a8n-sli HORROR story / problems discovered?

[J-Mag]

Well as usual I seem to be in that very special, MERRY, FREAKING! time of the year.

Although this year, it seems like the X-mas part was all good, just my Quest for SLI (or at least ONE DAMN CARD) has taken a dump.

Anyway not only did I have problems acquiring one working 6800GT PCI-E (i had to buy three of them before I got ONE that isn't broken or missing) Link to that story below:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=845781

Now I have an XFX 6800GT PCI-E that came from gameve.com. It was packaged well, and I inspected the card and no there is no visual damage. Although it was a mild price gouge (I wonder if the sspecifically hold back stock to pump up the prices, sorta like the OPEC for vid cards)

Anyway, I hooked up my new system sans the SLI part because then I would have paid near $1800 for video cards (still waiting to see what comes of my $800 credit from chumbo DAMNIT!)

I should get to the point here: I have tried installing a Brand New install of XP Pro on my a8n-sli three times now and I am still getting random reboots. ( I think I saw someone else who had this problem over in anandtech)

Here are system Specs:

A8N-SLI Deluxe ( did I even need ot mention this, new, from directron )
A64 3000+ ( stock cooling, retail, week 44, new from monarch )
OCZ PC4200 EL Platinum 512mb (x2) ( used in previous rig, tested fine for 10days )
PC Power and Cooling 510w ESPV12 ( was in previous rig for about 2 months )
* PSU was purchased Broken and repaired Direct with manufacturer
XFX 6800GT PCI-E ( new from gameve )
Maxtor 250GB 16mb Cache NCQ SATA drive ( new, grabbed at fry's)
Lite-ON CDRW / DVD (used in previous rig 6 months )
17in Dell Trinitron ( grabbed one of the dusty monitors from work, 3 - 4 yrs old )
Key and Mouse ( Both from previous rig to ensure function )

Setup:
Motherboard on foam pad which is on a box. The box is on a antistatic pad.
Same with New Hard drive.
I am using seperate lines for each molex that plugs into the PCI-E GPU power adapter.
PSU Plugged strait into outlet ( I don't think a power strip is that critical? )

So, my reboots have happend first when the new disk was being formatted with NTFS through the blue windows installer. Next, it happend when the cd drive was loading general install files into memory.

I tried changing my ram's latency from default to 2.5-3-3-7 1T in dual channel

I am not quite sure where this error could be coming from and wanted opinions because I think I might be chasing my tail here for a while.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[drizzt81]

maybe a loose cable? or a ground/ short somewhere, which may be 'jiggling' and cause random reboots.

you could try taking it apart and putting it back together? Thermal grease on CPU?

 

[Jasonx82]

Try placing the memory modules in a different socket.. worked for me..

 

[rolo]

I remember reading over in the nvnews.net forums where someone was having awful troubles getting an A8N-SLI to work and they flashed to the latest beta BIOS and all the problems went away.

 

[J-Mag]

I remember reading over in the nvnews.net forums where someone was having awful troubles getting an A8N-SLI to work and they flashed to the latest beta BIOS and all the problems went away.

I have still been working on trying every option I can think of to get this beast to work. I have tried alot and I really don't feel like posting it all right now, but i haven't been able to get windows to install.

Looks like it is time for me to get my floppy out of the closet... ugg... I hate floppies, which is why I rarely update my BIOS, but I guess this is probably my only hope at this moment

 

[Jasonx82]

Could you use a USB Flash Drive just curious? instead of a floppy.?

I have still been working on trying every option I can think of to get this beast to work. I have tried alot and I really don't feel like posting it all right now, but i haven't been able to get windows to install.

Looks like it is time for me to get my floppy out of the closet... ugg... I hate floppies, which is why I rarely update my BIOS, but I guess this is probably my only hope at this moment

 

[jabronidan]

You are using PC4200 RAM but isn't PC3200 reccomended for the AMD 3000+??? May that be the problem? I dunno, just a thought, lol.

 

[debello_64]

I have still been working on trying every option I can think of to get this beast to work. I have tried alot and I really don't feel like posting it all right now, but i haven't been able to get windows to install.

Looks like it is time for me to get my floppy out of the closet... ugg... I hate floppies, which is why I rarely update my BIOS, but I guess this is probably my only hope at this moment

If you can load windows Asus included a nice little program on the CD which allows you to flash the Bios in windows. This is how I did mine, but everyone know flashing bios in windows is kinda like having unprotected sex with a hooker. Good luck to you

 

[penelope]

two things:

1. "OCZ PC4200 EL Platinum 512mb (x2) ( used in previous rig, tested fine for 10days )"

the board is only rated for PC3200

2. i read that you need to manually set the memory voltage on these boards as the auto voltage tends to underpower them.

good luck! keep us posted!

