A8N-SLI Premium Standby Power light stays on all the time...

[HST]

Is the SB_PWR (Standby Power) light supposed to stay on all the time
even when the computer is turned off? The manual says:

"The motherboard comes with a green standby power LED that light up to
indicate that the system is ON, in sleep mode, or in soft-off mode.
This is a reminder that you should shut down the system and unplug the
power cable before removing or plugging in any motherboard component."

But I have shut down the computer completely from the start menu and
the light stays on all the time, what gives?

HST

 

[Paul]

Is the SB_PWR (Standby Power) light supposed to stay on all the time
even when the computer is turned off? The manual says:

"The motherboard comes with a green standby power LED that light up to
indicate that the system is ON, in sleep mode, or in soft-off mode.
This is a reminder that you should shut down the system and unplug the
power cable before removing or plugging in any motherboard component."

But I have shut down the computer completely from the start menu and
the light stays on all the time, what gives?

HST

SB_PWR is wired to +5VSB. That power supply is operating as
long as the switch on the back of the PSU is in the "ON" position.
Before adding or removing any hardware (PCI/AGP/PCI-e cards, memory,
processor etc), either switch off the PSU on the back, or for total
safety, unplug the computer. (The reason for the "unplug" suggestion,
is one poster here tried to use the switch on his PSU one day, and
the PSU actually didn't switch off. Unplugging the PSU is the
only way to guarantee there is no power at all.)

Paul

 

[HST]

SB_PWR is wired to +5VSB. That power supply is operating as
long as the switch on the back of the PSU is in the "ON" position.
Before adding or removing any hardware (PCI/AGP/PCI-e cards, memory,
processor etc), either switch off the PSU on the back, or for total
safety, unplug the computer. (The reason for the "unplug" suggestion,
is one poster here tried to use the switch on his PSU one day, and
the PSU actually didn't switch off. Unplugging the PSU is the
only way to guarantee there is no power at all.)

Paul

Yes I understand that Paul but will that light always be on? I mean,
I'm not supposed to switch the PSU switch off every time I shut down
and walk away from the computer, I never had to before. Before I got
the A8N-SLI Premium I had an Asus P4B266 and didn't have any lights
on.

HST

 

[Christoph Spies]

Yes I understand that Paul but will that light always be on? I mean,
I'm not supposed to switch the PSU switch off every time I shut down

I do this to save energy.

and walk away from the computer, I never had to before. Before I got

Maybe you noticed that not before, that´s normality since the ATX-standard.

the A8N-SLI Premium I had an Asus P4B266 and didn't have any lights

Maybe it has no light, but naturaly it was also in Standby Mode, and of
course consumes energy.

The only way to prevent this, is to really cut the power of your PSU.

Tschüß
Chris

 

[milleron]

Is the SB_PWR (Standby Power) light supposed to stay on all the time
even when the computer is turned off? The manual says:

"The motherboard comes with a green standby power LED that light up to
indicate that the system is ON, in sleep mode, or in soft-off mode.
This is a reminder that you should shut down the system and unplug the
power cable before removing or plugging in any motherboard component."

But I have shut down the computer completely from the start menu and
the light stays on all the time, what gives?

HST

That's as it should be.
It goes out only if you unplug the computer from the mains or flip the
PSU switch to off. If you see it illuminated after powering down the
computer by using the operating system or by pushing the case's
"Power" button, then it's functioning correctly. In those situations,
the motherboard is still receiving power in case someone wanted to
enable one of the BIOS functions like powering up the computer by
hitting a key, moving a mouse, or having an incoming call on the
modem. I think it's part of the ATX standard.

Ron

 

[stevem]

Yes I understand that Paul but will that light always be on? I mean,
I'm not supposed to switch the PSU switch off every time I shut down
and walk away from the computer, I never had to before. Before I got
the A8N-SLI Premium I had an Asus P4B266 and didn't have any lights
on.

HST

HST,
Like you, I have recently moved from a P4B266 (in my case, to a P5AD2-E
Premium), but my P4B266 also had that light. Could it be that you had
jumpered the P4B266 such that +5VSB was not available? I can't find my
P4B266 manual at the moment, but I seem to recall that was an option.
Certainly, my LED was always on (until I switched off the PSU).
Steve.

