AW9D-MAX out in the wild!

I sure hope it loves up to the hype. Would sure be nice as the only good mobo's out atm are >$300
 
I would never buy this mobo because of the crap PCI placement. With Crossfire, no usable PCI slots!
Can't use X-FI
 
wow... I an rooting for the success of this board also... it's got some layout flaws but on the whole looks like a good OCers board.. that power molex and the pci slot are so poorly placed.. gah!
 
If you have a Fry's near you check there.
I am waiting on results and good memory to come out (dominator) before taking the plunge.

oh $279.99 @ Fry's B&M.
 
Can anyone confirm (mentioned by FUGGER on the xs forums) that the fatality version of this board has fans rather than heatpipes. I cant use heatpipes due to my iATX case
 
Ohhhh yeah! I'll be at the Webster, TX Fry's today, here's hoping they have the normal version.

My only gripe is the PCI slot: there's only one and I've already used it with my SCSI card. :(
 
The onboard sound is supposed to be surprisingly good. I using the ECS board right now with my C2D and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised (by the quality of the onboard sound). In fact, I think I hear more sounds than I did with my Creative Live Value card, but I also noticed some distortion in the bass. I'm an audio noob though, so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm waiting to the the X-Fi because the upgrade left a crater in my wallet ;) Either that, or I'm just more frugal than I used to be 10 years ago :p
 
jbrukardt said:
Can anyone confirm (mentioned by FUGGER on the xs forums) that the fatality version of this board has fans rather than heatpipes. I cant use heatpipes due to my iATX case
Click to expand...
see for yourself http://forum.abit-usa.com/showpost.php?p=752111&postcount=3

OTES fans on PWM but heatpipes on chipset
It will have standard fixings though so if you are happy to swap them out for active cooling on the chipset...
 
its on sale and in stock at a low profile site as i type - 0753 9/16
$239 for max
$199 for vanilla

i will post store name after i decide if i need one and a couple of buds pick them up.
 
I was holding one at Fry's yesterday... I had the urge to splurge... and make my other rig a conroe setup.. lol. but I think one project PC is enough.. whew. $279.99 to buy now have now btw. they had only two left in the Sunnyvale, CA (East Arques) Fry's.
 
vanilla_guerilla said:
its on sale and in stock at a low profile site as i type - 0753 9/16
$239 for max
$199 for vanilla

i will post store name after i decide if i need one and a couple of buds pick them up.
Click to expand...

I think I know who you're talking about ;)
Only problem that I've seen with them is that unless they specifically say "in stock", don't get your hopes up. Few weeks back when the P5W DH was scarce, they had em listed so I called them up to confirm stock and they didn't have any.
 
couldn't pass up on the $239 price even though I've got 2 conroe builds I haven't even started yet. RMA time for a mobo! Hopefully this place actually has the mobos in stock. Love to have one in my grubby hands by Friday :D
 
Got mine at Frys on Friday and returned it this morning, if your using the P5W DH you will be disappointed with the board, it had a very cheap feel to it and cramped. If you use SLI or CrossFire the on board sound device sits to close to the vid card cooler. After market coolers are a tough fit as little room around cpu.

Oh and I forgot I could only boot to bios once, the board did not like my Corsair ram or my Corsair PSU :eek: Maybe a revision or two down the road and I will try again.

It worked out in the long run, I ended up with the new revision of the Asus P5W DH and all is well. :)
 
decapitator said:
It worked out in the long run, I ended up with the new revision of the Asus P5W DH and all is well. :)
Click to expand...

Did I miss something? What new revision?
 
decapitator said:
Got mine at Frys on Friday and returned it this morning, if your using the P5W DH you will be disappointed with the board, it had a very cheap feel to it and cramped. If you use SLI or CrossFire the on board sound device sits to close to the vid card cooler. After market coolers are a tough fit as little room around cpu.

Oh and I forgot I could only boot to bios once, the board did not like my Corsair ram or my Corsair PSU :eek: Maybe a revision or two down the road and I will try again.

