AOpen AK89

[Handruin]

Has anyone had any experiences with the AOpen AK89 board? Anandtech and many others gave it a good writeup. I'm considering purchasing it with a AMD Athlon 64 3200+. It has everything I'd want in a board, so I was curious if anyone has used this board, or had any input on it. The only two complaints I've read are the location of the audio connector, and the range of adjustable voltage. Neither of which bother me.

Positive Reviews:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=2033&p=2

http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/mobos/AOpen_AMD64/pg_9.htm

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=441&pageID=697

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=437&s=10

 

[ddrueding]

With the nFOrce3-250Gb chipsets shipping now, I wouldn't get anything else.

Random link

 

[blakerwry]

4 pci slots is kind of a bummer for me. I usually prefer 5 or 6 slots if I can get em. But with all the onboard devices these days that may not be a problem for you.

I agree that chipset integrated G-bit NIC is a very compelling feature that this board is missing. However I don't know if the nforce3 is a mature enough chipset. I would love to see SiS hurry up with their design.

 

[Handruin]

4 PCI? It has 5 PCI on the AOpen board. The last PCI slot (colored blue) is for PCI cards requiring more voltage than normal. It allows for a separate power supply connection for power hungry cards. (not a big deal to me)

With that said, the system I have now has NO PCI slots in use because of on-board components.

I'm confused by your GbE comment. The AOpen AK89 has 10/100/1000 onboard LAN.

ddrueding, I know you bought a bunch of the MSI boads, but I'm not too happy with my prior MSI experieince to chance buying another one for a while. Aside from the corroded capacitors, I also had many other issues with that MSI board. Granted, the one you linked to is much newer, I'd rather not give MSI my business right now. :-?

The one advantage I can see of the MSI board is that it has the nForce 3 250Gb, where as the AOpen has the 150.

 

[Clocker]

I've had good experiences with AOpen motherboards. I've installed three AK79D-400VN for friends/family and have had absolutely no problems.

Sorry, I can't comment on the specific model you are looking at though..

C

 

[blakerwry]

sorry, i mistook that last slot for something else... the notch looks reversed and i figured it wasnt a PCI slot.


You are really missing the obivous on the NIC. It's a realtek PCI NIC. you'd be lucky to break 20MB/sec average transfer rate on it... You can buy NICs with the same chip on them for about $12.

If you went with a chipset integrated like the NForce3 *GB or an intel with CSA then you could easily get twice the transfer rate.

 

[ddrueding]

Sorry, didn't really pay attention to it being an MSI board. Mainly it was the chipset being 250Gb, rather than 150. IIRC, the 250Gb has chipset integrated GbE, wher4e the board you are looking at has PCI-attached GbE. Also, the sound is supposed to be better on the 250 boards. Not sure about Dual-Channel RAM, but I know the 150 boards don't have it.

WRT PCI slots: I do have a PCI RAID controller, but a board with 3-4 slots would be fine with me as I don't anticipate adding even a second card of any kind.

 

[Mercutio]

Aopen typically makes really good motherboards. If it has what you want, I'd say go for it.

Disclaimer: I've not used an nforce3 250 for anything.

 

[CougTek]

With the nForce3-250Gb chipsets shipping now, I wouldn't get anything else

VIA makes better chipsets for the Athlon64 than nVidia so far. The KT800 Pro and upcoming KT890 are both more stable and slightly faster (on average) than the 250Gb.

Besides, there are rumors that the nForce 3 250 chipset is broken in some way and that is probably why Abit has so far restrained to use it in its design.

That's more than enough for someone not to see the 250Gb has the only option for a s754/s939 platform.

 

[time]

Aces Hardware compared the nForce3 150, 250 and Via KT800. The networking results were indeed terrible when this feature was provided by Realtek.

I know that one sample does not count for much, but I have a client with an Aopen P4 board that displays alarming problems; specifically, after a while it kills the entire LAN that it is connected to ... not good.

 

[CityK]

Doug,

Without reading up on that particular AOpen mobo, my nit picks are:

- the absolute retarted placement of the 4 pin power connector
- non native SATA (but if your going to be using PATA, this matters little)
- the PCI based Gbit LAN
- probably lacks a PCI/AGP lock (which will not matter if you have no plans for OC'ing)
- don't see 1394 there (maybe there's a header)

But, as Merc suggested, if it fits your current needs, it will probably be just fine. (No experience personal experience with AOpen mobos ... but respect the good words I heard about them from Clocker, Merc etc etc)

And speaking of retardedness, what's with the stupid position of the SATA 3&4 on most of the new NF 250 boards? Better, yet, how come most board makers are opting to use 2 native SATA and then 2 via an add in chip (Promise or Sil)? SATA --> an ongoing case study of slow and poor adoption.

Looking a couple of months down the road, there are some interesting mobo's waiting in the wings....of course, a couple of months for Nvidia probably means a release schedule this time next year.

 

[CityK]

Oh, and to continue my OT ranting - someone better slap some Gigabyte designers on the side of the head for using active cooling on the NB of recent boards.

 

[Mercutio]

KT400 4 eva'



OK, now that that's out of my system - my solution to the active cooling on new Gigabyte boards is to just take the damn fan off. It'll die in six months anyway, at which point the fan basically becomes an insulator, so the way I figure it, I'm probably doing work that someone would have to do later, anyway.

 

[Handruin]

I'll have to do some more research on this when I get home tonight. I'll try to dig up some reviews on the VIA KT800's. The results are bad on the realtek NIC...I should probably just buy the Intel Pro 1000MT with my next board just to work around this issue. Even the NForce 3 results weren't as good...but they consumed much less CPU time.

 

[CityK]

You lost me on that one Mercutio.