 

[J-Mag]

You are using PC4200 RAM but isn't PC3200 reccomended for the AMD 3000+??? May that be the problem? I dunno, just a thought, lol.

This PC4200 works fines as PC3200 it is the EXACT same chips that OCZ uses for the PC3200 PLatinum Rev 2 (TCCD), it is just a higher speed bin.

 

[J-Mag]

Try placing the memory modules in a different socket.. worked for me..

You know your solution "kinda" worked... Before I decided to install the floppy disk drive, I decided to try the motherboard out in single channel one dimm. It didn't crash on me! Normally, by about 2-3mins into windows install it died...

I actually got Win XP installed! After that I flashed the biod to 1003-004 from the windows flash util, so I didn't have to install that stupid floppy.

Then I decided to push my luck and install the ram again (which can run at pc3200 and I was running it at 200mhz so I was well within spec) It seemed to work fine...

Hrm, I decided to try to give myself a CPU boost, so I upped the FSB to 215 and then changed the max FSB setting from Auto to 250...

I rebooted, interestingly enough instead of setting the FSB to 215 it set it to 250 (I guess MAX FSB actually equals the FSB) I had hypertransport at 4x...

Well long story short the damn board now wont even detect my new SATA drive anymore...

 

[J-Mag]

If you can load windows Asus included a nice little program on the CD which allows you to flash the Bios in windows. This is how I did mine, but everyone know flashing bios in windows is kinda like having unprotected sex with a hooker. Good luck to you

What BIOS v are you running? Are you using an IDE or SATA drive?

 

[anr11]

How were you loading the SATA drivers without a floppy? Did you make a custom XP install CD? Try your HDD on the other SATA controller, in other words, whichever one you are not using at the moment. It could be that, like other nforce boards, one or the other of the SATA controllers doesn't get locked to the proper speed when overclocking.

Did you run Memtest before when you were getting random restarts during install? I would bet it was due to memory related BIOS settings, possible undervolted as was previously mentioned or incorrect timings.

 

[J-Mag]

How were you loading the SATA drivers without a floppy? Did you make a custom XP install CD? Try your HDD on the other SATA controller, in other words, whichever one you are not using at the moment. It could be that, like other nforce boards, one or the other of the SATA controllers doesn't get locked to the proper speed when overclocking.

Did you run Memtest before when you were getting random restarts during install? I would bet it was due to memory related BIOS settings, possible undervolted as was previously mentioned or incorrect timings.

Well, when I first fixed the random reboot problem with the early 1002 bios by switching to single channel of one 512mb DIMM in slot B1, the BIOS recognized the drive and the OEM SP2 XP PRO installe don the SATA drive fine, without ANY SATA drivers loaded form the floppy.

I was under the assumption that you only needed to use the Floppy for RAID drivers, no?

Anyway after I go t windows installed I flashed to the 1003-004 BIOS with ASUS's flashing util, then I installed hte other 512mb dimm and everything was working fine.

It was when I set my FSB to 215 and my MAX FSB to 250 that the computer locked up again during post, when I went back into the BIOS the Hardrive wa sno longer detected.

I ran Memtest86 last night for 16 consecutive runs with both DIMMS installed and NO errors, but that doesn't do me anygood anymore cause now it won't see the fricking SATA drive.

I am at work right now, but I just came in to check my email and stuff... I will go back home and try the SATA drive in my other computer ( I mean if there was no PCI lock and my FSB was at 250mhz, that could have fried the thing? Do you think? )

 

[debello_64]

I am at work right now, but I just came in to check my email and stuff... I will go back home and try the SATA drive in my other computer ( I mean if there was no PCI lock and my FSB was at 250mhz, that could have fried the thing? Do you think? )

When I was setting up my RAID 0, At some points after loading windows and installing drivers and such on the reboots, windows had some how lost the drivers for the SATA drives, I had to reload windows again to have windows reconize the HDDs. I thought it was something I had done but may be it is a bug with the board. I doubt you damaged the HDD.

 

[anr11]

Well, when I first fixed the random reboot problem with the early 1002 bios by switching to single channel of one 512mb DIMM in slot B1, the BIOS recognized the drive and the OEM SP2 XP PRO installe don the SATA drive fine, without ANY SATA drivers loaded form the floppy.

I was under the assumption that you only needed to use the Floppy for RAID drivers, no?

