Zebo does my board have PCI and SATA locks?

[joejccva]

You have a great OC guide and it has helped me have a better understanding on how to OC now. It took some digging through your thread to find out what everything meant, but I think I finally got the logistics.

Would you happen to know if my motherboard has those locks you are talking about for PCI-Express and SATA.

Here's my specs:

A64 3200+ Venice
Asus A8N-SLI (non-deluxe)
OCZ 1gb (2x512mb) dual channel unbuffered ddr400 PC3200 ram
Gigabyte Geforce 6600GT 128mb pci-ex
Antec TruePowerII TPII-430W PSU
Western Digital 80gb 7200rpm SATA150 HD
NEC Black IDE DVD Burner
Thermaltake Soprano Case
Thermalright XP-90C w/ Panaflo 92mm H1B fan (3pin)
Panaflo 120mm U1A exhaust fan 4pin molex (using this to replace stock exhaust fan)
Panaflo 92mm H1B fan 3pin (using this to replace stock side window intake fan)


I was hoping that with my airflow pushing through that I could get decent OC gains, but I wanted to ask if you or anyone else might know if my mobo bios has the options to lock PCI and SATA?

I appreciate your time and patience in answering this.

Thanks.
Joe


Oh btw, here is a link to my ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227213

I hope it's good enough to OC. I was going to buy the OCZ Performance Series RAM but someone talked me out of it saying I didn't need to pay that much for RAM because I run an A64 and I can still get nice timings with the ram linked above. Your thoughts?

 

[theMan]

i looked through the manual for the a8n-sli on the asus website, and i didnt see a single overclocking setting in there. wtf?

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: theman
i looked through the manual for the a8n-sli on the asus website, and i didnt see a single overclocking setting in there. wtf?

Try here: http://www.ocmodshop.com/default.aspx?a=244&p=692

It shows most screens in the BIOS on the Asus A8N SLI and SLI Deluxe mobos. I couldn't really find where it has anything about PCI or SATA locks. *puzzled* I hope it has the option. These are supposedly popular boards.

 

[Dragon41673]

Actually I am wondering this too...but I'm going for the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: Dragon41673
Actually I am wondering this too...but I'm going for the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium

Asus is one of the top mobo manufacturers. I would assume that we can lock SATA and PCI in bios but not certain. If it doesn't have this functionality, I'm probably going to get a different mobo.

 

[Rock Hydra]

I've modded a couple ASUS boards before. I bet they broke a circuit that would determine the overclocking features. If that's the case, you would get a Deluxe or whatever it's called by bridging two terminals.

 

[joejccva]

Let me ask a better question.

On motherboards that you KNOW has the SATA lock and PCI lock feature. What exactly does it say in the bios and what option do you choose? Disable, Enable, Lock? Can someone verify this?

 

[stevty2889]

On my motherboard that has PCI/AGP/SATA lock, it just lets me choose the speeds. IE. 33/66/100. There isn't always a setting, sometimes it will just remain locked and not allow you to change it. On some of the nforce boards that have 4 sata ports, 2 of which are on the south bridge, 2 on an add on chip, the south bridge ports are locked, the add on chip doesn't get locked.

 

[imported_whatever]

It almost certainly has it, I believe all NF4 boards do.

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
On my motherboard that has PCI/AGP/SATA lock, it just lets me choose the speeds. IE. 33/66/100. There isn't always a setting, sometimes it will just remain locked and not allow you to change it. On some of the nforce boards that have 4 sata ports, 2 of which are on the south bridge, 2 on an add on chip, the south bridge ports are locked, the add on chip doesn't get locked.

How do I which out of the 4 ports on the south bridge ports? LOL. I'm looking at a picture of the motherboard right now and all 4 are close together directly on the mobo near the bottom of it. *puzzled look*

 

[imported_wyrmrider]

sounds like a question that must be answered
did you post in the motherboard forum also?
any other ASUS forums?

 

[joejccva]

I haven't posted there yet, I figured I'd ask here cause you guys have helped me so much thus far.

 

[Jeff7181]

There's no manual lock. They're either locked or they aren't. In your case, the PCI bus is definately locked. I can't say for sure on the SATA ports because some motherboards only have some of them locked... my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum for example.

I haven't seen a utility that lets you check the frequency the SATA controller is running at, but there's one way to find out for sure... start overclocking and see if the hard drive(s) works.

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
There's no manual lock. They're either locked or they aren't. In your case, the PCI bus is definately locked. I can't say for sure on the SATA ports because some motherboards only have some of them locked... my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum for example.

