A8N-SLI Premium - works fine but have several tuning questions

Building a PC for my part time day trader brother. The board has way more
features than needed, just trying to get the best and most stable set-up for
this use. Will have 6 monitors on it when completed.

AMD 64 X2 4200+
Stock/Retail cooling fan
2 GB Corsair Ram (wish I knew in advanced it was so picky about the memory
it likes)
Quadro4 NVS 280 & 440 video cards (PCI & PCIx16)
XP HOME
WD Sata 200GB
Antec Sonata II case with 450 Watt Smartpower (really is quiet!)

Selected XP Home instead of Pro because Pro did not offer a single thing
that was useful. Thought pro would only end up causing more problems than
benefit by having all these things not needed that might get in the way.


Many questions if anyone would like to take a stab at it (much
appreciated!!!)



I've enabled the cool n' quiet in the BIOS and seems to work fine except
when the machine is cold, and first turned on because the CPU fan
accelerates slowly I get a CPU cooling fan failure error on initial boot,
even with the threshold set to the minimum of 800 rpm. It looks like I
either have to turn off the cool-n-quiet or the fan alarm. Anyway to have
both??

What am I suppose to do with 2 Ethernet connections? Have the nVidia
working fine. With all the issues people seem to have with the Marvell is
there any reason to enable it?? My brother has 2 internet connections for
back-up (DSL & Cable), but don't think there is a way to team them (Shotgun)
together anyway.

I've installed a single SATA hard drive. Can't figure out why this has 2
different RAID controllers on it (Overkill!)?

As stability is more important that absolute speed, I've left most settings
on default. Am I correct that any gains by tweaking are in the order of
only a few percent? Not sure what the nVidia performance tuning program
will do, am afraid to run it.

Still looking for a anti-virus program. Norton seems to be a resource hog.
McAfee, PcCillin better?

Any experience with the XP Firewall? Is it good enough? (Believe it is
more efficient than all the other programs). I already know not to use the
nVidia firewall that came with the MB.

Thanks!!

 

Sometimes i have the same problem, think it has to do with the ambient
temperature: it's to cold ;-).
Well, it's cold enough for not running the CPU fan, but when i hit continue
mostly the fan is running if windows is fully booted First time it happened
i freakly went to the bios and opened the case, but then the fan starts
running.... after a while. Don't know what the threshold temp is, but i
thinks it's around 25C. No worries, you could enable the warning but what
when there's realy something wrong....?

same question here...nVidea or Marvell...?
..

Free antivir from grisoft

www.free.grisoft.com

works fine to me...and it's free!

think ZoneAlarm is free and better


Maus

 

«What am I suppose to do with 2 Ethernet connections? Have the nVidia
«working fine. With all the issues people seem to have with the Marvell is
t«here any reason to enable it?? My brother has 2 internet connections for
«back-up (DSL & Cable), but don't think there is a way to team them
(Shotgun)
«together anyway.

Marvell is really useful when one connects another computer to it.
It is faster for file transfers, etc...
It runs well, but it is not installed automatically. I had to go to the
Marvell folder on the CD to set it up.

As far as SATA connectors are concerned, useful if you want to
setup a RAID configuration; and eventually to instal more drives
CD-DVD drives are now available for SATA. And I would think
with time ATA drives are going to be phased out.

(I have four. drives. Much safer than independent partitions; I never
loose any data through WinXp reinstall or hardware failure.
The first two drives are saved daily to the much larger last one
with Ghost):

 

Define picky. I have 2 x TWINX1024-3200C2 (= 4 x 512MB) at [email protected]
on my Premium. Corsair RAM often likes a wee bit more voltage than the
motherboard's default.

I use QFan rather than C'n'Q but the effect is the same. Disable the CPU
fan monitoring in the BIOS though or you'll get that bogus "CPU fan failed"
error when booting, as the BIOS's CPU fan speed threshold can't be set to
less than 800rpm and with QFan on my Freezer 64 Pro fan spends most of its
life in the 500-600rpm range. I find QFan on is worth about a 3C CPU
temperature increase but as long as it stays significantly below the safety
threshold I don't care and it makes a huge difference to the overall system
noise level. I have the QFan CPU threshold set to 60C, well below AMD's
recommended max 71C, but it has yet to kick in even on the hottest day.

The Marvell seems to work fine when it has the right driver (some people
swear by the one from the Marvell web site rather than the one on the ASUS
CD) but if you don't need it disable it. Most systems can't heavily load a
single gigabit Ethernet let alone two, but having two can be handy if you
want to run different subnets and have your PC do the routing.

The Silicon Image RAID has slightly more functionality than that built into
the Nvidia Force4 but if you don't want it disable it in the BIOS.

By default the Premium Auto overclocking profile in the BIOS overclocks your
system to 103% (Auto = 103%, Standard = 100%). I've had nothing but trouble
with the AI NOS profile but I do everything manually these days anyway.