I have seen some reports of people loading Windows XP without having to load drivers for the controller. I can't see this being a good thing, using the default XP drivers instead of the respective Nvidia or SI drivers but what do I know. I was required to load the driver for the NVRAID controller before the XP intall routine would recognize my drives. I was unable to install XP without hitting F6 in the beginning and loading the driver from a floppy.

 

[DB27]

The ASUS board fools Windows into thinking the drive is IDE during startup, which is why you may not need the drivers. When people have clocked their hard drives afterward, they do operate at SATA speeds.

Note: this doesn't apply for NVRAID setup, just single drive configs.

 

[J-Mag]

When I was setting up my RAID 0, At some points after loading windows and installing drivers and such on the reboots, windows had some how lost the drivers for the SATA drives, I had to reload windows again to have windows reconize the HDDs. I thought it was something I had done but may be it is a bug with the board. I doubt you damaged the HDD.

However, it is my BIOS which isn't even recognizing the drives during the detect phase.

As of today, I got this damn machine working, but it is running on an ancient 6gb IDE drive.
Yesterday, when I took out my DVD drive to see if that was the issue, my DiamondMax 10 was recognized then I immediately assumed it was the DVD drive I was using. I got windows installed and everything seemed to be running great then I started trying out some gaming. I think I crashed in a game, then rebooted with the new SATA drive no longer being detected in the BIOS, AGAIN!

Damn i dunno if the SATA ports are jacked or what?!?!? The drives work fine in other systems. Interestingly, the Nvidia SATA ports can recognize other SATA drives, but usually crash within 2-3mins...

Now to this IDE drive I am running on now... Well, It seems I can run in windows indefinately. Also, I am able to run memtest for 56 consecutive loops with no errors.

HOWEVER, my computer will randomly reboot or turn off during video game play. (it won't just drop into windows... I got another 6800GT PCI-E today, so I will check just to be sure.)

Could I have a bad A8n-SLI?

Note: I have noticed with CPU-Z that the FSB is at 202 when in the bios it is set 200...
I have heard SATA doesn't like working at anything higher than its base speed... Could it be that the little overclock that is standard in the board is causing problems with my SATA drives? and Maybe even my PCI-E bus, which is why in games I crash?

Hrm...

Any suggestions would be appriciated.

 

[DB27]

Frankly, I am suspicious that you got a bum board. There are people having problems getting their drives to work, but this is a bit unlike the other issues I've read about. Might want to consider RMA'ing it.

 

[debello_64]

What BIOS v are you running? Are you using an IDE or SATA drive?

Running the new Beta 1004, I have 2 Raptors in raid for my system and an IDE drive for my storage drive.

 

[vxspiritxv]

Running the new Beta 1004, I have 2 Raptors in raid for my system and an IDE drive for my storage drive.

Where did you get that beta? Latest I see is 1003.005

 

[Rasha]

uhh i dunno if im reading this right so im gona reask? the question
did you press f6 and install the raid driver in the setup process? cuz you need to, also did u use the nvidia raid setup menu on bootup to setup the sata drivers?

 

[J-Mag]

Where did you get that beta? Latest I see is 1003.005

http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A8N-SLI Deluxe&Type=Latest

Thats a link to all the Beta BIOSes.

My A8N-SLI experience is continuing on right now with 1003.005. Definately working PCI lock on mine. ( set FSB in BIOS to 201, then used nforce4 clockgen to up the HTT)

It seems to be alot more stable as long as I don't have my DiamondMax 10 drive installed (which it still doesn't see anyway). I was able to run prime for a few hours today at
250fsb 2-3-2-9 1t x4 2.7 VDimm

For some reason this board WILL NOT work at 2.5-3-3-9 I get memory dump errors during windows load or just thereafter. Thi seems unfortunate because my RAM should be able to handle way more FSB at lax timings... Why would this happen?

I also played around with 3-4-3-9 timings and seemed to get stable 265FSB. Does this board or my winchester need a Higher CAS to RAS than the CAS?

270fsb crashed even at 2t.... Hrm maybe I need more volts on the ram...
or could it be that my Winchester needs more volts? ( My max temp is about 42C after a few hours of prime at 1.45V (I do see some random jumps to 1.5v on occasion with CPU-Z)

Is there a way to check for sure if my motherboard is actually supplying 3v to the DIMM when it is selected in the BIOS?

In essence, I can use the SATA2 16mb Drive if I run the old 1002 BIOS, but if I want to overclock I have to use these beta BIOSes (my PCI Lock worked fine in the other beta BIOSes, although I never tried 1003.001 or 1003.002)

 

[vxspiritxv]

http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A8N-SLI Deluxe&Type=Latest

Thats a link to all the Beta BIOSes.