 

[milleron]

Yes I understand that Paul but will that light always be on? I mean,
I'm not supposed to switch the PSU switch off every time I shut down
and walk away from the computer, I never had to before. Before I got
the A8N-SLI Premium I had an Asus P4B266 and didn't have any lights
on.

HST

The light will always be on. It's not wasting any power. You're not
supposed to switch the PSU off. As I mentioned, I believe this
feature of leaving the board on power-standby is part of the ATX
standard. I'm not sure of the vintage of your P4B266, but the Asus
A7M266 I got in 2001, had the same green LED to remind the user not to
plug or unplug any PCI devices or jumpers while the board was powered.
It's NOTHING to worry about.

Ron

 

[Robert Hancock]

Is the SB_PWR (Standby Power) light supposed to stay on all the time
even when the computer is turned off? The manual says:

"The motherboard comes with a green standby power LED that light up to
indicate that the system is ON, in sleep mode, or in soft-off mode.
This is a reminder that you should shut down the system and unplug the
power cable before removing or plugging in any motherboard component."

But I have shut down the computer completely from the start menu and
the light stays on all the time, what gives?

The standby power is always on for any ATX motherboard, unless the power
supply has been shut off with a physical power switch. The standby power
is needed for, among other possible uses, receiving the signal from the
power button to power up the machine..

 

[Paul]

Yes I understand that Paul but will that light always be on? I mean,
I'm not supposed to switch the PSU switch off every time I shut down
and walk away from the computer, I never had to before. Before I got
the A8N-SLI Premium I had an Asus P4B266 and didn't have any lights
on.

HST

According to the P4B266 manual, LED1 (between PCI5 and PCI6) does
the same thing as your current board. According to the manual:

"When lit, the green LED (LED1) indicates that the system is ON,
in sleep mode, or in soft-off mode, a reminder that you should
shut down the system before removing of plugging in any
motherboard component."

It is wired to +5VSB just like your new board.

Paul

 

[HST]

Thank you one and all for your replies, although at first It was a
hard sell for me to believe that the light should stay on, I plugged
back in my old P4B266 and low and behold, there is a little green
light and it was on as well, whew! I thought I had to send back the
mobo, just my kind of luck anyway, hehehe. I just can't believe after
all these years I never noticed it was always on.

Ron, let me ask you this, how far into the build are you right now,
all I did so far was connect the AMD, Video card (without drivers so
far) the RAM and the mobo (flashed the BIOS with the newest one from
ASUS) and load Windows XP, then I shut down and called it a night.
What did you do next? I don't have an internet connection to get
available updates so do I have to install drivers for the LAN or is it
a setting in the BIOS? or did you install drivers from the CD that
came with the mobo or what? Would you rather talk through e-mail, if I
take out the "spamless" is your address is it legit?

HST

 

[milleron]

Thank you one and all for your replies, although at first It was a
hard sell for me to believe that the light should stay on, I plugged
back in my old P4B266 and low and behold, there is a little green
light and it was on as well, whew! I thought I had to send back the
mobo, just my kind of luck anyway, hehehe. I just can't believe after
all these years I never noticed it was always on.

Ron, let me ask you this, how far into the build are you right now,
all I did so far was connect the AMD, Video card (without drivers so
far) the RAM and the mobo (flashed the BIOS with the newest one from
ASUS) and load Windows XP, then I shut down and called it a night.
What did you do next? I don't have an internet connection to get
available updates so do I have to install drivers for the LAN or is it
a setting in the BIOS? or did you install drivers from the CD that
came with the mobo or what? Would you rather talk through e-mail, if I
take out the "spamless" is your address is it legit?

HST

The next thing is to load the nVidia chipset drivers, but I didn't use
the one on the CD. I got version 6.53 from nVidia here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp2k_6.53.
The nForce driver package contains other components. I can't remember
if there's a "custom install" option during the Setup program, but if
there is, elect that method because I don't think you'll want to
install all four of the components. I chose NOT to load the nVidia
IDE SW drivers. My computer benchmarks a good 15% faster with the MS
IDE drivers you've already installed with XP.

After that's done and you've rebooted, load your video-card drivers.
I chose to load the nVidia nTune utility suite that you can download
from the global Asus site. (I don't really know what version's on the
CD, but I never use that CD for drivers or software. I make it a
practice to download everything from the Asus site). In this case,
however, you WILL want to boot your computer from that Asus CD at
least one time. Doing so autoloads a little program in the root
directory of the CD (IIRC it might be called ASUSACPI.EXE; someone
will correct me if I'm wrong about that). Anyway, you have to do that
in order to get rid of one "unknown device" in Device Manager. If you
have the onboard sound enabled, you'll need to install the latest
version of the Realtek software and drivers to get rid of a couple of
other "unknown devices."

