Setting up a new rig soon w/ Asus A8n

[Wall7486]

Well, i'll be building my rig in a few days, when the motherboard is delivered. Anything I should keep an eye out for, so my installation will be as smooth as possible? Feedbacks from A8N owners will be appreciated.

 

[mofrack]

As an A8N owner, I suggest you read the official A8N thread, the ENTIRE thread.

Then you can be a pseudo-expert, just like me! Bwahaha.

 

[ohnnyj]

I would keep the shipping BIOS installed unless you run into issues. Only update it if you encouter problems. If you are going to be running a RAID setup then create a RAID boot diskette that you can use during the Windos setup (F6). In my experience it was a painless install, others would have you believe that it is a pain to get a computer up and running on the board but I have absolutely no problems with it whatsoever (of course I do have a very good PSU so that helps).

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I agree, a very painless install. And as ohnnyj said a high quality power supply with strong 12v rail is essential with this motherboard.

 

[fORM]

1) Make sure you connect every single connector including the power cable to the mobo.
2) Double check that ram is properly inserted.
3) Connect the video card in the 1st PcX slot.
4) Properly install updates mobo updates first, followed by OS updates and leave the video card updates to the end.
5) Don't install the NV firewall until you've got Sp2 and you've disabled XP Firewall. You can easily reinstall it later.
6) Pick the correct Nforce drivers. Some have issues with games. Nforce 67.66 etc. Some users swear by 3rd party drivers but be weary.
7) Don't bother trying to update the bios to a foreign language like germany. The beta releases can mess with your system.

Good luck