AOpen nCK804Ua-LFS Motherboard report

[ChiPCGuy]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813137066

The above link is to this motherboard that I have recently installed into a new system build.

Basically, this is one VERY stable motherboard and is not quirky in any way. Pleasure to work with--easy build.

I put it through pretty heavy stress testing with SnM Burn, long mode on both the memory and CPU, with safe mode disabled and it passed with flying colors four times in a row. 25 passes of MemTest 86 v 1.60 and 48 hours of Prime95.

The goods:

1. Excellent placement of the SATA connectors. No interference with any video cards, regardless of length. Connectors are also the SATA II spec ones--very sturdy.
2. All on-board power connectors are in-line at the front of the board, nothing goes over the H/S Fan.
3. Well done BIOS, with plenty of OCing options. I have not OCd yet with the machine.
4. Uses a ton of high quality Rubycon 3300uF low ESR capacitors. That is one of the main selling points of the board.
5. MCP is in a place where you can use a passive heatsink without issue.
6. Smaller than full size ATX PCB. Similar size to the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra PCB. Similar layout, as well.
7. On-board Agere 1394a firewire and Realtek Azalia HD audio (ALC880).
8. DIMM slots spaced well--no problems with my DIMM heatsinks touching. Not staggered, but still spaced very well.
9. BIOS is smart enough to recognize a 1.4v CPU when it sees one. Many recent boards simply default to 1.5v regardless of core...
10. CMOS battery is irrelevant. Settings can be saved to EEPROM, so if CMOS battery dies a few years down the line it won't matter. The board will load from EEPROM.

The could be betters:

1. Pricey at $114 with a very limited bundle. Includes two modded flat cables that pass for rounded cables. No brackets provided AT ALL for any of the on-board ports. For some, that will be an issue, especially given the firewire can only be accessed via the on-board header.
2. No way to monitor CPU temp or MCP temp even using MBM 5 or Everest. No provided utility for doing so. Only place monitoring can be done is in the BIOS, and the CPU temp is radically incorrect. My idle temp with a 3800+, Thermalright XP-90C with Panaflo M1-A, and AS5 was 56C. Wow, must be wrong. Thought I misapplied the AS5 and reapplied again. Same temp. Voltages were dead-on, though.
3. No software bundle to speak of. The so-called AOpen bonus pack includes Acrobat Reader and a WinDMI utility.

My setup:

1. The motherboard previously described, with Microcool MOSFET chipsinks added to all MOSFETS and a Zalman NB47J passive MCP H/S glued on using Arctic Silver Alumina thermal epoxy.
2. Venice 3800+ at default speed.
3. OCZ PC3200 Plat Rev. 2 -- 1 Gig (2x512).
4. Thermalright XP-90C with AS5.
5. XFX GeForce 7800GT OC.
6. Chaintech AV-710 VIA Envy24HT-S sound card using the Wolfson DAC at high sample rate in 2.1 configuration.
7. Hitachi T7K250 250Gig SATA II at 3.0Gig (NCQ disabled in drivers).
8. Antec Sonata I case with 2 Vantec Stealth 120mm fans.
9. OCZ PowerStream 520 Watt PSU.
10. Lite-On Combo CD/RW DVD-ROM.
11. Vantec 7 in 1 media reader.
12. Klipsch Promedia 2.1 THX Certified speakers.
13. Hyundai L90D+ 19" PVA/LCD using DVI-D.

The shipping BIOS is 1.03, and is actually more recent than the latest on the AOpen website. No BIOS update necessary. Supports all recent A64 (including X2 3800+) right out of the box. I have not tested the on-board Azalia HD sound. I opted right for one of the best sound cards out there--the Chaintech AV-710. The Envy24HT-S never causes anyone problems, and is quite mature with the latest 4.51c drivers from VIAARENA.

Using nForce 6.66 and GeForce 77.77. XP Home SP2.

If anyone has any questions, let me know.

