mylanta
04-05-2006, 07:43 PM
Well, rather than add to my "power management is making me crazy" thread, I thought this deserves a new start.
I was looking for a socket 939 board to keep away from SLI, which is of no interest to me, and I suspect is part of the reason I had so many problems with the Asus boards. A new board from Biostar TForce 4U fit the bill perfectly.
Actually had this been around when I bought the first Asus mobo, I would never have gone there. It has pci-express 16 slot and an Agp slot and it's at a great price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138270
(of course it was $3 higher when I bought it...)
Impressive package as it has it's own mesh carry bag for the manual, belts and software. This is the first board I have seen with 4 sata slots, that has 4 sata cables and not only that 2 ide cables, which I haven't seen in years, and really nice quality ones. Software cd and driver for sata (which is completely unnecessary as Nvidia has driver built in) and even 4 nicely packaged heat spreaders for your ram. The box it all comes in is a quality looking carry box with a handle as well so this is a really nice package too.
It went right in though somehow the sata controllers were mismarked. but after scratching my head a few times because I could not install XP as I kept getting a message "no disk in volume"...I caught on. Just like either the hdled or power led is almost always reversed on every mobo I have ever built.
Bios has a few quirks that took me by surprise where if you enable usb mouse and keyboards, then ps2 shut off, which of course isn't mentioned in the manual (nothing of any importance ever is anyway).
Risers are in a different position on the right side which is an annoying surprise, but is surmountable.
I had some problems where a freeze in the middle of Windows Updates made me have to install all over again, as I could not get out of the loop of auto update not completing and my inability to reverse what had happened, but I wasn't far into the install anyway.
I firmly believe that the best way to do an install is install with Sp2, then mobo drivers and then all Windows Updates, before turning on auto update, and before installing any programs, and it proved well as usual after intial problem.
Nice quick system, with power management and hibernate working fine after full install and backup images made, and it moves along nicely with it's 2 gb ram and Pci Express NVidia 6600 256 meg and Athlon 4200 dual core cpu.
All in all well manufactured board, easy to install and if you want to overclock, this baby is ready for you.
I was looking for a socket 939 board to keep away from SLI, which is of no interest to me, and I suspect is part of the reason I had so many problems with the Asus boards. A new board from Biostar TForce 4U fit the bill perfectly.
Actually had this been around when I bought the first Asus mobo, I would never have gone there. It has pci-express 16 slot and an Agp slot and it's at a great price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138270
(of course it was $3 higher when I bought it...)
Impressive package as it has it's own mesh carry bag for the manual, belts and software. This is the first board I have seen with 4 sata slots, that has 4 sata cables and not only that 2 ide cables, which I haven't seen in years, and really nice quality ones. Software cd and driver for sata (which is completely unnecessary as Nvidia has driver built in) and even 4 nicely packaged heat spreaders for your ram. The box it all comes in is a quality looking carry box with a handle as well so this is a really nice package too.
It went right in though somehow the sata controllers were mismarked. but after scratching my head a few times because I could not install XP as I kept getting a message "no disk in volume"...I caught on. Just like either the hdled or power led is almost always reversed on every mobo I have ever built.
Bios has a few quirks that took me by surprise where if you enable usb mouse and keyboards, then ps2 shut off, which of course isn't mentioned in the manual (nothing of any importance ever is anyway).
Risers are in a different position on the right side which is an annoying surprise, but is surmountable.
I had some problems where a freeze in the middle of Windows Updates made me have to install all over again, as I could not get out of the loop of auto update not completing and my inability to reverse what had happened, but I wasn't far into the install anyway.
I firmly believe that the best way to do an install is install with Sp2, then mobo drivers and then all Windows Updates, before turning on auto update, and before installing any programs, and it proved well as usual after intial problem.
Nice quick system, with power management and hibernate working fine after full install and backup images made, and it moves along nicely with it's 2 gb ram and Pci Express NVidia 6600 256 meg and Athlon 4200 dual core cpu.
All in all well manufactured board, easy to install and if you want to overclock, this baby is ready for you.