*** Official ASUS M2N-E Thread ***

[AnandTech Moderator]

In an effort to make finding information about the ASUS M2N-E easier for all forum members, please post and discuss your issues, problems, experiences, rants, raves and FAQs here.

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[drum]

I've been doing some research on this board and from what I can tell, it sounds like it needs a bios update right out of the box. Can anyone shed some light on this?

 

[Talcite]

It's a horrible board. It overclocks poorly, most ram isn't supported, and even the supported ones run slower than rated speeds. It's a headache in a box, even after all the bios updates.

 

[Captante]

After initial good results with this board in a system I built for a friend (who happily is out of town till 9/1!) I have to suggest that this board be avoided.
My problems began when I decided to upgrade the on-board sound with a Audigy 2 ZS I had sitting around. The card installed fine, machine booted right up & drivers went in without a hiccup too... problems began when I shut the PC down. A few hours later when I tried to power up, it simply refused to POST... power light blinked on & then it immediatly shut down, like it would do if the CPU were not being recognized. No beeps, no chance to enter BIOS.. nothing. I changed every setting in the BIOS with the card removed, tried all 3 available PCI slots, tried the X-Fi in my computer but had the same problems, other non-creative PCI cards work fine & these same cards work fine in other motherboards... frankly I'm baffled & I don't have any more time or patience to figure this nonsense out, any suggestions before I RMA this POS to Newegg on Monday much appreciated!

 

[drum]

thats the general impression i've been getting. thanks

 

[acegazda]

This board's main competitor is the MSI k9n platinum is it not? How does it fare in a direct comparison to that?

 

[StevenNevets]

Ya, what better quality alternatives are this to this board?

Ram: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 675 (PC2

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2000MHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2

Motherboard: ASUS M2N-E Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD

Video Card: eVGA 256-P2-N564-AX Geforce 7900GT KO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI
Express x16 Video

 

[opmike]

Again, I must reiterate that people avoid this board if at all possible. Apparently, having the right RAM makes thing go a LOT better; but there are not many modules that are currently supported. OCZ, G.Skill, and others seem to be out of the question. The max 1.95 Vdimm seems to be a major culprit. Overclocking for me has been a nightmare as well.

I tried all three BIOS, and none corrected my issues. I just ended up RMA'ing mine for the Foxconn. While some are not having any issues, many are. ASUS needs to really work out the bugs in this line; as it seems to be hit or miss.

 

[acegazda]

you went for the foxconn 590sli board? That's a big jump in price.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: opmike
Again, I must reiterate that people avoid this board if at all possible. Apparently, having the right RAM makes thing go a LOT better; but there are not many modules that are currently supported. OCZ, G.Skill, and others seem to be out of the question. The max 1.95 Vdimm seems to be a major culprit. Overclocking for me has been a nightmare as well.

I tried all three BIOS, and none corrected my issues. I just ended up RMA'ing mine for the Foxconn. While some are not having any issues, many are. ASUS needs to really work out the bugs in this line; as it seems to be hit or miss.

No question about it, this board is pretty shaky... I even have the Corsair 6400 DDR2 which is rated for operation at 1.9v & even at 1.95v in the BIOS, it still failed Prime 95 & Memtest at 800mhz (the RAM passed at 667mhz) ... I think the board I have is just not delivering enough power... anyway, I have my RMA from Newegg & I've ordered the MSI board which should be here today hopefully, I'll post again when I get it installed.

 

[opmike]

Originally posted by: acegazda
you went for the foxconn 590sli board? That's a big jump in price.

Granted, I didn't pay full price for it. A a good friend of mine had one, and decided to sell it off for one of the P5W's (I forget which model) after seeing the performance of Conroe. I picked it up from him for 40 bucks more that I paid for the M2N-E.

40 dollars to get rid of a 24/7 headache is a good deal in my book :thumbsup:

 

[acegazda]

no lie. That's a good deal. I'd still like to hear from anyone who has the k9n platinum. I know 996gt2 has one and loves it, but he uses ddr2-667 RAM, and I'm shooting for ddr2-800.

 

[StevenNevets]

Heres my proposed solution

Ram: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) System Memory http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145015
($152.00 after $30.00 Mail-In Rebate)

 

[acegazda]

yeah, corsiar is the only one to use 1.9v RAM. Why?

 

[AndyHui]

There seem to be some very strange problems related to RAM speed and power on this board.

For those having random reboots, try setting the DDR2 speed down to 533 from 667. That seems to help, but it's not really an acceptable solution.

There's also a beta 0301 and 0302 BIOS that some say helps with stability as well. I've tried the 0301 and it didn't really help. I'm waiting to try the 0302 BIOS...

 

[scumlash]

Hey guys I've been waiting for some threads on this board to spring up on the interweb. I got one recently with some OCZ 533 Ram and an AM2 3800+ x2 cpu and have a stable over clock of 2400MHz going at the moment. I dropped the ram freq to 400 so that it would run at 1:1 with the cpu and both are now going at 240.

