( 2 reviews )
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Posted: 02-10-2009
I spent one day putting together the system and another day installing software, just to be disappointed at the end. Here is what you might want to know: The good: - The board is relatively easy to install and works pretty much nicely out of the box. - For the price is a pretty good value since it comes with a video card, sound card and Gigabit LAN, built in. - The NVIDIA video chip gives very good quality video and the speed seems very good. - If you have installed motherboards before, you will find it pretty easy to do it again, but the manual is not that clear. The bad: - I use RAID-1 hard drives configuration and the set up was a pain because the instructions are not clear at all, and they in fact differ from what you are actually supposed to do. I had to format the hard drives three times until I got it right. - What I found really bad is that if you boot the computer with any kind of USB storage device plugged in (like a memory stick, or an external hard drive) the boot fails as somehow the BIOS gets over written and the hard drive is replaced by the USB device. In fact the hard drive does not show anymore as a boot option in BIOS. You have to power down, remove the USB storage device and then reboot. Sometimes it works and the computer starts, sometimes it does not, and you have to boot again, go to BIOS and since you have unplugged the USB storage, now you can choose again the hard drive as the boot device. What all this means: you would have to get under the desk and unplug all the storage devices, turn on the computer and then plug them back in... EVERY TIME. I just got out of the phone with customer support: they confirmed that for this motherboard this is normal, and the guy pretended not to understand why I would want to start with any USB device plugged in (what about an external back up drive buddy?). I am returning it and looking for something else.
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( 0 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: 02-10-2009
I spent one day putting together the system and another day installing software, just to be disappointed at the end. Here is what you might want to know: The good: - The board is relatively easy to install and works pretty much nicely out of the box. - For the price is a pretty good value since it comes with a video card, sound card and Gigabit LAN, built in. - The NVIDIA video chip gives very good quality video and the speed seems pretty good for a built in video card. - If you have installed motherboards before, you will find it pretty easy to do it again, but the manual is not that clear, specially regarding setting up RAID - Plenty of SATA ports and legacy support for PATA, Floppy Disc, and has also a Fire-Wire, if you need it. The bad: - I use RAID-1 hard drives configuration and the set up was a pain because the instructions are not clear at all, and they in fact differ from what you are actually supposed to do. I had to format the hard drives three times before I got it right (I have to say that this is the first time I configured a RAID system). - What I found really bad is that if you boot the computer with any kind of USB storage device plugged in (like a memory stick, or an external hard drive) the boot fails as somehow the BIOS gets over written and the hard drive is replaced by the USB device. In fact the hard drive does not show anymore as a boot option in BIOS. You have to power down, remove the USB storage device and then reboot. Sometimes it works and the computer starts, sometimes it does not, and you have to boot again, go to BIOS and since you have unplugged the USB storage, now you can choose again the hard drive as the first boot device. What all this means: you would have to get under the desk and unplug all the storage devices, turn on the computer and then plug them back in... EVERY TIME. I just got out of the phone with customer support: they confirmed that for this motherboard this is normal, and the guy pretended not to understand why I would want to start with any USB device plugged in (what about an external back up drive that runs all the time when the computer runs?). I am returning it and looking for something else.
