WARNING Antec PSU's do NOT work with Abit AV8

[obeseotron]

In 6 years of reading AnandTech, I've never seen them make a bad recommendation, but the Abit AV8 is at best a flawed product unworthy of any kind of editor's choice award and at worst simply a poorly made motherboard. When my PC got caught in a cyclic reboot cycle earlier today I thought I must have screwed something up or there was a ground out or something. Not so, Antec power supplies are simply incompatible with the Abit AV8. Abit's own representative has confirmed this on their forums. How the hell do you release a motherboard for the enthusiast market and not test it on Antec power supplies, which are probably present in at least 20% of homebuilt enthusiast systems. Antec's have been highly regarded for years, when someone has PSU problems Antec is always one of two or three brands suggested on these forums so I've got to believe the fault is mostly with Abit.

To the editors of AnandTech: Please rescind the silver award given the Abit AV8 until Abit resolves this issue. A problem this severe affects many potential buyers who may end up breaking the bank to get a 939 based rig only to find out their PSU won't work and they have to pony up even more to get a working box. (me)

 

[Frew]

Wow... Link to the "Abit's own representative has confirmed this on their forums."

 

[mechBgon]

Just out of curiosity, was your Antec's three-pin fan-monitoring wire plugged into the mobo? If so, did you try it without? Those fans run pretty low RPMs when cool, and I've seen (and owned) boards that may not even POST when they have a low-RPM tach-equipped fan plugged into them, so that's why I'm curious if you had your PSU's tach lead plugged in.

 

[obeseotron]

Meant to put the link in before, sorry, here it is.

AV8 and Antec PS

Dear ABIT user,

Thank you for choosing ABIT product.

We have got us a Antec power and we are able to duplicate this problem with an Antec power. The problem is becuase of the 5V standby power, we are observing some strange 5V standby power behavier when using antec power (we are using a TruePower 430W), and we did not see the same problem on other PSU. We have a preliminary solution for this issue, and we are testing if this solution will effect other PSU.
We will contact you once we have a final solution for this issue.

 

[obeseotron]

No the only things I have plugged in are the CPU fan (only plugs into the motherboard for speed reporting, it is plugged into the cpu header, but it uses a normal molex for power), ATX and 12V plugs, one molex on the 6800gt, and the power switch cable. For reference, I have a 3500+, gainward 6800GT (tried swapping with geforce1 and 4), 1GB A-data ram (tried using only one stick, and also tried older corsiar stick) and a Thermaltake Venus12.