A strange thing though, I can't 'restart' my pc now? If I I restart then it won't post and i must hit the reset button then I get a failure to post warning and I then must enter the bios, when I do I just F10 immediately and it reboots fine. Its weird cause I don't actually ever have to change a setting to get it to start just go through that routine every time. Also if I power off my pc then button start it there is no problem.

Anyway I have been searching for info on a problem I have RE: overclocking my 7600gt, it seems that using either coolbits or rivatuner I cannot get any o/c at all, not even 5 MHz on the core or memory. After searches on the card I found that it really is a fine overclocker and regularly acheives 600/800 speeds. I'm only looking for a mild o/c from it like I have done with the cpu.

So anyway the conclusion is that it must be the mobo, does anyone know if the mobo somehow locks the vid cards frequency? If so anyway to stop it doing so.

I have considered a pencil volt mod but these are used when you reach the best o/c you can on a card, not just to try and get one.

CAn anyone help me solve this problem?

 

[vfrex]

scumlash:

I am running an AM2 Sempron 3000 with this board, and am having the same issue with soft reboots. I played around a bit, and found that the inability to "soft boot" starts at around 225-227 on the CPU frequency, at least for me. That was regardless of whether I dropped the ram lower or HTT multiplier. Have you found where it starts for you? It would be interesting if we hit it around the same frequency.

As far as the video card goes, I haven't had any trouble overclocking my 7300GT. I did think that the nvidia drivers were a pain to get going right though.

Other than the computer's inability to post on a soft reboot over 225, I haven't really run into any problems with this board (aside from some weird driver issues in linux related to dual booting with windows, but that's another story). I managed to push this CPU up from 1600->2400 on stock voltage without it crashing when it successfully booted. It wasn't exactly stable, but taking it down a bit was showing a 200 point increase in 3dmark06. That said, I don't find it acceptable to not be able to reboot without being in front of the machine. It sucks that the board would be holding me back on that, but I'm thinking of a workaround. I wonder if I can set clockgen to apply the overclock settings on boot, and reset it back to stock as part of the shutdown or reboot process.

 

[imported_inspire]

My random reboot problem was solved with a BIOS update. I do still have the same POST / soft reboot problem as vfrex. Asus does have some bugs to work out though...

If you plan on overclocking, you're going to be held back by this board because it only gives 1.95v max to the memory (Read as 1:2 divider). You'll also find that the divider options are limited and the CPU multipliers are incremented in whole numbers.

@AndyHui - the latest BIOS revision I see available for download on Asus's website is 0203 - where can I find these other versions you're talking about?

What's the best way to get Asus to give us another BIOS revision? Anybody have an inside connection? Ideas?

 

[scumlash]

vfrex:

I haven't experimented to that extent with mine tbh, I am not really a very experienced overclocker. What I have done is left the cpu multi at x 10, dropped the cpu<->MCP55 HT speed to x 4 and raised the cpu freq to 240. I have DDR2 533 ram but I dropped it to 400MHz in the bios and the cpu o/c raised it to 240 to match the cpu. I have had no crashes and overnight prime 95 went fine on both cores so the only issue I have there is the soft reboot.

How did you go about the vidoe o/c? I tried with coolbits, rivatuner and nvtray all with no success. Was there any bios item that you changed to help?

I am using the 0203 BIOS.

 

[vfrex]

Yeah, this is my first attempt at overclocking, so no real experience to go by here. What I did last night was play around to find the FSB that the soft boot problems started. Then I dropped the HTT multiplier from 4 to 3, and moved the FSB up above the max stable reboot level. That didn't change anything, so I moved the HTT multiplier back up and dropped the ram from 667 to 533. That didn't change anything either, which leads me to believe that this soft boot issue is independent of those factors. If you get a chance and are bored, would you mind playing around with the FSB to find where the issues start for you? If we find that it is around the same, perhaps that could help to determine what the issue is.

About the video, I can only speak for RivaTuner, but it doesn't work through the motherboard BIOS. I have an XFX card, and one of the files on the driver CD is a registry entry that unlocks overclocking for the card. Once I got that in, RivaTuner worked fine.

 

[imported_inspire]

I can do that, vfrex, once I get a stable OC and save the profile (which may be awhile...) I may try the 0302 Beta BIOS revision (currently using 0203) and see if that changes anything - although I've heard that it doesn't, so I may not bother.

I've been overclocking my rig and I can't get the memory over a 1:2 divider. I'm considering dropping my multiplier and raising my HTT to hit the same OC at a higher memory bandwidth.

If Asus doesn't fix this soon, I won't be buying another board from them.

Oh, and a big thanks to the AT Mods for the sticky :thumbsup:

 

[AndyHui]

PM me if you require Beta BIOS 0301.

 

[scumlash]

Originally posted by: vfrex

I played around a bit, and found that the inability to "soft boot" starts at around 225-227 on the CPU frequency, at least for me. That was regardless of whether I dropped the ram lower or HTT multiplier. Have you found where it starts for you? It would be interesting if we hit it around the same frequency.