You'd have to do a little more than take out the "spamless" from my
email. Look closely and find the punctuation mark you need to
substitute for letters.


Ron

 

[HST]

The next thing is to load the nVidia chipset drivers, but I didn't use
the one on the CD. I got version 6.53 from nVidia here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp2k_6.53.
The nForce driver package contains other components. I can't remember
if there's a "custom install" option during the Setup program, but if
there is, elect that method because I don't think you'll want to
install all four of the components. I chose NOT to load the nVidia
IDE SW drivers. My computer benchmarks a good 15% faster with the MS
IDE drivers you've already installed with XP.

Doesn't the Nvidia chipset drivers have to be installed only if I use
two video cards in SLI mode and if I'm only using one card then I
don't need to install them?

And where did you see the option to load the nVidia IDE SW drivers,
and what does the SW stand for anyway?

After that's done and you've rebooted, load your video-card drivers.
I chose to load the nVidia nTune utility suite that you can download
from the global Asus site. (I don't really know what version's on the
CD, but I never use that CD for drivers or software. I make it a
practice to download everything from the Asus site). In this case,
however, you WILL want to boot your computer from that Asus CD at
least one time. Doing so autoloads a little program in the root
directory of the CD (IIRC it might be called ASUSACPI.EXE; someone
will correct me if I'm wrong about that). Anyway, you have to do that
in order to get rid of one "unknown device" in Device Manager. If you
have the onboard sound enabled, you'll need to install the latest
version of the Realtek software and drivers to get rid of a couple of
other "unknown devices."

You'd have to do a little more than take out the "spamless" from my
email. Look closely and find the punctuation mark you need to
substitute for letters.


Ron

Mail sent late last night, did you not get it?

HST

 

[Robert Hancock]

Doesn't the Nvidia chipset drivers have to be installed only if I use
two video cards in SLI mode and if I'm only using one card then I
don't need to install them?

And where did you see the option to load the nVidia IDE SW drivers,
and what does the SW stand for anyway?

You likely need the chipset drivers installed for things to get
recognized properly in Windows. Has nothing to do with using SLI or not.

You also want the SATA drivers installed, as otherwise the controller
can't use any advanced features like NCQ (if it even works at all). You
likely don't want to install the NVIDIA driver for the regular IDE ports
however - just use the standard Windows driver..

 

[milleron]

You likely need the chipset drivers installed for things to get
recognized properly in Windows. Has nothing to do with using SLI or not.

You also want the SATA drivers installed, as otherwise the controller
can't use any advanced features like NCQ (if it even works at all). You
likely don't want to install the NVIDIA driver for the regular IDE ports
however - just use the standard Windows driver..

I can't recall anything about SATA drivers when I installed the 6.53
nForce drivers, so I'm concerned that I do not have them installed.
It's important to me because I selected my HDs on the basis of NCQ.
I'd hate to be missing that functionality because I messed up a driver
installation.
Here's what's in 6.53:
Audio driver 4.60 (WHQL)
Audio utilities 4.51
Ethernet driver 4.75 (WHQL)
SMBus driver 4.45 (WHQL)
Installer 4.60
IDE NVIDIA driver 5.18 (WHQL)

Now, I elected NOT to install the IDE driver, so where does one get
the nVidia SATA driver, and how does one tell what SATA driver is
installed?



Ron

 

[Robert Hancock]

I can't recall anything about SATA drivers when I installed the 6.53
nForce drivers, so I'm concerned that I do not have them installed.
It's important to me because I selected my HDs on the basis of NCQ.
I'd hate to be missing that functionality because I messed up a driver
installation.
Here's what's in 6.53:
Audio driver 4.60 (WHQL)
Audio utilities 4.51
Ethernet driver 4.75 (WHQL)
SMBus driver 4.45 (WHQL)
Installer 4.60
IDE NVIDIA driver 5.18 (WHQL)

Now, I elected NOT to install the IDE driver, so where does one get
the nVidia SATA driver, and how does one tell what SATA driver is
installed?