I haven't seen a utility that lets you check the frequency the SATA controller is running at, but there's one way to find out for sure... start overclocking and see if the hard drive(s) works.

Thanks for the info. If for whatever reason I overclock and the SATA's are not locked, will it ruin my HD totally so I'd have to buy a new one or would I just have to re-image it?

 

[zizo]

You just have to reimage it most likey, or just restart the computer.

My Asus K8N has the option in Advanced>Jumperfree configuration, and I can set Agp from 66-75. At 66 it's not locked, but at other frequencies it's locked. PCI is locked all the times.

 

[n7]

Jeff's advice is alright...well sorta.

If you do decide to just see what happens, make sure you have no important data on that HDD!, since it will very likely be corrupted if it turns out the SATA port isn't locked.
I personally don't like the idea of OCing w/o knowing if the SATA port is locked or not though, since i managed to wreck my first Raptor that way ...
Check the xtremesystem's forums...someone there is bound to have mentioned which are & which are not.

Also, i do not believe there is ever a bios option for SATA locks. It's something that just is or isn't.

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: zizo
You just have to reimage it most likey, or just restart the computer.

My Asus K8N has the option in Advanced>Jumperfree configuration, and I can set Agp from 66-75. At 66 it's not locked, but at other frequencies it's locked. PCI is locked all the times.

Hmmm...so I can't set my PCI to 33mhz in the Jumperfree config? Also...how do I know which of the 4 SATA ports are on the south bridge. In Zebo's guide he says "Sata 1 and 2 are not locked on some nforce motherboards, use 3 and 4. So I would assume that ports 3 and 4 are on the south bridge? When I looked at the pic of the motherboard the SATA 3 and 4 are on the side closer to the chipset. SATA 1 and 2 are opposite.

Here's a few pics of the mobo.

http://www.ocmodshop.com/a8n_sli/big/13.jpg
http://www.ocmodshop.com/a8n_sli/big/5.jpg

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: n7
Jeff's advice is alright...well sorta.

If you do decide to just see what happens, make sure you have no important data on that HDD!, since it will very likely be corrupted if it turns out the SATA port isn't locked.
I personally don't like the idea of OCing w/o knowing if the SATA port is locked or not though, since i managed to wreck my first Raptor that way ...
Check the xtremesystem's forums...someone there is bound to have mentioned which are & which are not.

Also, i do not believe there is ever a bios option for SATA locks. It's something that just is or isn't.

Yea what I was going to do was build the pc, install XP Pro, install windows updates, then image the HD using Ghost. Let the machine burn in stock for a while (not sure how long), then start OC'ing slowly.

 

[Dragon41673]

There is a set in red and a set in black. I'm no rocket scientist but on that board...isn't one set of the sata plugs a part of the nforce chipset and the other set a part of the raid controler onboard the M/B?

 

[Viditor]

The A8N-SLI is a great board (I am running one myself), but it is NOT the board of choice for OC...in fact it is missing a number of OC handles that the DFI has.

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: Dragon41673
There is a set in red and a set in black. I'm no rocket scientist but on that board...isn't one set of the sata plugs a part of the nforce chipset and the other set a part of the raid controler onboard the M/B?

My apologies in the pics. That was a pic of the SLI Deluxe board by Asus. I have just the standard A8N SLI (non deluxe) in which instead of 8 SATA ports (4 red - SATA RAID and 4 black - SATA) on the deluxe, I only have the 4 black SATA ports which aren't really near the chipset. They are more towards the corner of the board but all 4 ports are piggybacked to each other. It makes it difficult to know which ones are locked (south bridge I guess?)

See my dilemna?

 

[n7]

Yeah...what type are they?

Are they all nForce 4, or are two Silicon Image, or what?

 

[joejccva]

Originally posted by: n7
Yeah...what type are they?

Are they all nForce 4, or are two Silicon Image, or what?

nForce4 Storage:
- 4 x SATA 3Gb/s
- 2 x UltraDMA 133/100/66/33
- NVRAID : RAID0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD span cross SATA and PATA


Thats what the website says. I guess all 4 SATA ports are nForce 4. What's this mean?

 

[n7]

Argh...i tried searching around for info on the SATA ports...but nothing concrete came up.

I hate to be discouraging, but while i was searching around, i noticed a rather common theme...the Asus A8N series mobos are crap for OCing...i really hope you have better luck than it seems most are having though.

 

[n7]

Oops wrong thread.