K8V SE Questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter William
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William

I just purchased this board along with an Athlon 64 3200+ cpu.

I hope to assemble it this weekend, but I had a few questions before I
proceed.

First, I was planning on installing Windows XP Pro. But I also just
downloaded the Beta version of the 64 bit version of XP from
Microsofts site. Has anyone else tried this yet and is it worth my
time?

Second, the board specs say it supports AGP 8x, if I put my older 4x
AGP card in there for the time being, will it run? or do I need an 8x
card?

Third, I do hope to overclock the board, but the only memory I was
able to get my hands on was the Corsair CMX512-3200C2PT--I've read
numerous places to get the Corsair 3200LLPT memory--any thoughts if I
wasted my money or is this memory still good enough to overclock with?

Any thoughts on a good CPU fan/cooler? I'm not ready for water
cooling just yet, but would like something better than the factory
cooler.

And any last thoughts on things i should look out for while assembling
the computer--maybe stupid glitches that others here have encountered.

Its been about 5 years since I last built my own computer (Abit BP6),
so I'm sorry if theses questions seem dumb. I did read through this
messageboard, but didnt find the answers to these questions

Wish me luck and thanks in advance

-Bill
 
Hey Bill, got the K8V Deluxe myself so I dont know if there will be any major
differences but I'll tell ya what I ran in to.

In reguards to XP 64. Honestly unless you love beta testing I'd leave it alone.
I've played with it on a seperate harddrive and like all other beta and early
releases it has issues here and there (major problem for me was lack of sound
drivers for my sound card).

Check the volatage on your card, if its somewhat modern you should be fine. I'm
using a Geforce 3 card in mine and its not having any issues.

If your planning on overclocking with this board you may have made a bad
investment. This isnt one of the boards that OC'ers go for when trying to OC
the 64bit Chip. However I'm not an OC'er so I cant say for sure, try posting on

alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.amd
for more detailed info on it.

If your not planning on OC'ing this board the Stock retail fan works just fine
on mine. I run in an insulated case and my heat isnt anywhere near an issue.
Again try the overclockers forum/NG for some more indepth advice if you do want
to try it.

As for random glitches, I'd need to know more about what hardware your planning
on running but i"ll give you some brief run downs from what I've seen and delt
with.

First and foremost when it comes to set up, the prompt for how to get in to the
bios will flash by at about warp 9 since its probably going to be set for fast
boot. Either reset it hit f1 like a mad man when booting, also I found my board
REALLY does not like dealing with a USB keyboard when trying to deal with the
BIOS.

Download the newest drivers from via and asus. The most common complant I hear
on this NG is the CD that came with the board not working. If your planning on
running a SATA drive as your system drive this is crucial. Windows XP pre SP1
does not ship with native support for SATA (I'm not even sure about post SP1,
if someone can correct me please do) and so you'll have to load drivers off a
floppy during setup, standard hit F6 when prompted deal.
Also the via sata controler will not light up the harddrive LED on the case.
This is a known problem with this board. The normal IDE works as normal and I
belive the promise controller works on it as well.

When setting up your drives if you use a SATA for system and IDE for secondary,
should you get NT loader not found or some such error, dont freak, check the
bios settings, my board likes to default to use IDE as boot when I make any
type of drive changes (swapping out drives, etc..)

As always make sure you have a stable PSU, and download memtest86+. I found my
board to be a bit picky about the ram and it was though using memtest that I
was able to figure out it was the memory when I had an issue when building.
Both the via sata drivers and memtest86+ will require a floppy, I know a lot of
people that say the floppy is dead, do yourself a favor and make sure one is
installed on this system, makes life nice and easy in the long run.

I think I've babbled long enough but hopfuly this should help with anything you
might run in to.

Good luck
Arie
 
SATA + XP requires SP1.

It may be worth the effort to create a slip streamed XP install CD.
Google for "XP slipstream CD" without the quotes.
You can (if keen) also load all custom drivers, but that would only be a
good idea when they are WHQL + Stable.

- Tim
 
I cant begin to explain how much I appreciate your replies. But they
also give me new question (doh).

