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Silent.Sin
Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2003
- Messages
- 969
It turns out that life hates me even more than I already knew. I somehow managed to kill my nf7-s the same day I get Doom3 on August 3rd, but only after tasting its sweet graphical goodness so the separation was even worse. My system froze while I was playing, then when I tried to restart it wouldn't get to the POST screen at all. I narrowed it down to a dead BIOS chip (well probably not technically "dead" but it would not reset with the clear cmos jumper, nor would it boot so it needs to be reflashed or replaced). Everything gets power and turns on but nothing gets past that, no beeping or error lights either. I tried completely removing the RAM (corsair XMS Pro LL with the lights btw, the lights come on but in a really weird random pattern) and there weren't even any error beeps. That was actually somewhat of a relief since replacing the mobo is less expensive than the RAM anyway.
So after talking to people I realize I might as well just buy a new mobo instead of waiting for ABit to deliver me a new BIOS chip. Here's where we run into problems: I'm a poor college student without adequate funds to replace with the same product, I also need to move back to school in a week so time is of the essence (more importantly, I want to play more Doom3 dammit!). So in my quest to find a sensibly cheap motherboard (that is, one that is cheap, but not so bad as to be a complete piece of crap when put up against my old nf7) I happened upon this EPoX 8RDA3I. Seems to have everything I want, minus the MCP-T which I won't miss all that much since I never used surround sound anyway and had no use for the dolby encoding.
So anyway, even though I've already bought this motherboard based on some quick and dirty research I went through today, just wanted to know if any one else here uses this motherboard (this is the "I" revision, sort of a budget oriented 8RDA3+) and has any thoughts on it. Want to know general overclocking experience, voltages, highest OC, etc. so I can get an idea of what I'll be dealing with.
Also, while I haven't actually recieved the board yet, I found the prices at this store were extremely good and they had a pretty broad selection. So barring anything horrible happening during order processing I highly recommend mwave.com. I picked up the motherboard and a tube of arctic silver 5 for $88.50 shipped overnight fedex, sounded good to me.
So after talking to people I realize I might as well just buy a new mobo instead of waiting for ABit to deliver me a new BIOS chip. Here's where we run into problems: I'm a poor college student without adequate funds to replace with the same product, I also need to move back to school in a week so time is of the essence (more importantly, I want to play more Doom3 dammit!). So in my quest to find a sensibly cheap motherboard (that is, one that is cheap, but not so bad as to be a complete piece of crap when put up against my old nf7) I happened upon this EPoX 8RDA3I. Seems to have everything I want, minus the MCP-T which I won't miss all that much since I never used surround sound anyway and had no use for the dolby encoding.
So anyway, even though I've already bought this motherboard based on some quick and dirty research I went through today, just wanted to know if any one else here uses this motherboard (this is the "I" revision, sort of a budget oriented 8RDA3+) and has any thoughts on it. Want to know general overclocking experience, voltages, highest OC, etc. so I can get an idea of what I'll be dealing with.
Also, while I haven't actually recieved the board yet, I found the prices at this store were extremely good and they had a pretty broad selection. So barring anything horrible happening during order processing I highly recommend mwave.com. I picked up the motherboard and a tube of arctic silver 5 for $88.50 shipped overnight fedex, sounded good to me.