what is a good socket 939 motherboard that is not by asus?

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 1:36 pm

so, i have my asus A8N SLI-Premium, and it crashes every time I start a game.

so I'm looking for a good replacement, that will go well in my p180, and have room for my ninja. also i would like a board that either has a passive NBsink, or can fit the zalman 47 northbridge heatsink without any rigged-up ghetto bicycle spoke attachments.

and third of all, i need something with NO compatibility problems with my Antec NeoHE 430 PSU or my OCZ platinum RAM.

rei · Post by **rei** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 1:38 pm

ATX or MicroATX?

any legacy port requirements? printer/parallel/serial? firewire? HD onboard audio? onboard video as fallback?

most of the new uATX C51G boards are pretty good. having had an ATI Xpress 200 chipset mobo i'm not so sure i'd go with one again, even with the refreshed RS482 chipset.

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 2:11 pm

I'm sorry, I should have mentioned hat. ATX, as it's for the p180. as for all the other factors... I don't really care. the asus came with a lot of nice features, like serial game port, firewire400, USB, external S-ATA hotplug, dual gigabit LAN, SLI.... etc

out of all of these things i have used the game port for my old controller and the dual LAN (i have my fileserver temporarily connected through that), but I will get my router set up soon and i wont need more that one LAN port anymore.

basically any extra stuff is welcome, but not necessary. my concerns are in this order: stability, speed, functions.

I've been looking abit at the ABIT (no pun intended) AN8-SLI, and that is really minimal for features, but it is fast, however i have heard similarly negative things about its stability.
DFI lanparties are nice and stable and fast, they also look to have lotsa features, unfortunately they are pretty expensive (even moreso than the 160$ sli premium) and in addition to that i need a Zalman NB-sink.

as for NB chipset... i don't really care. SiS and VIa are passive, so that's one major advantage.

i tend to look at the SLI models, but i dont even have plans to use SLI, its just they usually come with more features.

but to summarize it, if it has no compatibility problems and it's a cheap board I'll be content.

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 3:41 pm

DFI NF4 ultra-D, SLi-dr, ultra-dr (not out yet). They have a loud fan over the chipset though, so you might wanna swap it out for the nice big zalman chipset passive hsf.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 4:50 pm

i know its not what you asked for. but ive heard from alot of people having problem with OCZ memory not working properly with certain motherboards lately. have you thought that mabey its not the motherboard? swapping ram is really simple and easy to check, swapping a motherboard takes alot more work.

nici · Post by **nici** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 4:51 pm

Actually the DFI boards chipset cooler is probably the best actively cooled chipset cooler of any nF4 board. The fan is a smooth MagLev fan, it runs at 7000rpm stock but i could run mine at 1500rpm when idle and still with good temps

Its quieter than a quiet HDD. It never needs to run full 7000rpm, about 3000rpm is enough during load. I suggest you at least change the thermal pad for some goo though. And while your at it i suggest you remove the chromed/polished thingie too, it adds some turbulence noise.

But if yo dont mind some cutting a zalman NB47J can be installed pretty easily, i´ve had several of them installed in different ways, first was to bend all the fins to make room for the graphichs card, then i put the gpu in the lower slot(no performance loss) and used a non mutilated NB47j, and now the GPU is in the upper slot with a NB47J with about 2½ rows of fins cut away and its bolted to the mobo. nuts and bolts, spring loaded to make even pressure on the chipset.

The included ITE SmartGuardian program is a very good piece of software, muh better than asus probe imo. It has simple and effective control for three fans. Set a constant speed or set it so it adjusts the fans automatically based on temperature.

As for the price, DFI is cheaper than the A8N-SLI Premium if you exclude the SLI-DR and the Crossfire board. SLI-D is about the same price, Ultra-D is about 140€ wich is about the same as A8N-SLI deluxe.

The onboard audio seems above avarage but not spectacular in any way, more USB ports than youll ever need(10)...

I have had no problems with the Ultra-D, i´ve checked most of the recent 939 mobos and would still get this one if i was to buy a 939 mobo now

One thing seriously bugs me though.. Why the F*CK isnt there any soundcards with PCIe interface??

marcmercer · Post by **marcmercer** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 4:16 am

I have an asus A8N-E and it is the most stable board I have ever owned. Not one crash in weeks - and it lives on 24/7.

However - it wasn't always that way - I had problems with the latest nvidia drivers. The ones on the CD worked ok ... but the v6.66 caused many crashes.

If you need the v6.66 driver in order to run a later bios only install the chipset driver. Do not install the IDE, ethernet, sound etc.

Also .. make sure you uninstall everything to do with this nvidia firewall. I think this was the key to making mine perfectly stable.

