The unofficial "Official A7V266-E Thread" !

[tazdevl]

I sent an email to Asus Tech Support. They informed me a 8045 would not fit the A7V266E. So I went out and bought a MCX462, guaranteed to fit all socketA 4 hole boards.

 

[Swanny]

<< They informed me a 8045 would not fit the A7V266E. So I went out and bought a MCX462, guaranteed to fit all socketA 4 hole boards. >>



Grrrrrr.

That may keep me from getting this board.:|

 

[Assimilator1]

Thanks Tazdevl ,hmm wonder if the FOP 32 will be ok for modest overclocking on an XP 1500?

jaeger66
Not if you run old games too ,especially DOS games.......................... I know!

 

[bluesky]

Thanks XCrodo.
Well, I don't care much if it has the nic, since I have couple of them.
However, I would guess they'll put the connector for the cable on I/O panel.
Can't think of them so stupid that they force people to cut a hole for it.

One question.
I have Live MP3.
Is the onboard sound as good as the card?

 

[CraigRT]

<< Win2k and XP are fine for games. With an nVidia card, they're better. >>



I agree 100%

my fps went UP when i switched to win2k with my GeForce2 GTS..

I would never ever use 9x again.. there is simply no point.. win2k rocks for gaming!

Do not waste space and install 98SE for games.. there is no need !

 

[Heinrich]

I agree with you guys to a point. I was, however, forced into re installing W98 because Saitek does not have drivers to support the programming of my joystick/throttle combo in W XP (or W2K for that matter) yet. They've promised them by 06/02 (haha). So I had to dual-boot for flight sims. This really annoys me.

 

[Assimilator1]

Yield
You obviously didn't bother to read my early reply ,Win2k is NOT compatible with ALL games(& its not just DOS games) ,so installing Win 98SE is not a waste of time

 

[carbonbased]

On Wednesday night I got my A7V266-E from UPS and built my new computer!

Here are the specs:

AthlonMP 1600+
New Koolance water cooled case
Asus A7V266-E /w RAID
768MB DDR RAM CAS 2-2-2
Radeon 8500
Sound Blaster Audigy
Linksys 10/100 network card
2 Maxtor D740X 60gb 7200rpm hdd's
Lite-On 24x10x40x burner
Kenwood 72X TrueX cdrom
Regular 104 Keyboard
Logitech Mouseman Dual Optical mouse
Planar 17.4" Digital/Analog LCD
Boston Acoustics MediaTheater speakers

I had to leave college later that night to drive home for Thanksgiving, but I got WinXP Pro installed and some software and drivers updated, etc.

The only problem I encountered is when I was installing WinXP Pro on the raid array. If you are going to do this make sure you go into the Asus driver cd beforehand on another computer. Go into the Promise raid folder and run the program that puts the driver files on a floppy disk. Then when the winxp install first runs you press F6 to load the raid drivers. Other than that so far so good.

I'm looking forward to seeing how far I can push the processor!

 

[Assimilator1]

Cool! ,I'd be interested too.
My Asus board arrived today ,the Athlon XP & HSF are at a friends house ,I only await the PSU now.

Btw whats the Liteon CDRW like? ,I'm thinking of getting 1

 

[Swanny]

Assimilator1: What HSF did you decide on?

 

[Thresher]

I'm upgrading from an Asus A7V133 to the A7V266E. Normally, I'd wipe the harddrive and just reinstall everything, but with WinXP, I'm a little worried about doing that.

Has anyone just swapped motherboards without reinstalling? Any problems with it?

Regarding the Promise controller, I had no problem installing WinXP on my A7V133, didn't need to worry about the controller drivers, although I did get the most recent ones and installed them after finishing my WindowsXP install.

I'm putting in the board this afternoon, so I hope I get an answer on this soon!

Thanks.

 

[Assimilator1]

My friend had a spare GW FOP 32 sitting about which he is selling to me for 1/2 of the new price ,so I'll try that & see how it goes.He's also selling me the XP 1500 for £89 ,that's £20 cheaper than new

 

[Swanny]

<< My friend had a spare GW FOP 32 sitting about which he is selling to me for 1/2 of the new price ,so I'll try that & see how it goes.He's also selling me the XP 1500 for £89 ,that's £20 cheaper than new >>



Lucky:|


J/k

 

[Kadarin]

<< On Wednesday night I got my A7V266-E from UPS and built my new computer!

Here are the specs:

AthlonMP 1600+
New Koolance water cooled case
Asus A7V266-E /w RAID
768MB DDR RAM CAS 2-2-2
Radeon 8500
Sound Blaster Audigy
Linksys 10/100 network card
2 Maxtor D740X 60gb 7200rpm hdd's
Lite-On 24x10x40x burner
Kenwood 72X TrueX cdrom
Regular 104 Keyboard
Logitech Mouseman Dual Optical mouse
Planar 17.4" Digital/Analog LCD
Boston Acoustics MediaTheater speakers

>>



Hey Carbonbased,

How do you like that Koolance unit? I know it's getting good reviews, but I'm curious to see if you thought it was easy to set up, and what your opinion is of its general fit and finish. Also, is it quiet compared to, say, the Alpha cooler?

Any problems getting the Asus board to fit? I remember seeing something about larger boards getting in the way of the reservoir?

Thanks,

-j

 

[carbonbased]

Assimilator1: I haven't tried burning anything yet because I don't have my computer here at home, but I'll let you know when I do.