BTW--I was previously posting under ChicagoPCGuy, and had racked up quite a few posts. Forgot my login info and lost the emai...crap. Oh well, I guess this is post #1 again....

 

[ChiPCGuy]

bump

 

[ClockerXP]

Thanks. The great layout is one of the reasons I plan on getting this board as well. Nice to know SATAII connectors are included. I think I'll pick up the same drive you have to complete the package.

I also have the OCZ RAM you have. Currently mulling over what CPU to get. Let us know if the overclocking is OK.

I planned on installing WinXP 64 for my initial install as well...

Also considering an aftermarket chipset cooler as well as CPU cooler. Anticipate any clearance problems for the CPU? Also, I'm considering a Zalman passive chipset cooler or the Swiftech (18dB) active one. Do you think active chipset cooling is required for this board?

Thanks,
CxP

 

[ClockerXP]

bump 'cause I meant to subscribe to this thread

 

[vailr]

Originally posted by: ChiPCGuy

7. Hitachi T7K250 250Gig SATA II at 3.0Gig (NCQ disabled in drivers).

3 questions:
Why is NCQ disabled? Does this board support NCQ?
And, what does the "3.0Gig" refer to?
Thanks.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: vailr

Originally posted by: ChiPCGuy

7. Hitachi T7K250 250Gig SATA II at 3.0Gig (NCQ disabled in drivers).

3 questions:
Why is NCQ disabled? Does this board support NCQ?
And, what does the "3.0Gig" refer to?
Thanks.

I disable NCQ because it confers no performance advantage in a desktop usage pattern, and in fact, will cause a minor slow down. I therefore disable it. A peek over at StorageReview will give you the benchmarks to show you what I mean. I have also benchmarked my drive with it on and off, and it is slower with it on. You disable NCQ in Conrol Panel, under the SATA controller section of DEVICE MANAGER. The drivers enable it by default, you will have to go disable it and then this is followed by a reboot.

The 3.0Gig is part of the SATA II spec, and means that the Hitachi T7K250 will run at 3.0Gig/second transfer rate vs. 1.5 Gig which is SATA I. You have to run the Hitachi utility via bootable ISO image from CD and then change the drive from SATA 1.5 to 3.0 because it ships at SATA 1.5 for backward compatibility. The ISO image can be downloaded from the Hitachi website. When turning it on, change it from 1.5 to 3.0 and then DISABLE SPREAD SPECTRUM on the same screen as that can slow you down too. The nForce4 Ultra MCP supports the 3.0 Gig transfer rate, so the drive is an EXCELLENT match for this board. Hitachi drives are very very good. I would not hesitate to recommend them, as they provide the most bang for the buck out there. NewEgg and ZZF have excellent pricing on them.

Active chipset cooling is not required if you do not intend to radically overclock. The Zalman NB47J is actually more effective by about 10degrees C than the stock active coolers on many boards. I cannot speak for the other coolers you may or may not use as I have not used them.

Board is still running very well, with no lockups or weirdness. I only wish AOpen would release a utility that would read the CPU and MCP temps!

I have not OC'd with it yet.

Hope that helps!

 

[Greenman]

I was just looking around the Storage Review site, and couldn't find anything about the pros and cons of ncq. Do you have a link perhaps? I'd really like to read that since it seems to contradict what other sites have to say. Since NCQ is the primary feture of sataII, if it doesn't work it would change my upgrade plans. Personaly, I feel the sataII transfer rate is a total joke. I've never heard of an ide drive that can sustain the 100 megs a second spec of ata 100.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: Greenman
I was just looking around the Storage Review site, and couldn't find anything about the pros and cons of ncq. Do you have a link perhaps? I'd really like to read that since it seems to contradict what other sites have to say. Since NCQ is the primary feture of sataII, if it doesn't work it would change my upgrade plans. Personaly, I feel the sataII transfer rate is a total joke. I've never heard of an ide drive that can sustain the 100 megs a second spec of ata 100.