Marc

hravn · Post by **hravn** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 4:56 am

When you say crashes, to you mean that it turns itself off, or that it reboots?

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 5:18 am

as for the ram suggestion, i read about that on anandtech or the asus forums, i think, and that was the one thing i was easily able to test. i took my single stick of 512MB pc3200 corsair out of my old pc, and tried CoD2 again. laggy obviously, because the ram can't cope properly, but after about a minute it crashed again. so i doubt it's (entirely) the RAM.

as for the nature of the crashes, the computer just dies with out warning, and stays off. so no reboot.

it often happens in combination with GPU load, like i was discussing in this thread, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. in anycase, if its a RAM-mobo problem, or a PSU-mobo problem, either should be taken care of with a new mobo.

hravn · Post by **hravn** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:24 am

I'd swap out the PSU instead, less of a hassle than switching MB (reinstall of windows and so on). In the P180, alot of PSUs stay silent/quiet AFAIK.

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:47 am

hmm... i really love the silence (no other word for it, it's silent. stock) of the NeoHE, does anyone have any good alternate suggestions? i'm looking for something that has front to back airflow (so no s12) and long enough cables to reach the atx12v auxiliary plug. and i'd like the same silence as the NeoHE. unfortunately the phantom is just too expensive for me.

however, i quote from this thread:

Ralf Hutter wrote:BTW, FWIW, I was reading just a smattering of the posts in the the A8N-SLI forums and there are more than a few people having the sudden shutdowm problems with PSUs other than the Neo HE. Names mentioned include Seasonic S12 500W, and Thermaltake 430W and 500W PSUs. Probably more too, as there's lots of posts that I haven't read.

hmmm, well I'll look around the PSU forums a bit, and perhaps make a topic.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 7:52 am

What I am wondering: Have you contacted Asus for an exchange of the mobo? As after Antec and Asus had investigated the issue Asus officially took the blame for this and said they would exchange them. If you didn't, why not?

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 5:16 pm

Yes. i was given this wonderfully helpful reply:

Dear Sir/Madam,
use different power supply

Best Regards,

Jesse
ASUS Technical Support

yay - retards at anus - err, asus.

aqm consultant · Post by **aqm consultant** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:13 pm

I'm starting to feel like the woman who won a radio contest for "100 Grand" and they tried to give her a candy bar by the same name. First, the NV mobos come out with SATA-II RAID, firewalls, etc.

Then the P150 shows up -- no door, quiet, HDD suspension, and an apparently solid and silent PSU.

Then it turns out the mobo's won't work with the power supply (similar problems with other mobos including Intel), other PSU options (S12) also have problems with the mobos. ARRGH!

So what options exist in the near term. Specifically, anyone have thoughts about sticking a SATA--II RAID controller in a passive NB mobo that doesn't have issues with the Neo HE? I'm running an old Promise RAID card now, but never liked the additional mechanical connections (card and cables), as they occasionally cause boot failutres ("non-functional array").

And I'm running out of time...

hravn · Post by **hravn** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 12:28 am

klankymen wrote:however, i quote from this thread:
Ralf Hutter wrote:BTW, FWIW, I was reading just a smattering of the posts in the the A8N-SLI forums and there are more than a few people having the sudden shutdowm problems with PSUs other than the Neo HE. Names mentioned include Seasonic S12 500W, and Thermaltake 430W and 500W PSUs. Probably more too, as there's lots of posts that I haven't read.
hmmm, well I'll look around the PSU forums a bit, and perhaps make a topic.

Hmm, it is definitely the Neo HE, in my case at least. I have three other PSUs that are 100% stable with the rest of my config, while the Neo HE just shuts down. Chieftec 360W (17A on 12V), Antec TrueBlue 480W (28A om 12V) and a NoName "400W" (16A on 12V) which I'm currently using. Unfortunately it's pretty loud...

DGK · Post by **DGK** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 12:40 am

I had a bunch of problems with my MSI Neo4 so I got a Asrock 939Dual-SataII and I am very happy with it. It has the ULI chipset which has been very stable for me. It is a S939 board with both AGP and PCI graphics slots (I am using the PCIExpress). The only bad thing about the board is that it does not have built in firewire. It does have a passive NB heatsink. The board cost me about $75 which is its most positive feature.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 2:26 am

EPOX is probably the cheapest highest performing motherboard for the past year and a half.

after that for cheap and quirky and yet great performance plus out of the box never gets hot passive cooling, an Asrock dual sataII board with the uli 1695 chipset. it lacks features but is half the price of a lanparty and really smokes the benchmarks. ocworkbench.com has all the info on it.

thats my fav board, the asrock one. I am goign to put a 170 opteron on it with 2 gigs of ram and it is goign to be the pimp-daddy.