hi all,
i've been thinking of using the a7v880 for new systems. after
googling thru this group for "a7v880" i noticed a fair number
of "problem" posts. not surprising given the tendency of folks
to only post when they are experiencing trouble.
so, anyone out there happily using an a7v880?
ciao,
david
The private forums can help with your quest. There are a
large number of forums, of which I only use a few. Here
is a sample thread.
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=367408&highlight=a7v880
All motherboards have problems of one sort or another. It
is the problems that have no obvious fix that kill the
reputation of a motherboard.
I like my A7N8X-E Deluxe and would recommend it - it
is picky about RAM, but if you pick up some CAS2 memory
for it, it should work just fine for you. It only gets
picky about RAM when run at DDR400. At DDR333, even
CAS3 will work. There are other brands of Nforce2
motherboards that have a good reputation, if you
are looking to save a few dollars.
To get to roughly the same price as the A7V880, you might
research the A7N8X-X board (or equiv from other manufacturers).
It is single channel, but since a FSB400 AthlonXP can
only theoretically move 3.2GB/sec, a single PC3200 bus
is enough to keep it pretty full anyway. The dual channel
on the A7N8X-E buys about 5% difference in performance,
which is not too significant.
As far as power supplies go, my peak consumption running at
3200+ equiv rates, with 3 sticks of RAM, is
[email protected]
5V@17A
[email protected]. The board draws most of its power from +5V.
If using a high end video card, the video card could draw
5.5A from +5V. Disk drives are 1 amp on +5V each. These
numbers soon add up, and 5V@25A is a bare minimum for this
board with a good video card (and judging by appearances, these
same rules should apply for the A7V880 too, as it has no
+12V 2x2 connector that I can see).
Paul