In Device Manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, the SATA entries
should be recognized as "NVIDIA nForce4 ADMA Controller". If it's
something else, presumably the driver's not installed.

I don't know if you can actually install the SATA and IDE drivers
separately - I've usually just installed them and then reverted the
driver for the IDE ports back to the Microsoft one (Standard Dual
Channel PCI IDE Controller) afterwards.

 

[milleron]

In Device Manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, the SATA entries
should be recognized as "NVIDIA nForce4 ADMA Controller". If it's
something else, presumably the driver's not installed.

I don't know if you can actually install the SATA and IDE drivers
separately - I've usually just installed them and then reverted the
driver for the IDE ports back to the Microsoft one (Standard Dual
Channel PCI IDE Controller) afterwards.

Yes, I saw the nForce4 ADMA controller in DM before I rolled back the
driver to the Microsoft version. I'll try installing nForce drivers
6.53 again and then see if I can roll back only the IDE drivers.

That said, though, when I had the entire nForce 6.53 driver package
installed, my HD Tach results on my SATA drives was about 55MB/s
sustained read and 115 burst. After I rolled back to MS, the numbers
went back to 65MB/s and 125 MB/s burst. I wonder if going with the
nVidia drivers to get NCQ is an overall advantage or disadvantage.
What's your thinking on that point?

Ron

 

[Robert Hancock]

Yes, I saw the nForce4 ADMA controller in DM before I rolled back the
driver to the Microsoft version. I'll try installing nForce drivers
6.53 again and then see if I can roll back only the IDE drivers.

That said, though, when I had the entire nForce 6.53 driver package
installed, my HD Tach results on my SATA drives was about 55MB/s
sustained read and 115 burst. After I rolled back to MS, the numbers
went back to 65MB/s and 125 MB/s burst. I wonder if going with the
nVidia drivers to get NCQ is an overall advantage or disadvantage.
What's your thinking on that point?

That's kind of interesting.. What was the CPU usage like between the two
drivers? Also, the NVidia drivers have a speed test button inside the
entry for the controller in Device Manager, might be interesting to see
what that shows.

NCQ mainly provides gains when there are multiple disk transactions
occurring at the same time - something like HD Tach likely doesn't
stress that very much. Then again, many common desktop applications
don't really do that either..

 

[HST]

You likely need the chipset drivers installed for things to get
recognized properly in Windows. Has nothing to do with using SLI or not.

ok cool, thanks

You also want the SATA drivers installed, as otherwise the controller
can't use any advanced features like NCQ (if it even works at all). You
likely don't want to install the NVIDIA driver for the regular IDE ports
however - just use the standard Windows driver..

In device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers it says this:

NVIDIA nForce Parallel ATA Controller
NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller
NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller

Does this mean that the NVIDIA drivers are installed for both Serial
and Parallel? Common sense tells me yes but how and why do I want to
use the regular windows drivers for the IDE ports? And IDE would mean
Parallel right?

Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from (e-mail address removed)
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/

HST

 

[Robert Hancock]

ok cool, thanks




In device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers it says this:

NVIDIA nForce Parallel ATA Controller
NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller
NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller

Does this mean that the NVIDIA drivers are installed for both Serial
and Parallel? Common sense tells me yes but how and why do I want to
use the regular windows drivers for the IDE ports? And IDE would mean
Parallel right?

The SATA entries should be "NVIDIA nForce4 ADMA Controller" if the
NVIDIA driver is installed. That may be a Microsoft driver that you have
there, I'm not certain.

 

[milleron]

That's kind of interesting.. What was the CPU usage like between the two
drivers?

I failed to note the CPU usage during the nForce test. I just ran it
again with the MS drivers installed, and CPU usage is 4%. It would be
sort of involved to switch the drivers again, but if I get around to
it, I'll post the CPU usage here.
I've Googled this subject to death, and information on the pros and
cons of these two driver choices is extremely difficult to come by.

Also, the NVidia drivers have a speed test button inside the
entry for the controller in Device Manager, might be interesting to see
what that shows.

NCQ mainly provides gains when there are multiple disk transactions
occurring at the same time - something like HD Tach likely doesn't
stress that very much. Then again, many common desktop applications
don't really do that either.

I realize that NCQ will provide discernible benefits only under some
conditions, but I was hoping to have it enabled, even if it doesn't
help often. I presumed that it was a feature of the nForce chipset
rather than the drivers,


Ron