The 4200 will happily overclock up to 2.6Ghz (CPU frequency aka FSB =
240Mhz, CPU multiplier x11) at near stock voltages. That's a 20% increase
in raw CPU performance. I'm running mine at 1.375v, which is only a little
over the default. I've had it up to 2.7Ghz but had to ramp the voltage up
to 1.425 to get stability with Prime95. I dropped it back to 2.6Ghz because
it's fast enough for what I need and I'm not convinced about the long-term
effects of running it over the AMD recommended operational maximum 1.4v.

But decent CPU cooling is a must. I reckon the Freezer 64 Pro is far and
away the best value AMD CPU air cooler out there. Where I am it's half the
price of the Zalman 9500 and the 9500 is only about 1 degree Celcius cooler
than the Freezer 64 Pro. Both are worth about 11-13C against the stock
cooler, the Freezer 64 Pro fan is way quieter than the stock, and unlike
many high-end coolers for AMDs it fits on the standard 939 mount (so you
don't have to drill holes or mount baseplates on the back of the motherboard
or whatever). That 11-13C is the buffer you need when you overclock as the
CPU will run hotter at higher voltages. Effectively, I'm running at stock
FX-60 speed (2.6Ghz) at AMD stock cooler temperatures (low 30s idle up to
high 50s under 2x100% load depending on ambient/case temps) at a third the
cost.

You'll also need to read up on tweaking your RAM and the HyperTransport bus.

Ignore it. Overclock from the BIOS.

I use EZ antivirus from CA. I hate Norton and McAfee with a passion.

Zone Alarm. It's free and craps on the XP firewall.

 

"Define picky. I have 2 x TWINX1024-3200C2 (= 4 x 512MB) at [email protected]
on my Premium. Corsair RAM often likes a wee bit more voltage than the
motherboard's default."

By picky I mean I purchased 2 sticks of matched memory, 1GB each. BUT
because they were double sided with 16 memory chips, it could be used in the
motherboard - as indicated in the manual which I did not have when I
purchased the MB and RAM. Would not boot at all. Stuck in an old stick of
512MB DDR 266 and it ran fine, well it least it booted.

 

Are you referring to the statement in section 2.4.2 ?

"Due to CPU limitation, DIMM modules with 128 Mb memory chips or
double-sided x16 memory chips are not supported in this
motherboard."

An "x16 memory chip", is a memory chip with a 16 bit wide interface.
A bank of RAM is 64 bits wide. It takes four of those chips to make
a bank. Thus, the physical appearance of the illegal module type,
would be a double sided module, with four chips on each side
of the module. That is a typical memory configuration used on
smaller capacity RAM modules in the past.

Current (good quality) modules, use x8 chips. When you buy a
512MB module, there is very little risk of getting the wrong
kind of chips. With 1GB modules, there are two module construction
techniques. The best kind of memory uses x8 chips, eight of
them per side of the module. An inferior construction technique,
used on generic modules from Ebay, is to use x4 chips. It takes
16 of those to build a single bank, so the memory module still
has 16 chips on it. Thus, it is hard for a customer to
determine they've been screwed, because both good and bad
1GB modules have 16 chips on them. This sample advertising
page, shows good modules on the left, and a bad module on the
right.

http://www.portatech.com/catalog/memory.asp?ID=285

Corsair should only be selling proper modules using x8 chips,
so I don't think that is your problem. Since you are able to
get the motherboard running with one 512MB DIMM, set up the
timing in the BIOS while the 512MB module is in there, then
add one of the Corsair modules. Are you able to get the
motherboard to post then ? (A Rev.E processor can support
mixing DIMMs, so it should be able to start, even when not
set up in a dual channel memory configuration.)

Try setting the memory speed to DDR333, as a simple first step.
With some luck, you may be able to eventually remove the 512MB
stick, and add the second 1GB stick, once you've conquered
whatever "By SPD" problem the Corsair stick is causing. Try
some "Manual" memory settings.

Paul

 

Won't be the Cool & Quiet doing that, but the Q-Fan control. If you're
using the stock heatsink you should likely turn that off as that fan
already has thermal speed control.

 

Didn't know that. The little booklet with the processor does not tell you.
I've turned it off, but can't tell if it solves the problem till the morning
when it's really cooled down.

 

Most of these questions are being answered elsewhere in the thread,
but I think there's one timing parameter which may give you more than
"only a few percent" improvement. That's the command rate. With only
two DIMMs, you should be able to set this to 1T, but it may default to
2T. That bit of tweaking is worth doing. If stability is more
important that speed, you needn't change the other settings, however,
Corsair is very good memory. I think you'll find that changing from
JEDEC defaults to the Corsair spec will allow both optimal performance
AND stability. If it doesn't, then it's simple enough to reenter BIOS
setup and switch the timings back to "auto." The nVidia performance
tuning program (nTune, I think it's called) is mainly for
overclocking, and that definitely could lead to instability; don't
install it.

Ron