Asus A8V-E Deluxe

[Anders Bang]

Hi,

I am strongly considering buying this mobo for a HTPC which will also act as
a file-server in my house (setup as SATA RAID mirroring) and it will
therefore be running 24/7/365. My only objection regarding this board is the
fan cooling the chipset, since I plan on building a fanless system. Does
anyone know if the fan can be replaced by a heatsink?

I am also very much interested in knowing your opinion in general about
using this board in such a setup.

Thanks
Anders
Copenhagen

 

[Peter van der Goes]

Hi,

I am strongly considering buying this mobo for a HTPC which will also act
as a file-server in my house (setup as SATA RAID mirroring) and it will
therefore be running 24/7/365. My only objection regarding this board is
the fan cooling the chipset, since I plan on building a fanless system.
Does anyone know if the fan can be replaced by a heatsink?

I am also very much interested in knowing your opinion in general about
using this board in such a setup.

Thanks
Anders
Copenhagen

OK choice if you never intend to use a dual core CPU. The VIA K8T890 chipset
will not handle the new dual core processors (period, even with BIOS
updates). OTOH, the A8V deluxe (K8T800 chipset) will handle the dual core
CPU's with a BIOS update. Another advantage (unless you already have a spare
PCI-E video card and don't need to buy one), is that the A8V Deluxe takes an
AGP card. Can't imagine you need state-of-the-art graphics on a file server.

 

[BC]

I am strongly considering buying this mobo for a HTPC which will also act as
a file-server in my house (setup as SATA RAID mirroring) and it will
therefore be running 24/7/365. My only objection regarding this board is the
fan cooling the chipset, since I plan on building a fanless system. Does
anyone know if the fan can be replaced by a heatsink?

Hi--

I am not a big fan of VIA chipsets after running into various annoying
crashes and incompatibilities traced to them. For stability, it seems
Intel chipsets are best, followed closely by NVidia, then the others.

The A8V-E does not get real great reviews from Newegg.com's customer
ratings:

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/FeedBack/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813131510

Also, from a review:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-a8ve-deluxe_9.html

"The thing is that the heatsink surface area is quite small, however,
ASUS (A8V-E) used a high-speed fan with the rotation speed up to
8,000rpm. The fan rotation speed is permanent, so the working mainboard
produces very noticeable unpleasant noise. Moreover, I would also
question the efficiency of this fan because the North Bridge temperature
remained within 50-60oC range throughout the entire test session."


This particular fan has gotten a lot of bad press, and has apparently
been replaced by ASUS with a better one, but, any fan adds noise and a
potential failure point. (ASUS has been replacing it for free, and it
seems that their latest products have a newer, better version).

A8N-SLI Premium has heat pipes (no fan)--has to be mounted vertically,
so not sure if that fits with your HTPC requirement--

AV8-Deluxe appears to be fanless:

http://dk.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=238&l1=3&l2=15&l3=0

But, not sure if it having an AGP slot is an issue for you.

I use a Tyan Tomcat K8E: has been rock solid, no chipset fan, built to
be a "server" board, supports Cool n Quiet: can get a version with an
ATI Rage XL video built in, or, a simpler version with only one LAN
port, no video:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813151156

Version I have:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813151154

"Tomcat K8E (S2865) [ NEW! ]
• Supports AMD Athlon™ 64, Athlon 64 FX, Opteron 939 µPGA processor
• Four DDR 400/333 DIMMs for up to 4GB of unbuf. ECC/Non-ECC mem.
• Integrated audio (option), graphics, LAN controllers, and FireWire
• Two x1 PCIe, one x16 PCIe (graphics), and four 32-bit 33MHz PCI slots
• Integrated SATA controller and integrated PCI IDE
• ATX footprint (12" x 9.6"; 305mm x 244mm)"

Have been very happy with it thus far; flashing BIOS was not quite as
simple as on ASUS board--and, Tyan seems to sell mostly to VAR/OEM
clients, so not a lot of consumer hand holding. But, the documentation
is good, and their web site shows they pay a lot of attention to
compatibility and stability.

http://www.tyan.com/support/html/techref.html

By the way, a good site with info on building quiet and HTPCs:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/index.php

Good luck--

 

[Anders Bang]

Thanks for all the input. However, I am not convinced that this is not a
good board.

I myself have a VIA-based board (Asus A7V333) and the stability issues I
have had, have all disappeared since I changed my PSU to one of higher
quality. SO they were probably related to the PSU and not the board.

The A8N-series is very attractive with a proven track record but also very
expensive and does not come with integrated WiFi like the A8V/A8V-E boards.

As for the chipset-fan, I plan on replacing that with a heatsink anyway - no
matter the quality/noise generated by it.

Sure, SATA may be difficult to setup, but that procedure is related to
Windows and not the board/chipset. Once it's done, it's done...

But thanks again for your input - appreciate it!
Anders

 

[Paul]

Thanks for all the input. However, I am not convinced that this is not a
good board.

I myself have a VIA-based board (Asus A7V333) and the stability issues I
have had, have all disappeared since I changed my PSU to one of higher
quality. SO they were probably related to the PSU and not the board.

The A8N-series is very attractive with a proven track record but also very
expensive and does not come with integrated WiFi like the A8V/A8V-E boards.

As for the chipset-fan, I plan on replacing that with a heatsink anyway - no
matter the quality/noise generated by it.

Sure, SATA may be difficult to setup, but that procedure is related to
Windows and not the board/chipset. Once it's done, it's done...

But thanks again for your input - appreciate it!
Anders

Initially, I was going to suggest an Aopen i915GMm-HFS as a
good platform for a HTPC/server. But depending on the video
format you want to use, your choice of a stronger AMD
solution might make more sense.

http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=694

(Improved heatsink for Aopen board)
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article252-page6.html

This article just came out, on building an HTPC. It looks
like they kept the Northbridge fan and CPU fan, and got
decent temperatures in a small enclosure. If they only
could have reviewed the video performance, like in the
Sudhian article, the article would have been complete.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20051003/index.html

The Nvidia 6100 chipset, just introduced, has built-in
graphics. But my guess would be, the majority of motherboard
makers would miss the opportunity to copy the Aopen video
interface options. Otherwise, the soon-to-be-released
6100 based boards would make another HTPC option.

(This is an example of the first available 6100 based board.
There will likely be others soon.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138264

Paul

 

[John]

I wish I had know about the xbitlabs article before I got my
A8Ve-Deluxe. Every board I have used has required a little futzing
(sp?) but not like this. In 7 months I've had to screw with a lan
driver that didn't work(had to get one directly from Marvell), a wlan
driver that only worked as admin, USB 2.0 that required an RMA to fix
and now BSOD screens from the SATA (just one drive) controller. This is
my first ASUS board and for sure my last. Life is too short.

John