I just experimented with this and yeah around 220MHz is where soft boot stops working for me, 225 never worked and around 222-223 worked but not everytime. Curious

 

[imported_inspire]

Well, I've registered my board and flashed up to the 0302 beta BIOS. I'm not really impressed, to be honest. But, I've got to face it - I don't feel like RMA'ing the board, and Asus is going to probably prioritize the out-of-the-box stock problems before it gets to the overclocking ones.

I really think they've had a hard time keeping up with the ahead-of-schedule releases of the AM2 platform and the C2D platform and the 'budget overclocking' sector just got put on hold. I really hope they can get the ball rolling on some better BIOS revisions and options. From what I can tell, 0302 is no different from 0203 in terms of overclocking options. We'll probably have to wait to at least an 04 revision before we start seeing any of those.

For now, I'm keeping my board at stock (although I have manually locked in some higher voltages and what are supposed to be standard memory timings of 5-5-5-15 1T) until Asus can get some of this stuff worked out. I'm tired of fighting with this board to ovberclock, and I know it would have some great potential if Asus can get the bugs worked out, but right now it's eating more time than it's worth for me.

Back to business - I think we should seriously find some sort of way to put some pressure on Asus to get this stuff fixed and corrected - maybe if we can get enough M2N-E owners to let them know what we need, they'll expedite the BIOS revisions. I have submitted the following technical inquiry:

I have a few issues with this board which I would like to have addressed. The majority of my problems are overclocking problems. The foremost of which is memory.

My current memory DIMMs operate at 1.9v, so at stock speeds, this is no problem. However, when I attempt to overclock, which this board is advertised as being designed to do, I have to choose the lowest memory divider (1:2 or DDR2-400). I feel that if more voltage options were given - say up to 2.5v, I could get a lot more out of this motherboard.

Another problem I've experienced between this board and my memory is that the board auto-detects my 5-5-5-15 1T memory as 5-5-5-18 2T. This isn't a huge problem, as I can simply lock what i know to be stock settings in myself manually in the BIOS, but it's something you may want to be aware of and consider fixing.

I also have a list of features I'd like to see added to the BIOS in addition to what I've already mentioned:

-More CPU Voltage options - up to 1.65v
-More Memory Divider Options - four is not much at all
-Finer CPU Multiplier adjustments - use 0.5 increments rather than 1.0

I realize that with the expedited launches of new platforms from both AMD and Intel and these platforms' green-ness that there are bugs to work out and that Asus is most likely having some trouble keeping up. However, this is not what I have come to expect from Asus - particularly not when a motherboard is advertised for overclocking. I also realize your first priority is to solve the stability issues customers are having at stock speeds.

I'd like to have some assurance, though, that Asus will address these problems and concerns that I have presented. I seriously considered RMA'ing this board once I found that it was not capable of what it claimed, but I have decided to give Asus the benefit of the doubt in what has been a whirlwind market the past few months. Please bear in mind that I am a young professional who undoubtedly has many more potential Asus purchases ahead of him. I have enjoyed your products and dealing with your company for some years now and I hope that will continue.

I encourage all you guys to register at Asus and register your motherboard and submit a technical inquiry. You may also want to hang around the M2N-E boards there as it is a useful resource. The more people we can get to put pressure on Asus, the faster we can get our problems solved. If anyone has any other suggestion on how to do this, please let us know.

EDIT: I got a reply.

Thank you for your support of our products!

If your ASUS product needs to be repaired or exchanged, first try to exchange the item with your vendor. If this is not possible, you will need to contact our RMA department for assistance. There are three ways to contact them:

1) If you have Internet access, you can visit this website:

http://helpdesk.asus.com

Click on the ASUS RMA Online link, and request an RMA

2) Send an e-mail to:

RMA@asus.com

Please include your name, mailing address, telephone number, and the serial number of your product.

3) If you are in the USA or Canada, call our RMA department at 510-739-3777 option 3. Please have the serial number of your ASUS product handy when you call.

Please do not respond to this email. If you need further assistance in this matter please contact our RMA department.

[lots of links that don't matter]

Innovative Solutions for a Limitless Tomorrow
Best Regards,

RR
ASUS Technical Support

So, basically, when I asked for some sort of assurance that they will fix it, they give me the RMA routine. I may just RMA the board, and buy something nicer from a company that doesn't blow me off. I'm really disappointed by this, and I will not be buying another Asus product again. Talk about trash.... ugh.

 

[mitaiwan82]

Originally posted by: inspire
So, basically, when I asked for some sort of assurance that they will fix it, they give me the RMA routine. I may just RMA the board, and buy something nicer from a company that doesn't blow me off. I'm really disappointed by this, and I will not be buying another Asus product again. Talk about trash.... ugh.

wow that's pretty harsh for a new product...I've usually heard good things about Asus, that's why I decided to go with them when I ordered this board yesterday. I think that the M2N-E is just not as high in priority as the M2N-SLI or M2N32-SLI boards when it comes to BIOS support, because Asus probably feels that the SLI boards are intended more for enthusiasts/overclockers. For example, a number of OCZ DDR2-800 modules did not work very well on many of the AM2 Asus boards, but the only board to have this issue addressed is the M2N32-SLI (that I'm aware of).

if Kanye West were here: "Asus doesn't care about budget overclockers."