My A8N-SLI experience is continuing on right now with 1003.005. Definately working PCI lock on mine. ( set FSB in BIOS to 201, then used nforce4 clockgen to up the HTT)

It seems to be alot more stable as long as I don't have my DiamondMax 10 drive installed (which it still doesn't see anyway). I was able to run prime for a few hours today at
250fsb 2-3-2-9 1t x4 2.7 VDimm

For some reason this board WILL NOT work at 2.5-3-3-9 I get memory dump errors during windows load or just thereafter. Thi seems unfortunate because my RAM should be able to handle way more FSB at lax timings... Why would this happen?

I also played around with 3-4-3-9 timings and seemed to get stable 265FSB. Does this board or my winchester need a Higher CAS to RAS than the CAS?

270fsb crashed even at 2t.... Hrm maybe I need more volts on the ram...
or could it be that my Winchester needs more volts? ( My max temp is about 42C after a few hours of prime at 1.45V (I do see some random jumps to 1.5v on occasion with CPU-Z)

Is there a way to check for sure if my motherboard is actually supplying 3v to the DIMM when it is selected in the BIOS?

In essence, I can use the SATA2 16mb Drive if I run the old 1002 BIOS, but if I want to overclock I have to use these beta BIOSes (my PCI Lock worked fine in the other beta BIOSes, although I never tried 1003.001 or 1003.002)

Guess I'm not overclocking then, I require my maxtor 300gb 16mb sata drive to work.

 

[s10010001]

im personally holding off on SLI untill theres more rock solid info that the board are rock solid and the SLI tech. is working correctly...mabey a few driver revisions..

 

[J-Mag]

im personally holding off on SLI untill theres more rock solid info that the board are rock solid and the SLI tech. is working correctly...mabey a few driver revisions..

Well I really don't have to worry about the SLI problem until I get my RMA done...

But as of today, the 1003.005 BIOS randomly detected my diamondmax 10 and I was able to boot from it... However, the next reboot it had disappeared from the BIOS detection screen yet again...

I have tried 3 or 4 different SATA cables and most of them feel slightly loose... I haven't really had problems with my SATA connectors before, anyone had this happen??

 

[AthlonXP]

so i am looking at getting this board this week, should I wait or go for it, zipzoomfly has a deal withthe 3500+ and the board.

 

[dfedders]

so i am looking at getting this board this week, should I wait or go for it, zipzoomfly has a deal withthe 3500+ and the board.

Not really a deal. You save $5.00 over buying them separate.

 

[AthlonXP]

well it seems good, but if i waited how much longer should I til the prices drop.

 

[debello_64]

Where did you get that beta? Latest I see is 1003.005

1003-004.zip

1003-005.zip

I am using the 004s, I havent tried the 005s yet but I am having no problems running the system at 240x10. Also having no problem with the PCI lock being that the Audigy 2 that I have will crash a system with any increase on the PCI bus speed. Found this out with my old system that didn't have AGP or PCI locks. The most crucial thing for the overclock is getting the RAM timings set right.

 

[lentic]

hey just feel lucky i just got my a8n-sli deluxe in with a 3500 winchester and a 6600 gt. booted it up started to install windows and it poped and won't even post let alone beep just turns on but nothin happens. im RMAin it tomarrow morning first thing but its still goin to be another week or two before they get me another one.. damn

 

[s10010001]

dose thie shipping BIOS support the winchester cores?

 

[lentic]

Its supposed to from what Asus said all the A8N Bios's have support for the winchester core plus i was able to get mine to run with out updating the BIOS

 

[DB27]

dose thie shipping BIOS support the winchester cores?

Yes. I don't know of anyone reporting a problem on any BIOS version (in terms of supporting Winchester cores).

 

[J-Mag]

I am still limping along here. I don't know if I am having multiple problems and I am attributing them incorrectly, but I am still getting random shutdowns.

I got one last night while watching a dvd image from an IDE disk drive which has a SATA converter on it ( I wanted to test to see if other SATA devices can be detected with my 1003.005 BIOS and I have tried a converted 250gb WD, and a standard 120gb SATA WD, both worked fine, but my diamondmax 10 still did not detect ) This dvd crash happend about 40mins into the movie with no other applications running.

It wasn't a reboot, blue screen, memory dump, or lock-up. My computer just turned off...

Does this sound like a PSU problem or what?
MY PC Power and Cooling should be able to handle it, damn! I am not even running two vid cards at the moment.

 

[DB27]

Actually, that DOES sound like a power problem. When the computer turns itself off without going through BSoD, freezing, or shutting down, it usually implies a problem with the PSU or a connector (the one from the case to the MB for the power switch comes to mind). Of the two, a faulty power supply is much more likely.

