Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe + opty 165 arriving tommorow , tips ?

[weebroonieuk]

any tips anyone knows about for these things , what is the passive northbridge like i am going to watercool the cpu but should i leave out my maze 3 northbridge block as there quite restrictive ? im guessing the nforce 4 northbridge doesnt make as much heat as the nforce2 because the cpu does the memory controlling ?

what are the onboard lan and firewall like i hear the firewall is crap should i leave it disabled ?

what about

i have just bought a cheap HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X300SE 256MB Hyper Memory DDR

to get me into pcie land i will ditch it later and upgrade to something faster when funds permit!

ram is ocz el ddr 3200 rev2 something or other 1gb kit

hard drive will be 1st gen raptor

psu is antec phantom 500

thats all i can think of at the moment

cheers in advance

[RavenNight]

Its the same firewall as my deluxe, and yep its awful, ditch it like the plauge.

[weebroonieuk]

lol noted !

[s29feb]

Do not install nVidia firewall or the IDE SW drivers as htey are pants!

Also teh opty should clock well especially with water as they get toasty as you up the volts. However you might want to conside is it worth it as my 170 belts out at 2.6 stock volts no probs so FX60 with no effort

I have An AN8 Ultra and they options for clocking are excellent and very well laid out/easy to follow bios ( so easy a noob like me can overclock).

[DanceswithUnix]

im guessing the nforce 4 northbridge doesnt make as much heat as the nforce2 because the cpu does the memory controlling ?

It burns quite a bit of power, perhaps it is down to how they implemented PCIe in that device.

what are the onboard lan and firewall like i hear the firewall is crap should i leave it disabled ?

I think the drivers get you some TCP/IP offload which speeds up networking if:

1/ You actually use gigabit networking
2/ You have something at the other end fast enough to keep up.

Personally I have neither and don't bother

[weebroonieuk]

wont be using gigabit for a while and dont have anything to keep up with it

is that a vote for keeping the northbridge waterblock then its not hear yet i missed the delivery gonna try and get it

[DanceswithUnix]

Might depend on what video card you install. I have the standard A8N-SLI and put a Zalman passive northbridge cooler on it, but I only have a 6600GT video card. I gather some longer cards can go right over that northbridge, hence asus made it low profile.

[Dark Horse]

I wouldn't bother watercooling the Northbirdge, it will just dump excess heat into your loop which can easily be handled by the fan. Its also a bit of hassle setting it up as you'll need to route the pipes around your graphics card too.

[weebroonieuk]

that settles it northbridge block is getting sold !

darkhorse i just have a x300 at the moment i will wait for the aiw x1900 or something like that to drop a bit in price and for me to get out the overdraught over my latest spree !

[jaysback]

looks like i will be joining you in the opty 165, asus a8n33. managed to get the funds for a 7800gtx though.
will have to see if the 165 is better than my 146.

[weebroonieuk]

it should be , im priming at 2781 according to clock gen i can boot at over 2.8 into windows but fails prime might need burnt in and stressed for a while to loosen it up

just about to rip it all out tho to put the watercooling on doubt it will give me much more speed but it sure will be quieter !

[weebroonieuk]

ok water is in and idle around 35 i will load it up anyone suggest a good temp moniter ?

[Noni]

asus probe is good

[weebroonieuk]

i keep getting errors while trying to install or run it i will give it another bash

do you know how to get round the know cpu fan rpm thing im having to have a 120 mm fan plugged in and its annoying

and what about the option in the bios to over voltage the cpu core by offset 200 mv?

[k0nigen]

asus probe is good

I really thought you just said "anus probe" - had to read it twice

[turgid]

I had an anus probe but that's a story for an endoscopy forum


edit: this post is unfortunately placed