It worked out in the long run, I ended up with the new revision of the Asus P5W DH and all is well. :)
Click to expand...


well ok then. glad i didnt buy one from ATACOM.COM for $239 and $199 for the vanilla. i was just about to, then i got the 1404 bios for the p5wdh and now can get 480mhz fsb and working multis and somewhat higher clockspeed (booting @ 3800 ish, not stable yet.)
 
vanilla_guerilla said:
well ok then. glad i didnt buy one from ATACOM.COM for $239 and $199 for the vanilla. i was just about to, then i got the 1404 bios for the p5wdh and now can get 480mhz fsb and working multis and somewhat higher clockspeed (booting @ 3800 ish, not stable yet.)
Click to expand...


Well, it looks like I jumped the gun (again) and will have to cancel my order tomorrow morning. That $239 price suckered me in. Funny thing about this place is that you don't get any email confirmation/invoice till a couple days later - Ordered mine yesterday and am still waiting. :confused:
 
BUFF said:
the guys on XS seem to like the AW9D-MAX
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=115968&page=2
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure others will have better results then I did, you don't know how excited I was for this board, the board is a good overclocker from what I have seen but the layout is horrid. I'm about as big of an Abit fan as you will find but the quality control on this board is questionable to say the least. Hell this is the first time I have ever cut myself installing my parts on a motherboard, its that cramped around the cpu and this happened installing an aftermarket cooler. This board seemed small.

Maybe after using the P5W DH I had set my standards to high, but I think anyone going from the P5W DH to the AW9D MAX will see what I mean. I hope mine was just defective and the board is not ram and psu pickie like DFI. You can see my ram in my sig and its as plain vanilla as you can get, also my psu should have had no issues.
 
decapitator said:
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure others will have better results then I did, you don't know how excited I was for this board, the board is a good overclocker from what I have seen but the layout is horrid. I'm about as big of an Abit fan as you will find but the quality control on this board is questionable to say the least. Hell this is the first time I have ever cut myself installing my parts on a motherboard, its that cramped around the cpu and this happened installing an aftermarket cooler. This board seemed small.

Maybe after using the P5W DH I had set my standards to high, but I think anyone going from the P5W DH to the AW9D MAX will see what I mean. I hope mine was just defective and the board is not ram and psu pickie like DFI. You can see my ram in my sig and its as plain vanilla as you can get, also my psu should have had no issues.
Click to expand...

I havent laid my hands on the board so I am just going by what I see in pics but anandtech has a ninja on this board and thats a pretty big cooler.

How did you determine that both the ram and the PSU wouldnt work with this board? did you try it in ATX V2 and the EPS 12V connectors and did it not boot with either?
 
zeekle said:
I havent laid my hands on the board so I am just going by what I see in pics but anandtech has a ninja on this board and thats a pretty big cooler.

How did you determine that both the ram and the PSU wouldnt work with this board? did you try it in ATX V2 and the EPS 12V connectors and did it not boot with either?
Click to expand...

Hi zeekle,
Yes my Corsair psu has both 4 and 8 connections and I used the 8pin on the first boot and got to bios, at the same time I had what sounded like a police siren and blue lights flashing on and off but everything looked good in bios.

In bios the ram was right by SPD readings, the cpu looked good and the psu as well, so I had no clue why I had a problem so I shut it down and went over all the jumpers and I noticed the clear cmos jumper was in the clear cmos position, I guess it was an over site from the factory. So I moved it back and got a big smile on my face as I thought this was the issue, so I rebooted and now I have no video signal.

I looked at the error code and then looked that up in the manual and it says I need an ATX power supply :eek: So I rebooted again and got a new error code and this one said I have a ram error :eek:

The 4 pin did not resolve the issue

As for the cooler, yes I got mine installed but to uninstall it is another issue if the aftermarket cooler uses the push pin solution as you can not get your fingers in between the heat sink on the cooler and the heat sink on the MB to release the push pins, its that tight towards the back.

Keep this in mind when buying a cooler.

Again maybe a defective board, I could not try another as I got Frys only one.
 
decapitator said:
I had what sounded like a police siren and blue lights flashing on and off but everything looked good in bios.
Click to expand...
if you are that big an Abit fan then you will know that the hi-low is usually due to an rpm, voltage or temp being outside the set parameters in uGuru. Often it's not a problem at all but a checked box when there is nothing to monitor (e.g. nb fan).
As for the flashing blue LEDs well, that's a feature of the board (iirc there are 5 patterns that you can set). ;)
 
BUFF said:
if you are that big an Abit fan then you will know that the hi-low is usually due to an rpm, voltage or temp being outside the set parameters in uGuru. Often it's not a problem at all but a checked box when there is nothing to monitor (e.g. nb fan).
As for the flashing blue LEDs well, that's a feature of the board (iirc there are 5 patterns that you can set). ;)
Click to expand...