Not really a question, but I also beta tested Windows XP before it
came out a few years back and didnt really have any major issues--so
I'm still up in the air on this. The iso is downloaded and the disc
is sitting here next to me as I type....I have 2 days to decide :-)
But just because there were no major issues last time, who's to say I
wont have any this time--its from Microsft afterall. Atleast it was
FREE!

SATA was mentioned--and although I think I have an idea of what this
is, I really dont. Something to do with a RAID? And why would I want
to do this over using a standard IDE as my boot drive? I have an
older IBM 40 GB ATA 100 drive that I will be using for now--can I use
this with SATA, or would I need 2 drives for this? Sorry if these
are dumb questions, I'm gonna read up on this myself as soon as I'm
done here.

In addition to the RAM/Motherboard and CPU, I also purchased a new PSU
(Zalman 400w) so I should be ok on that front.

I have a 30 day return on the RAM, so maybe I'll look into getting the
3200LL memory from Corsair. The place I bought it sold the 3200LL,
but only in the Twin packaging and I couldnt afford 1GB of memory at
this point.
I'm not a crazy overclocker (anymore) but it just wouldnt be right if
there were no overclocking going on--I couldnt live with myself. Both
of my other computers are overclocked and have been running great for
8 and 5 years respectivly.

Thanks again

-Bill

PS and yes, I'll still be using a floppy--I've been burned too many
times by CD's that were supposed to be bootable, but wouldn't
 
Hey Sprite

Be interested in how you got your SATA drive to boot - 'cos I just can't!!!
Have the K8V, AMD64 3200+, WD 120GB SATA Drive, stock fan, Thermaltake case

Everything fires up no problem, except I can't install onto the SATA drive,
even with the drivers on floppy. XP picks up the drivers, and then says no
drive to install onto!

Any pointers you have would be great!

Cheers

Darren
 
<snip>Be interested in how you got your SATA drive to boot - 'cos I just
can't!!<snip>


Darren, I use the via controller for my SATA so I just downloaded the lastest
drivers for it from viaarena.com

If you use the promise controller I'd assume you could download the driver from
them. I never trust mobo companys to have the latest driver sets on their site
so if I can I try and go right to the source.

Also make sure you have the drive connected to the correct port. The K8V has
absoulty the worst documentation when it comes to port ID that I've ever, so
once you download the right drivers just sit with the case open and experiment
till you figure out which port is which.

Also make sure you have the bios set to boot off the sata drive. Its ID'd on
the via controller as a via"random numbers here" drive I belive. I found it
makes life a bit eaiser if you only have the SATA drive and the CD rom and
floppy drive connected to the board when loading so you dont have to worry
about it trying to default to the IDE channel. And if your not using the RAID
controller at all turn it off in bios, makes boot up time a lot faster.

If your still having issues try making sure you only have one power source
plugged in to the drive. SATA drives (in general) have both molax and their own
power ports (forget the name for the SATA power port). Last I heard you can
damage your drive if you have both power leads plugged in to the drive. Havent
personaly seen it happen yet (thank god) but I could see that possibly creating
issues.

Since you tried previously with a floppy I'm assuming you know the procedure.
If you dont, feel free to email me and I'll out line it in depth for ya.

Let me know how it works out for you
Arie
 
Hi

Is it better / recommended to use the Via controller for SATA or the Promise
one??

Any major differences?

Richard
 
I"ve heard some people say the preformance on the Promise is better than on the
Via, also (if it makes a difference) I've heard tell that the promise
controller can work with the HD LED on your case where as the via controller
wont.

Personaly I use the Via and have, admitiatly, been to lazy to go trying out the
promise and testing it out.

Anyone out there with any benchmarks for the Promise vs Via controller?

~
Arie
 
Hi

Is it better / recommended to use the Via controller for SATA or the Promise
one??

Any major differences?

Richard
Click to expand...

I use the Promise sata with no problems. The K8V SE Deluxe on some boards does
not illuminate the hard-drive led when using the via controller, but it works
okay with the Promise. (no big deal but that's why I use the Promise
controller) Readings taken with Sisoft Sandra 2004 give it around the 55Mbit per
sec transfer rate. That's on a Maxtor 160gig with 8meg cache. I used to get
around the 37mbit per sec with the same drive on IDE previously so a worthwhile
increase there.

Regards

John
 
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