I would not recommend this product at all because it is very fussy.
Written: Feb 17 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: There aren't any.
Cons: Doesn't work as advertised. What more is their to say?
The Bottom Line: I would not recommend this board because it does not work as advertised and there's no guarantee that asus will be able to help you.
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| colpaarm's Full Review: ASUS PC-DL Deluxe Motherboard |
I've done just about everything to get this motherboard up and running. If you happen upon a configuration it likes, I guess everything will be fine. I don't know from my own experience. In my own, I've had nothing but trouble.
I first bought the board about a month or so ago. I bought it with pc2700 ddr dimms, Xeon 1.5 GHz cpus and a vantec 420 W power supply. I also got a radeon 7000 AGP 4x video card and a western digital 30 GB hard drive. Not only was the machine not booting, it wasn't even posting to the bios. Even though the tech guy from asus assured me that the board takes all types of xeons, it turns out that it only takes 1.8ss and above. Fine, so I get 1.8s. Then, it turns out that although the board supports pc2700s, that's only if your cpu's bus speed is 533 MHz. If it's only 400 MHz (which mine was) you have to use pc2100. You don't find this out until you read it in the manual. It's not listed anywhere on asus' or the reseller's site. So I replace that. Then, I had a problem with the power supply. Turns out that unless your power supply is 460 watts, it won't work (even though Asus says 350 watts will work just fine). Check hardwareanalysis.com. You'll see a number of threads with people having problems with this board.
Anyway, with all of the changes (and extra money), the board posts to the bios but won't boot the operating system. After posting and detecting the memory, it takes 5 minutes (no typo) to detect the ide devices. Then it takes another 5 minutes to final post back an error. I've gotten a number, including "no bios installed", "checksum error" and "boot fail: bad media, check cable". Asus can't figure out what's wrong and the reseller doesn't even have an 800 number to call them. And this is the second board. The reseller told me to simply send back the first one because he felt that it was D.O.A.
More than likely, this board is not "broken". It just doesn't work as advertised. I bet if I play around and find different memory, it will work. However, according to asus' website, the memory I have should work. I even used one of their recommended manufacturers. Again, if you look at hardwareanalysis.com, you'll see a ton of guys that are having the same problem with this board. One guy stated that his board simply reboots on him sometimes. Sometimes, it just shuts down. Some got their problems resolved "by simply using memory from a different manufacturer". In almost all cases, the "solution" to their problem had nothing to do with using the wrong hardware, at least according to asus. And I've installed dual xeons before. This is the first board that I simply could not get to work. Guys, when the manufacturer can't help you, that tells you something about this new board: stay away!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 215
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Epinions.com ID: colpaarm
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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