Since there isn't an official thread yet, I said I would post my initial observations. No chance to really mess with bios yet, and not overclocking until I get a 40mm fan for the NB which does not come standard but :
1. The Tuniq Tower fits on this board...in both directions. If you use it with the longest side parallel to the i/o shield so the fan is blowing towards you rear case fan, it will still fit, but the bottom edge of the tuniqs 120mm fan will touch the edge of the NB heatsink. No big deal. And you can still get the 40mm fan on.
2. Using an Akasa Mirage, it's not possible to slide the mobo tray back in if you do an external mobo/tuniq install as the cpu scoket is positioned so high on the board, the top of the tuniq will be hitting of the psu cage.
When fitting the Tuniq onto this board (parallel with i/o shield), I had to first mount the tuniq on the board and then mount the board onto the mobo tray while it was in the case. This was also very difficult as the top of the Tuniq is hitting off the upped side of psu cage. I had to bend back in the little metal catches on the bottom of the psu cage (the ones used to mount the optional hdd cage).
3. My Cellshock 8000C4 booted no problem, at 533mhz, 4,4,4,12,2T. Have it now running at specced 1000mhz,4,4,4,12,2T. Will see how far I can run with 1T tommorrow.
4. The Abit Wifi card is fussy. Twice is mysteriously dissapeared from the device manager.
5. My temps are very high. Abit uguru reads mid to high 30's for cpu. CoreTemp reads mid to high 40's, closer to 50 actually. Maybe mounting the tuniq the way I did, one of the bolts loosened and it's not flush against cpu, or possibly too much thermal paste. If temps stay this high, I might remount it. Then again, the windows in my room were closed all day with the radiator on. Will see tommorrow.
6. The fan speed control works, you can control up to 5 case fans, and cpu fan. It uses voltage instead of pwm. You set a low and high voltage in uGuru in windows (8v and 12v are default), and low and high temp, and what you want the temps to be based on (cpu, system, pwm). I just used cpu, and have 3 case fans. I noticed the bios always reads full speed, and I can't find the rpm readout in the uguru app, but I noticed when I disable the control the fan noise increases - so it works. And the fans do speed up when cpu temps go up, and as it does not use pwm the fans do not click when running slow.
7. Had no OS setup / driver issues issues whatsoever, except to say I had to install the silicon image sata drivers to remove the bang in the device manager. This is even after disabling it in the bios.
8. The Abit CD autodetects your devices. Because I had audio disabled it only picked up on the chipset driver. The forceware driver on the CD is the latest on Nvidias site too. I just insalled SMBus, NVIDE, and did not bother with the nic. No mysterious event viewer warning have appeared for the hard drive yet, which is typical with nvidia ide drivers.
9. If running sli you cannot use the 4pin AUX connector at the bottom of the board as the 2nd video card blocks it. I think it is optional anyway and the manual says you only need for additional power to pci-e devices. However with 2-pci-e connectors per each G80 on a PSU that can do 70amp on the 12v line, I really doubt I will have power issues.
1. The Tuniq Tower fits on this board...in both directions. If you use it with the longest side parallel to the i/o shield so the fan is blowing towards you rear case fan, it will still fit, but the bottom edge of the tuniqs 120mm fan will touch the edge of the NB heatsink. No big deal. And you can still get the 40mm fan on.
2. Using an Akasa Mirage, it's not possible to slide the mobo tray back in if you do an external mobo/tuniq install as the cpu scoket is positioned so high on the board, the top of the tuniq will be hitting of the psu cage.
When fitting the Tuniq onto this board (parallel with i/o shield), I had to first mount the tuniq on the board and then mount the board onto the mobo tray while it was in the case. This was also very difficult as the top of the Tuniq is hitting off the upped side of psu cage. I had to bend back in the little metal catches on the bottom of the psu cage (the ones used to mount the optional hdd cage).
3. My Cellshock 8000C4 booted no problem, at 533mhz, 4,4,4,12,2T. Have it now running at specced 1000mhz,4,4,4,12,2T. Will see how far I can run with 1T tommorrow.
4. The Abit Wifi card is fussy. Twice is mysteriously dissapeared from the device manager.
5. My temps are very high. Abit uguru reads mid to high 30's for cpu. CoreTemp reads mid to high 40's, closer to 50 actually. Maybe mounting the tuniq the way I did, one of the bolts loosened and it's not flush against cpu, or possibly too much thermal paste. If temps stay this high, I might remount it. Then again, the windows in my room were closed all day with the radiator on. Will see tommorrow.
6. The fan speed control works, you can control up to 5 case fans, and cpu fan. It uses voltage instead of pwm. You set a low and high voltage in uGuru in windows (8v and 12v are default), and low and high temp, and what you want the temps to be based on (cpu, system, pwm). I just used cpu, and have 3 case fans. I noticed the bios always reads full speed, and I can't find the rpm readout in the uguru app, but I noticed when I disable the control the fan noise increases - so it works. And the fans do speed up when cpu temps go up, and as it does not use pwm the fans do not click when running slow.
7. Had no OS setup / driver issues issues whatsoever, except to say I had to install the silicon image sata drivers to remove the bang in the device manager. This is even after disabling it in the bios.
8. The Abit CD autodetects your devices. Because I had audio disabled it only picked up on the chipset driver. The forceware driver on the CD is the latest on Nvidias site too. I just insalled SMBus, NVIDE, and did not bother with the nic. No mysterious event viewer warning have appeared for the hard drive yet, which is typical with nvidia ide drivers.
9. If running sli you cannot use the 4pin AUX connector at the bottom of the board as the 2nd video card blocks it. I think it is optional anyway and the manual says you only need for additional power to pci-e devices. However with 2-pci-e connectors per each G80 on a PSU that can do 70amp on the 12v line, I really doubt I will have power issues.
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