Questions on the A8N-SLI Premium w/ Athlon X2

[barnld]

Hello all!

I just purchased an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ with an A8N-SLI Premium from Newegg for my first computer build. I've read various postings on the Asus forums and elsewhere stating that some of these A8N-SLI Premium boards shipped with an outdated BIOS version that made it impossible to boot the machine using the dual core X2 processor. I've heard horror stories of people having to borrow a non dual core socket 939 processor to get the computer up and running enough to flash the BIOS. Is there any truth to this?

Has Asus begun shipping these boards with a BIOS version capable of booting with the X2 processor, or may I run into troubles? I don't have a non-dual core processor to substitute in, if I do run into such problems, what other recourse might I have?

I appreciate your input and help in this matter.

 

[Amphoteric]

I bought a A8n premium and a 4400+ X2 from newegg. The board worked right from the start with the X2 chip. You should be fine.

 

[foolsbrain]

Got one from Boxing day sale and was good from the start.

 

[barnld]

Well that's good to know! thanks for the feedback guys!

 

[fa_ranger]

I bought the 64x2 4800 and the Asus A8N32-SLI DLX From Mwave ( Best prices I've found) the first board was and they shipped me a replacement. This took under 10 days. Now I istalled a Sata Raid0 and Raid1 using 4 each Westren digital 250gig Hard drives. I am using windows XP Pro Media center ( 32bit) The 32 bit is very important when setting up your Raids. Now I had to make Floppys from the Asus CD. Once I had them made could now install the Windows XP Pro watch out for the Press F-6 and this is where you add the drives for the Raid. And then it will restart and windows will do its long install. Also it will format the drives. Took my Dumb arse 2 days to figure this all out having never done it before( Old WIN 98 SE user) But I was able to stumble thru and get it all set up and then get the Puter online so I could download all the drivers For the Chipset, CPU, and mother board. thenonce you have the drivers for Nvidia Raid controler you can add more hard drives thru the Control pannel to set up your raid 1. I was even able to figure out how to take files from my old computer using Windows 98 SE and place them on my new computer. to include all my internet short cuts. this was too cool.
So if I can do it you can do it.

 

[JJ__BR]

Hi Guys,

I´ve bought a ASUS A8N-SLI Premium + AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+.
I need some help with the following: after around 6 and/or 8 hours of using my desktop it freezes (mostly) and/or reboots with no error message.
I´ve done some tests, all BIOS and drivers updates, and nothing make it work right.
No temperature problems; No-overclocking; 4 modules of CORSAIR VS1G400C3 at 400Mhz, 2,85volts and 2T (Corsair Techinical Suppot Tip), same thing happening with 2 modules; XFX GeForce 6800GT; Enermax PSU 535w; Windows XP SP2; 2 HDs Seagate SATA @ RAID0.
Memtest86 v1.65, CheckIt, and BCM Diagnostic Pro 2.30 software doesn´t point any problem.
Please somebody could help me?
Is there some way to test if it is a problem with the CPU, Chipset or ASUS MB, without changing those for a new one?

Thanks a lot for your attention, regards, JJ.

 

[Tsuru]

How many optical drives do you have installed? Do you have another power supply laying around that is >= 550w that you can test with? I had similar issues with a low-end PSU and it wasn't pushing enough amps to power all my devices. The comp would just restart on it's own.. usually at the most important part of whatever it was that I was doing :/

You can always run down to CompUSA or the like and purchase a PSU, test it.. and if it doesn't solve your problem, take it back

I have close to your setup with a GeForce 7800 GTX and 2 optical drives.. that added to 2 HDD's, etc.. sucks up alot of juice. I'm using the Antec HE 550w PSU and I haven't had any issues at all. I will, however, upgrade my PSU to 600w or greater in the near future.

Anywho, it's worth a shot if nothing else is working!

Good luck.

~edit~

BTW.. I'm running my Corsair 2x1024 at 2-3-3-8-1T with no problems..

 

[feedbrian]

I've had power supply troubles with an A8N-SLI Premium and an X2 4400+ processor. My original power supply was a 550W Antec model that was somehow incompatible with the motherboard (this was a couple months back, so I don't remember the specifics). I had the same symptoms--the computer would just turn off randomly every few hours. I'm now using a 600W Enermax PSU, and it works great. This is with an OC 7800 GTX and 4 hard drives. I'm also running 4 sticks of Corsair memory at 2-2-2-5 2T timings, and I haven't experienced any RAM troubles.

With regards to the original question in the thread, I got my A8N-SLI Premium around Christmas, and it had a BIOS version that caused the system to run very slowly (the first time I tried to install Windows, it took several hours instead of the expected 20 minutes or so). The board did boot, however, so I was able to update the BIOS and everything worked fine.

A word of warning with the A8N-SLI motherboards -- DO NOT install the Nvidia Serial ATA drivers if you use HDDs that support native command queueing. They will corrupt data on your hard drives, and possibly kill your pets while you sleep. This issue has been pretty much beaten to death in other threads, but it's very much worth mentioning again.

-Brian