The other possibility is a power surge. Do you have a UPS with the ability to provide steady, regulated power levels? If not, you might want to look into it. People often find their homes are not as well-wired as they should be. If you have a light plugged in to that same socket, does it occasionally flash or have brief periods where it gets brighter?

 

[J-Mag]

Actually, that DOES sound like a power problem. When the computer turns itself off without going through BSoD, freezing, or shutting down, it usually implies a problem with the PSU or a connector (the one from the case to the MB for the power switch comes to mind). Of the two, a faulty power supply is much more likely.

The other possibility is a power surge. Do you have a UPS with the ability to provide steady, regulated power levels? If not, you might want to look into it. People often find their homes are not as well-wired as they should be. If you have a light plugged in to that same socket, does it occasionally flash or have brief periods where it gets brighter?

I do not have a UPS connected to it, but I have two computers running in my room. One has absolutely no crashing, BSOD, lock up or freeze problems, although it isn't running off the same power strip.

I havent noticed any light flickering at all. I live in an apt complex that mus be only 20yrs old... I just moved in fomr a 1920's building, so I am assuming the wiring is better.

The PSU that I am using in my A8N-SLI rig had previously done it's duty over in the other machine I didn't have the shutdown problems with my 865pe p4 rig and the PC Power and Cooling rig. I guess I could try switching the two PSU's ( I have never used my backup PSU in the a8n rig yet because it has only 18A on the 12v rail, and it is only 20pin)

Also, I have been monitoring the 5v and 12v rails of the PSU when I am working with a multimeter. My 12v is at 12.06 rock solid and my 5 is at 5.04 solid they never move (this is from a molex) I am too lazy to connect it to the 3.3v motherboard wire, but it is always an otpion to monitor in the future.

ONE thing does kinda linger in my mind here... When I was first testing out the a8n-sli board I had everything hooked up outside of the case. I was using a flat head screw driver to start the computer by bridging the two pins where the Power Switch lead is... Well, I remember one time where I got the driver close to a third pin and it arc'd over. I saw a little spark and the machine shut itself off.

Do you think it is posisble to have damaged something on the motherboard itself? A chip that regulates the turning on and off?

 

[sticky2]

I can't get my A8N-SLI to work either. It's raid that is causing all the problems, I have installed windows almost 15 times now and it crashes everytime on the reboot. I have tried it using the silicon image controller and the NVRAID controller (which one should I use?) and it just won't work.

When hooked up to the silicon image ports I press f6 to install their raid driver and windows installs EXTREMELY fast but crashes on reboot. I can get into safe mode at which point I try to install the raid driver under device manager but then on reboot I can't even get into safemode as it crashes and I have to start the whole process over again.

Since I couldn't get it to work with silicon image I decided to go for NVRAID. The problem with this is it crashes if install both the nvraid driver and the nforce system controller. If I just install the nvraid then the windows install continues but it sees both drives seperately not as one (yes they are configured in raid).

I'm really frustrated, been working on this problem for 5 days now and I just can't figure it out. I don't want to have to give up on raid, that is the reason I got 2 raptors.

 

[FrgMstr]

All nForce chipsets have been very wacky when it comes to certain CD and DVD drives being connected. If you go back and read our last few NF3 reviews, you will see where we mention this and in our last NF4 ref review. We did not see these issues on the A8N-SLI but I would assume it would still have them.


Get you a new CD drive and set it to master on the IDE channel by itself. Then see what happens. Let me know if this helps any.

 

[dasaint]

That PSU that you have on that baby u said was Fixed what happened to it before?????
also the Recommended PSU Wattage for a system with that mobo requires lotza Juice...

A PC that doesnt Blue Screen and jes randomly reboots sounds like a power prob most likely the system is trying to hog more juice but ure PSU cant give it so it Critically fails and restarts.. plus u gotta have AMPS for this mobo

from the Manual i found that the requirements for this mobo are as such
Heavily Loaded Machine >=500W >25Amps on the 12+
Medium Loaded Machine >=400W >20Amps on the 12+
Lightly Loaded Machine >=350W >17Amps on the 12+

so i would definatly check that out in the manual and see if u got enough Juice for your system. jes remember this thing is gonna suck power i would definatly suggest havin a look at ure PSU look at the Brand and the Amps, if it aint Quality that could be your problem...

also i remember reading from a lot of forums that PSU's and Memory have probs with these mobos jes because it works in one board doesnt mean its gonna work in this one... there have been a few peeps on different forums that have quoted this.

hope that helps