Seeing how cmos was cleared and defaults set I should not have had this issue, and yes your right being an abit fan I should have exspected this from them ;)
 
decapitator said:
Got mine at Frys on Friday and returned it this morning, if your using the P5W DH you will be disappointed with the board, it had a very cheap feel to it and cramped. If you use SLI or CrossFire the on board sound device sits to close to the vid card cooler. After market coolers are a tough fit as little room around cpu.

Oh and I forgot I could only boot to bios once, the board did not like my Corsair ram or my Corsair PSU :eek: Maybe a revision or two down the road and I will try again.

It worked out in the long run, I ended up with the new revision of the Asus P5W DH and all is well. :)
Click to expand...

abit boards always feel cheaper. They don't use PCB's that are as thick as ASUS does. It has always been this way. Even though that is the case, the Intel chipset based Abit boards tend to be pretty good overclockers and they have generally been really stable.

My last board from them was an AA8XE and it was a joy to work with.
 
Dan_D said:
abit boards always feel cheaper. They don't use PCB's that are as thick as ASUS does. It has always been this way. Even though that is the case, the Intel chipset based Abit boards tend to be pretty good overclockers and they have generally been really stable.

My last board from them was an AA8XE and it was a joy to work with.
Click to expand...

I have not gone down with the ship just yet :p I ordered another one from egg, I just don't understand the layout choice for the board like the location of the sound device. I use crossfire and the sound max card has hardly enough room to sit and in fact it touches the ATI cooler. I do not care that I can not use a pci slot but you would think Abit would at least make room for the on board sound. The other thing is installing an after market cooler, I will look for one that mounts with a support under the MB, forget the pushpin type as people will see once it is installed you will be lucky if you can remove it if needed.
 
decapitator said:
I have not gone down with the ship just yet :p I ordered another one from egg, I just don't understand the layout choice for the board like the location of the sound device. I use crossfire and the sound max card has hardly enough room to sit and in fact it touches the ATI cooler. I do not care that I can not use a pci slot but you would think Abit would at least make room for the on board sound. The other thing is installing an after market cooler, I will look for one that mounts with a support under the MB, forget the pushpin type as people will see once it is installed you will be lucky if you can remove it if needed.
Click to expand...

I was really looking forward to this board, only thing that is stopping me from getting it is the no available PCI slot with Crossfire configs. I plan on going Crossfire and a X-Fi card. Maybe they think there move will force Creative to start developing x1 cards :rolleyes: .......

The latest Abit board I used and still am actually is the AW8 and love this board. Really Abit and Asus are the only boards I prefer to use. I still might jump on the AW9 though. I wish they kept the gold heatpipes though!!!!!!

decapitator how is the onboard sound? I heard its actually pretty good. I will have a Logitech 630 5.1 setup on it until I get the X FI if I get this board. Also, how is the Crossfire setup? Was a bitch to install, any performance issues, etc. Any input would be nice.
 
decapitator said:
I have not gone down with the ship just yet :p I ordered another one from egg, I just don't understand the layout choice for the board like the location of the sound device. I use crossfire and the sound max card has hardly enough room to sit and in fact it touches the ATI cooler. I do not care that I can not use a pci slot but you would think Abit would at least make room for the on board sound. The other thing is installing an after market cooler, I will look for one that mounts with a support under the MB, forget the pushpin type as people will see once it is installed you will be lucky if you can remove it if needed.
Click to expand...

The pushpin type is actually quite easy to remove. You simply twist the pins in the direction indicated by the arrows and it will pop right off. I've been thinking about trying the AW9D-MAX but I don't know about the layout of the slots. I don't think I can live with it.
 
Dan_D said:
The pushpin type is actually quite easy to remove. You simply twist the pins in the direction indicated by the arrows and it will pop right off. I've been thinking about trying the AW9D-MAX but I don't know about the layout of the slots. I don't think I can live with it.
Click to expand...

Dan that's the problem, once you push down the rear pins you can not get enough leverage with your fingers to turn them as there is no room between the otis and the cpu heat sink. People will understand this when they need to remove them, granted not all coolers will be an issue but the new type with the big stacks will be.
 
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