WOOHOOHOOOOOO!!! I am CANTERWOOD!

[BBA]

I went to the computer show this morning to replace my Gagabyte 8IRXP with a failing AGP slot...I found an AOpen AX4C MAX board (http://www.aopen.com/products/mb/AX4CMax.htm)...for $190...I couldnt refuse!

Looks like I wont have to settle for old crap performance anymore! Here is the list of goodies it has:

800 MHX FSB Intel Canterwood 875P/ICH5R chipset
Hyperthreading support
4x Dual Channel DDR 400 (4GB max)
8X AGP
Gigabit LAN
IEEE 1394
SATA-Raid
IDE Raid
EzClock 1MHz FSB adjustments to 200 MHZ (quad pumped)
Dual Bios
ALC 650 sound ( optical in and out as well as 6 speaker )


Ok...WISH ME LUCK, IM GOING IN!

[Roadkill]

Good luck!,you lucky dog,

[NDC]

Be sure to test some benchmarks.. Sounds like it's going to be ver fast system!

[Mntsnow]

I'm green with envy BBA!

[BBA]

Finally got through with hardware installation part...I am very impressed with the board layout given the number of devices and external connectors I am using. It looks very open and clean.

Another good thing is the Promise 20378 SATA/RAID controller correctly identified my existing raid array, so I dont have to worry about data transfer now ( 240 Gigs is a lot to handle too...)

The Software installation is underway right now, but I probably wont get to the testing phase until sometime late tomorrow, since I have to be somewhere at 7:30 tonight and will be busy until tomorrow night basically.

[BBA]

I'm posting from it now!

[keith]

That is an awsome card. I had been looking at some reviews for that chipset and it is soo good

What chip are you going to put in?

I keep scrolling down and looking at the features..............drool!

[robin801]

that board does everything. i kept scrolling down trying to find out if it does dishes.:)

[BBA]

Well...I'm not sure what it doesnt do, but mine does not seem to overclock very well.

I had a Gigabyte with my 2.0a chip before, and I overclocked the chip to 2.7GHz no problem, had to go to 1.625 volts on the core but it was stable and cool running.

With this board, if I set ANYTHING other than default core frequency, it fails to boot. I am not sure if it is a defective board or if it just cant handle it...but I think I'm going to see if I can swap it out to tell.

The thing is, this board has "CPU overcurrent protection" which may be the cause of the problem. Maybe overclocking causes the cpu to use more current, therefore tripping the protection circuit. It's only a hunch...but a swap out of boards will verify this.

I did have one casualty, a 120GB WD 8MB hard drive. It was all working fine until I rebooted once yesterday. The really sad thing is it's part of my striped raid 0 array. I am going to try to switch out the electronics on the drive to recover the arrays data ( don't feel like loosing all my email and MP3's and games and iso's and such ). I am having a friend bring one over tomorrow for the experiment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[BBA]

Here are some good things about the board:

Driver installation is very easy from the auto run of the "AOpen Bonus Pack" CD that is shipped with the board.

There are provisions for front channel and microphone speaker jacks on front panel of cases that support it.

SilentTek is great at keeping the 6000 RPM chipset fan running at a low noise level. I have the chipset and CPU fans running on a speed step where RPM is dependant on chipset/CPU temperature, perspectively. I have the chipset fan set so at 30ºC it is off completely, at 34ºC it is at 15%...and so on up to 100% at 50ºC. I have similar setting for the CPU fan. Basically, at idle or browsing internet use like right now, both CPU and chipset temps are so low the fans are off completely...really helps the noise factor.

The Gigabit NIC seems to work very well...even pulling files at 68% network utilization, I only have a few percent cpu cycle use.

So far here is my expanded list of complaints:

Besides overclocking ( which I can do but not reliably on this board) I have come to the conclusion this board is shipped with a beta bios at best. Most software features used as selling points are not functional. In specific:

The nifty little driver CD called the "AOpen Bonus Pack" is nothing more than a genericCD that probably ships with every older board they sell. A lot of the software packages/drivers would not function on this board. To name just a few:

- Vivid Bios is not enabled in the bios on the board, buty is used as a selling point.

- EZ Clock is not compatible with this bios/board version, which was another selling point.

- The Intel Application Raid Acellerator would not install as it said the board/hardware is not recognized.

- WinBios is not supportted by this bios/board...yet still another selling point not present in the final product.


So, my current conclusion is yes...it's a nice motherboard, but I have yet to see the performance my 845 board gave me before it's AGP slot died. I am going to offset this conclusion some for the reason I do not have two DIMM's installed to enable the dual channel memory function yet, so I should see, and I expect to see, a nice performance gain once I can add a second DIMM to enable dual channel memory functionality.


So...either this board is going to get a lot better by bios updates...or I was a sucker and was duped into buying the cheapest 875P board out that was marketed as a "Super board"

Only time will tell!