Lot of Features, Lot of Headaches
Written: Dec 09 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great features, especially if overclocking.
Cons: Unstable has "issues" with hardware.
The Bottom Line: You may have no problem with this board and may love it, or you could run into some unexpected things.
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| Boscorocks's Full Review: Abit NF7-S Motherboard |
I bought this board to build a whole upgraded system for myself. My old board was a cheapo ECS which never had any problems, but wasn't that thrillng either. I chose the Abit because of its overclocking reputation as well as features like SATA and RAID support.
I started with a Maxtor 40GB hard drive, 5600FX 256MB video card, AMD 2800+ CPU/Fan, 512MB Corsair XMS LL memory. Put everything together, turned on, set the time and boot sequence and all seemed well. I got Windows loaded and was putting in some other software. On one reboot the BIOS read the processor as 1250MHz rather than 2800+ and then froze up. I tried to clear the CMOS several times but it still would not post. I switched to my old processor and changed around components; in short I built a computer about 10 times that day. There was even an error that my CPU was unworkable I finally got it to get to the BIOS setup where I set it to fail safe mode and it worked again. After everything was loaded again and running for a while, there was and error that the configsys file in Windows was missing or corrupted. Repaired windows, after about the 10th bootup it said it again. THought my hard drive went bad. Found out from forums that this is some kind of corruption in the motherboard bios. Of course I found this out after getting a new hard drive. I also found out this motherboard had issues with my Maxtor hard drive as well as the memory and it could be my power supply (420 W) who knows. I have been trying to get this thing stable for over a week now and do have an RMA number ready and will send it back for sure if it does not behave this next week.
What a dissapointment. I chose this board over the Asus because of its layout when it came down to the nitty gritty, but am regretting the choice. I did not even overclock and had all of these problems.
The plus features of course is the wide array of BIOS settings for tweakers, the layout and the SATA, RAID, and Firewire features.
I have built computers for quite a while and have NEVER had such a hard time. Definitely for experienced users only.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 88
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Epinions.com ID:
Boscorocks
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Reviews written: 24
Trusted by: 1 member
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