First thoughts of my Abit IP35-Pro...

clocka

clocka

clocka

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Just received my board this morning, rev 1.0...

First thing i have noticed is that there is no Spdif coaxial in/out connections which i thought i read in the specs, instead there is optical in/out which i havent seen on a motherboard alone before, normally its spdif or spdif+coaxial. so now i have to buy a 2m optical cable from auction sites for £3 and wait for that to come before i can use my computer as the board doesnt come with an optical cable or a pci bracket with spdif in/out connectors:(

it comes with 5 * red 45cm sata cables and crappy NON-rounded black ide and floppy cables, yet this board is £115+ !!!

the backplate doesnt have colours around the slots and holes which is a bit annoying as my room is often dark and you can easily see where a certain cable goes with that.



ok, the positives... kind of...


there is a cmos reset switch where the backplate is, it's inbetween the keyboard/mouse ps2 holes and the optical audio in/out holes, which very handy, BUT there is no protective cover for it, so if you accidently touch that or something hits it whilst your computer is on you might be in for a shock:( but it is very handy when you are overclocking in your 1st week of your build. i hope there is an option to disable this in bios once you have done overclocking!!!

the 8pin cable is in a good position, near the ps2 keyboard/mouse connectors, some boards have it further down which can get in the way of heatsinks.

the 24pin + floppy + ide are several inches further down on the right hand side than on normal boards so the cables may not reach depending on which case you have.

i shalln't be testing this board out in action until the optical audio cable arrives as i use a usb tv pen card for watching tv on my comp and need my sound badly.


so far there are quite a few annoying things about the board which i wish i knew before i bought it so that i could have ordered an optical cable earlier or gone with the gigabyte ds4.
 
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The optical spdif in/out is clear in the specs & at no point does it say coaxial.

At least the SATA cables are latching - I believe that Gigabyte has been getting criticism because theirs aren't ;)
The floppy/IDE cables may be flat but they aren't crappy (& tbh how many enthusiasts are still using IDE drives ).

No, there isn't a BIOS option to disable the rear CMOS switch - but you shouldn't really be playing around at the back of your PC too much ...
 
i bought it from another site so read their specs.

quite a few ppl still use IDE dvdwriters as they dont die often and ppl have had their dvdwriters for years, i bought a optaric 7170s sata with the board, will sell my nec ata writer. the optaric is 1" shorter which is nice:) thats gutting about the switch:( i might have to sellotape a drinks top over the switch so it doesnt get switched accidently. there really should have been a cap like on fighter planes over the shoot missile button they have a clear cap to prevent accidental pushing.
 
The cmos reset doesn't wipe the profiles. Takes all of 3 mins to put a profile back in place. As for the cable's, the £170 Asus Blitz came with ribbon cables. So they're not alone.
 
jesus £170 with no rounded, that is just ludicruous! my dfi boards i used to have came with rounded, boards £100+ should come with rounded.
 
Not that many boards come with rounded cables, i don't see it as a statement of quality tbh, also they can be more finicky than flat ones due to the nature of them being rounded so maybe they're playing it safe for everyone so that those with possible problem IDE devices (some are with rounded cables) won't face issues. As for Gigabytes SATA, my DS3/4 boards came with the orange/yellowish cables with the clip and they work quite well tbh, i might more rip the SATA connector or bruise it badly if pulled off without pressing the clip so its quite strong, one of the best shipping cables with boards i've seen is on my BAD Axe Intel boards. I agree the red cables are playing it a bit cheap and i don't like em.
 
i think the red sata cables are decent them come with clips like my p965 ds4, dont really see any difference other than colour, i like that i got 5, some boards give 2 or 4.

btw the box is very strong and pretty some boxes are flimpsy and hard to get everything back in again, this is very easy to pack things back in with.

so overall without testing the board its good, but a few minor negative points depending if you see those as important or not.
 
I've never accidentily hit the CMOS reset switch. It's near the top away from the USB ports which I would assume are most frequently fiddled around with on most peoples systems. Also, the switch doesn't stick out of the backplate. I find I have to push on it a slight amount when I do use it.