Go back and look at StorageReview. Under the Performance Database, go ahead and run a comparison of NCQ capable drives with NCQ enabled and disabled. There is a performance hit with it enabled--EXCEPT in a server/workstation environment where there are a lot of outstanding *random* read requests, which NCQ is designed to improve upon. The thing is, there are not a lot of outstanding random read requests on a typical desktop.

I am surprised you have such a high opinion on NCQ. There are a lot articles that have pointed either no performance advantage or even performance hits. X-Bit labs, HardOCP, etc. have all pointed this out.

As for SATA 3.0--wow are you wrong. When it comes to burst speed out of cache, the SATA 3.0 Gig capable drives have a burst speed literally 70% faster than SATA I. When it comes to sustained performance there is no difference, but that is to be expected because the hdd platter rotation and density come into play there, plus we are dealing with a mechanical device that can only go so fast. BUT, when data is in the cache, the SATA 3.0 interface speed shows it muscle and in a BIG way. It is insane to pass this up, because *any* improvement, even if only from the 8Meg cache across the interface, is a really good thing when dealing with the primary bottleneck in your system.

That is all I have to say on the topic. Go back and do more research.

 

[ClockerXP]

Thanks a lot for your feedback. Please feel free to post any more observations or updates on the AOpen S939 board...
Thanks,
CxP

 

[ClockerXP]

Does Cool-N-Quiet work OK on the Aopen ? How loud is the chipset fan?

Thanks,
CXP

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: ClockerXP
Does Cool-N-Quiet work OK on the Aopen ? How loud is the chipset fan?

Thanks,
CXP

Did not test the chipset fan...immediately used the Zalman NB47J before first boot. I just tried CnQ, and it appears to work OK. I did not extensively test with it, though, but it is operational.

 

[Aenslead]

AOpen products are usually very solid and very well made. The reason they are not that famous, inspite of their quality, is because they never actually made BIOS that supported OCing.

The quality of their components and the stability of their motherboards are top noch. They could be on par with ABIT if they supported OCing a tad more.

 

[ClockerXP]

My experiences with the AOpen AK79D-400VN (NF2, Socket 462) motherboard was that it was a great board and excellent overclocking as well. While they don't have some of the crazy voltage options that the hardcore OCing boards do, I believe they are a higher quality product (in general). To say they don't support overclocking isn't true, it just isn't a hard core overclocking board company. They OC pretty good in general, I'll comment more after I get my new board in a few weeks...

CxP

 

[ChiPCGuy]

I want to stress that I have been using AOpen mobos since 1998 and I think they make some of the highest (if not THE highest quality) motherboards available. True, they might be light on bundle, or may not OC over the top, but when it comes to stock speed, stability, and LONGEVITY, I have found them second to none. I have a number of systems around still running Slot 1 Celerons on the AX63Pro and some P3 Coppermine based Slot 1 systems designed around the AX6BC Pro Gold series (the AX6BC Pro Gold is one of the best mobos in history, IMHO). Those systems have been running strong for SEVEN years now.

 

[SPQQKY]

Sorry to dredge up an older thread, but I wanted to concur with you gentleman. I strongly believe that AOpen makes the best motherboard available. It's always a hard choice for me to choose between an AOpen or a more OCing friendly board when I do an upgrade. Ever since I got into overclocking, I have strayed from AOpen, though I couldn't pass up a few of their AX45C Pentium 4 boards (yes, a few) a couple of years back.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Oh, forgot to update this thread. I have bitched at AOpen pretty nastily for the last couple of weeks and they will be releasing a BIOS rev to address the misread CPU temp in BIOS. I am also working on them for a Windows based utility as well. I won't let up...I can get really insistent and I won't hesitate to go head to head with one of their engineers on something.

