Ron, maybe you missed this from the bottom of my last thread and
hopefully you'll have the answers:
The ATI AIW X600 Pro is PCI Express and at Newegg for $189.00, I know
I called it the Pro SLI, my mistake.
Two more questions maybe you can answer.
The two LAN ports on the mobo, LAN1 and LAN2, what is the difference
and which one do I connect to my cable modem?
One Ethernet controller is BUILT INTO the nForce chipset so it
communicates with CPU and memory over the very fast Hypertransport and
memory buses. It's PHY later is made by Marvell.
The other LAN port (the one on the left) is connected to a Marvell Gb
controller on the motherboard. It, too, is compatible with 1,000-Mbs
networks, but it communicates with the computer over the relatively
slower PCI bus. Obviously you can enable both. Some need that for
Internet Connection Sharing, but most of us connect all computers to
each other and the Internet via a router, what MS calls a "Residential
Gateway" in their Network Setup Wizard. Therefore you can disable one
to free up IRQs and polling delays. Most, but NOT ALL, folks
recommend using the nVidia port and disabling the Marvell one in BIOS.
(There was at least one tech site that found better benchmarks with
the Marvell port, but that may have been with a prior nForce driver.)
I'm using the nVidia LAN port -- the one on the right.
My current old reliable P4B266 has 3 fan connectors and when I look at
the A8N-SLI manual on page 2-23 I see 5 fan connectors on it, besides
the CPU_FAN what did you connect the other 4 to?
I saw only four besides the CPU connector. I haven't noticed if the
Premium board still has a fan header for the no-longer-present
southbridge fan.
I'm not that far in my build. I installed the operating system with
the mobo sitting on the benchtop, connected only to the PSU, an
optical drive, and my Raptor. The only fan in this entire rig is the
CPU (XP120) fan.I think I'll connect my case fans to the "Fan-Only"
connectors on my Antec PSU to see how it does controlling them. If
it's noisy, I might connect them to all those fan headers you found
and use Q-Fan or SpeedFan. I'll definitely connect the PSU's rpm
monitor to one of them, though.
Ron