I do like the latching SATA cables though. I don't have to worry about knocking one off when my hand so much as brushes against one.
 
clocka said:
another bad thing is the usb ports are all together so if you have a large usb device like a hauppauge usb freeview card like i have you wont be able to use some of them due to it being too wide.

the asus board has a gap inbetween the usb ports where esata ports are so this wouldnt be a problem for them: http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/61/images/ASUS_P5K-E_06.jpg
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you've potentially got another 8 ports to play with let alone if you start using hubs on those ...
 
yeah i know but still some ppl dont want to use the pci brackets for extra usb ports or the usb headers on the motherboard to connect ones to the case, but still, a gap inbetween would be better.
 
of course you don't have both kb & mouse PS/2 ports on the P5K & to some people that would be more of a drawback.
nor do you have a clearCMOS - basically there isn't enough room to have everything there or they would all do it.
 
To be honest shouldn't your case have usb ports at the front? Id not want to keep fidding around behind my case to stick pen drives in. Seems more like your trying to find faults with the motherboard.
 
I have to agree to an extent, does sound like you are trying to find faults with the board more then you're pointing out what is good about it.

In the event that i'm totally wrong i'll be happy with my decision to buy the DS4 over the Abit.

Can't say i personally have any problems with the sata cables that came with the DS4 they work perfectly fine, they fit in securely, though if i had a 2nd vid card in there would be issues (but i don't).
 
I've just tried to 'accidentally' reset the CMOS, but I can't. It's actually quite a pain to use the switch once it's installed in the case as it is set back from the I/O shield.

As for the bundled cables - I haven't bought a board in some time (and I buy a lot of boards :D ) that had round cables. I actually think round cables are much more difficult to work with in a tidy case anyway.

As for the USB ports, the layout is pretty common in motherboards - it's usually a block of four in two pairs with the Firewire above one pair and the LAN above the other.

I can't comment on the SP/DIF thing as I use an XFi in the one rig I care about the sound, but again, it does sound like a very picky thing. That said - the DS4 does have the co-axial connector on the back, but no CMOS reset switch, which is a better thing for me as an overclocker anyway.

I'm sure you'll be a lot happier once you get the cable and start working with the board, although I think it was you that didn't think the P35-DS4 was any good either, so maybe not.
 
This board is an absolute nightmare!!!!!!!!!!!!

had a million error code on the display on the motherboard, saving changes in bios just stalls the computer in boot up number and get a new error number virtually every time. the alarm is on constantly due to watercooling and not using cpu fan, found out where to disable that go to save it and it wont, so have to use a case fan plugged into cpu fan connector. i have to reset cmos each time to be able to get into bios but me changing the boot order etc will not save, it stalls during bootup. I put memory in black slots and only 1gb showed in bios. the plastic memory securer snapped off 1 of them, had to take out pci-e card and ram to be able to put that back on.

worst board i've ever bought.

after a lot of faffing around and figured out to turn off the alarm i managed to get into windows with original "10" bios, flashed to latest "11" bios in windows and then tried changes some settings in bios and i now cannot get bios to save my settings.

i certainly dont recommend this board!:( will prob have to rma the board.

now when i choose load optimised defaults i get a nice "checksum mistake in bios" error, oh goodie:)!!!

i hate rma'ing, costs loads for posting a motherboard, then days for them to come back
 
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That's completely contrary to my experience, and while I'm on record as saying I prefer the Gigabyte P35-DS4 over the IP35-Pro, my IP35-Pro has been an absolute joy to use. I'm sorry you've had a bad experience, but I don't think it's typical of the board.
 
UPDATE: i managed to disconnect all my harddrives except my raptor which has the o.s on so it booted off that as that then have first boot priority, or you could look in boot priority in bios and change the sata cables so that sata1 is connected to your o.s drive. i then put bios 11 on a floppy, that didnt work, but bios 10 on a floppy did, now it works, i wonder if the bios 11 on the website is corrupt.

have any of you guys downloaded the bios 11??? i'd advise you to boycott bios 11 until we know more, use the default bios 10 that should be on your board, i've sent an email to abit with the info i gave here for them to investigate it.
 
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clocka said:
have any of you guys downloaded the bios 11??? i'd advise you to boycott bios 11 until we know more, use the default bios 10 that should be on your board, i've sent an email to abit with the info i gave here for them to investigate it.
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Bios 11 went in perfectly and works fine for me. Are you flashing the bootblock as well? Bios 10 was updated quickly, iirc it had bad ACHI support

A:\AWDFLASH.EXE M629B_11.BIN /py /sn /WB /cd /cp /cc /CKS
 
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i flashed from windows and from floppy using "runme" and pressing enter, which runs runme.bat which at the end flashes the boot block.

not a happy camper:(
 
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