side with the twisted cable is supposed to plug into the floppy drive.
 
i always think of it this way: the red stripe on floppy cable should be facing the red stripe on the power connection, provided that the power connection is on left and floppy connector is on right.
 
Originally posted by: runestone
Originally posted by: bwentzel
Ok, downgraded to 1003-004 and the SATA scores in HD_Speed are the same.

I noticed in the Hardware Manager under the controllers that there is a speed test there and the SATA drive burst speed shows 120+ mb/s. Odd.....
Click to expand...

Is your maxtor the Diamondmax, with NCQ?
Click to expand...

I think some other users are having issues with The Diamondmax drives; specifically not being recognized.
 
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