Astaroth33: I like the Koolance case a lot. To set it up I needed to add 100cc of the greenish liquid they ship with it and fill the rest of it with distilled water.

Getting the liquid thru the small little drainage hole on the bottom was the hardest part because I didn't have a funnel. I punched a small hole in the greenish liquid bottle's top and squeezed a little out at a time. For the water I put it in a water bottle and squeezed a little in at a time, but water would always get "stuck" in the grooves of the hole (there are grooves because a plastic plug/screw thing screws into it) even though the reservoir wasn't full yet.

The overall look of the case might be kind of boring to some, but it does have the different colored front bezel and the 3 fans on top. Personally I'm fine with it.

It's a very quiet case, and depending on what PSU you get, it can be virtually silent. I've never had an Alpha cooler myself, but my computer at home is pretty loud without even having a delta screamer fan or anything on it, and the Koolance is WAY quieter than it.

The Asus mb isn't wide enough to hit the reservoir but you might have a problem if you put more than 2 cdrom drives in the computer. If you look at pictures of the koolance case you can't use the top bay because that's where the reservoir is. My burner is in 3rd bay from the top (the 2nd one you can use) and it somewhat covers the last screw hole on the asus. The burner is very close to the RAID connectors so I think another drive might cover them up... I'm not sure because I can't see it right now.

Related to the wider motherboards, there is a "deep front bezel" that is mentioned in the Koolance.com website News section. They are holding off on selling this right now apparently because on this new bezel the optional usb front ports won't fit. I actually did get this bezel in case I needed it for the Asus. It's completely silver and the power button is near the bottom middle of the bezel. It says "Multimedia Computer System" or something on it... I don't really like it but I would be ok with it if I needed to use it, but it's not needed for me. The deep front bezel gives you another 1cm or so of room for the cdrom drives.

Overall I would totally recommend the Koolance case!

carbonbased

 

[Eolair]

<< I sent an email to Asus Tech Support. They informed me a 8045 would not fit the A7V266E. So I went out and bought a MCX462, guaranteed to fit all socketA 4 hole boards. >>



It seems like there are at least two different revisions of this board. Someone at the amdmb.com forums have been able to easily fit an Alpha 8045 on his a7v266-e board without making any modifications. Perhaps it's possible to fit the alpha on one of the revisions while it's impossible on the other. I've found different pictures of the a7v266-e which seem to confirm that there indeed are differences between boards.

From the lostcircus.com review I got this picture:
MB picture at lostcircuits

And from bench-house.com I got this one:
MB picture from bench-house.com

If you look at second picture and specifically where the upper right capacitators are placed you can see that the capacitators are more to the left, closer to the cpu socket, than on the mb on the first picture. People have reported that it's impossible to fit the Alpha because the capacitators are in the way so maybe they got a mb with the layout shown in the second picture.

 

[Swanny]

So, the question is which version of the board is the one in retail channels now.

Does anyone have this board and an Alpha PAL 8035 they can check it out with?

 

[tazdevl]

Swanny I bought a MCX462 in addition to my 8045 for that very reason. The MCX is Swifty's new 462 rev that guarantees it will fit on any 4 hole socket A mobo (footprint is different and more pins). Sidewinder has the base HS for $58. Nice thing is that if the 8045 does fit, I can return the MCX, 30 day money back.

 

[Swanny]

For some reason I thought the Swiftech was more expensive

Oh well, if it's only $20 more I should be able to handle it.

 

[Assimilator1]

I have rev 1.07 & it looks like the pic in bench-house.com

What rev does everyone else have?

 

[Eolair]

The new board review at Tom's hardware seem to have the "good" version of the a7v266-e.
Pic at Tom's
You can see that the two capacitors to the lower left are placed at the outermost the edge of the board.

 

[Swanny]

Well I bit the bullet and got one. I didn't want to wait for the Abit board. I had sort of wanted onboard ethernet, but the one at newegg didn't have it so I passed.

I also ordered the Swiftech MCX462-B to go along with it (thanks, tazdevl and an 80mm Sunon 39CFM fan. Hopefully with my 1900+ I also ordered I will get some good overclocking.

 

[tazdevl]

LOL Swanny, NP. I also bit the bullet on the mobo. Should be here tomorrow. KR7A keeps getting pushed back. FYI it doesn't have onboard ethernet.

Sitting here looking @ the MCX and it is one pretty heatsink.

If you want another fan to look @ for the MCX462... head over to coolerguys and look @ the Mechatronics 53CFM/39DBA fan. Has 3 & 4 pin coming off the fan. Not a bad deal and pretty quiet for the airflow it produces. You can go a bit louder inside the case and not worry. If it's too loud... I'll just smack the good 'ol Panaflo 40CFM on.

Regarding the capacitor issue and 8045... sounds crazy but the layout might be different between the RAID and non-RAID boards. We shall see.


**EDIT

Ah... forgot to add my question. If I configure/set up the Promise RAID controller for IDE, will it perform better than using the standard IDE channels that are controlled by the southbridge?

Thanks

 

[Thresher]

I got tired of waiting too. I got mine A7V266-E last Friday. Installed it without a hitch. Eventually I'm going to put an XP processor in here, but for right now, I have a 1.4 T-Bird.

 

[tazdevl]

Hey anyone know what the max stripe size is for the promise controller on this board?

Thanks