I also decided to try out the onboard 880 HD audio. Wow! Sounds just as good or better than the Chaintech AV-710 if you can believe it! I think I will continue with the on-board sound as it has better options than the VIA drivers, and VIA has a couple of bugs in their drivers that have been well reported on and not fixed in over a year....VIA sucks, with just about everything. The Envy24HT-S is very good, and the reason why is because VIA did not design it. They bought it, from ICEnsemble. Now VIA gets to write the drivers, which of course they FUBAR. The latest driver release is a great example--check out VIAARENA and see what the reaction is! Holy crap...VIA left out 3D Sound support in the latest release. Incredible. If you are using one of these cards that uses reference drivers, stick to driver rev. 4.51C for the moment.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: SPQQKY
Sorry to dredge up an older thread, but I wanted to concur with you gentleman. I strongly believe that AOpen makes the best motherboard available. It's always a hard choice for me to choose between an AOpen or a more OCing friendly board when I do an upgrade. Ever since I got into overclocking, I have strayed from AOpen, though I couldn't pass up a few of their AX45C Pentium 4 boards (yes, a few) a couple of years back.

QFT.

I am a major EPoX supporter as well, but I have been waiting and waiting for AOpen to finally release their nForce4 Ultra board, and when they did I jumped right on it. No regrets. The 9NPA+ Ultra I was using went into a family member's machine and is working quite well, too.

 

[SPQQKY]

I found this thread on a google search......because I was looking for info on it. I have been doing much more movie editing and recording and recording TV shows, so longevity and stability are my main objective lately and not so much OCing. This Epox has been VERY good to me, but I can't deny my desire to pick up this AOpen board.
One question, does the firewire header look to be standard? I know they did an odd pin configuration for USB on one of their boards, but can't remember which. I need the firewire for my external DVD Burner.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: SPQQKY
I found this thread on a google search......because I was looking for info on it. I have been doing much more movie editing and recording and recording TV shows, so longevity and stability are my main objective lately and not so much OCing. This Epox has been VERY good to me, but I can't deny my desire to pick up this AOpen board.
One question, does the firewire header look to be standard? I know they did an odd pin configuration for USB on one of their boards, but can't remember which. I need the firewire for my external DVD Burner.

Standard headers. I am using an Antec Sonata case and the firewire header and USB headers work perfectly with the supplied connectors from the case. Pin outs are the same.

 

[Remedy]

Anymore progress updates?

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Board is still working perfectly. AOpen is now claiming they cannot fix the incorrect CPU temps in the BIOS due to how they designed the BIOS/ACPI interface. I am still pressing for a Windows based utility, however.

I am making regular use of CnQ now, along with the AOpen fan-speed regulation option in the BIOS. Makes for a very quiet machine. No issues with either the fan-speed regulation or CnQ.

Overall, I am still sure I made a good choice. The misread CPU temp is annoying, but not a deal breaker.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

ClockerXP was using this same board and came home one day to a dead system. Mobo died. Just FYI, but I am hoping it was simply a defective board and not something more pervasive that will cause my system early demise. I have had the board running for a month now, I would assume that any kind of issue would probably have shown up by now considering the level of stress testing I have done plus the heavy gaming I do with FarCry and Doom3. If anything happens, I will let everyone know.

 

[dwb]

Just joined the Anandtech forums, been hanging out elsewhere for too long, perhaps!

I am really interested in this Aopen board, I wish that there was more info. I am concerned about support; there can't be a lot of these in cirrculation.

I don't overclock, and want stabilty with good stock performance. Build quality is VERY important to me; I am not interested in SLI. I am about settled on the MSI Ultra solution, but would sure like to get more input on this Aopen board.

Thanks to all for the above posted info.

dwb

 

[PClark99]

http://translate.google.com/translate?h...CK804Ua-LFS%2Breview%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

see if this works

 

[dwb]

PCClark99, you da' man! The first page of the review is tolerably translated, but the links to the other pages are in German. How would I go about seeing the whole thing in translation?
dwb