A8N-E: Cool & Quiet

Just putting together my 3800+ dual core & a8n-e motherboard.
I would like to enable cool & quiet.

Two things:
a) Do i need to enable q-fan? Concern is that it is a competing technology
and it doesn't mention requiring
it in the manual.

b) enable apic 2.0 support. the bios Power option just says apic support. i
assume they are the same

In article , "Jody"
wrote:

Just putting together my 3800+ dual core & a8n-e motherboard.
I would like to enable cool & quiet.

Two things:
a) Do i need to enable q-fan? Concern is that it is a competing technology
and it doesn't mention requiring
it in the manual.

b) enable apic 2.0 support. the bios Power option just says apic support. i
assume they are the same

I've seen mention that the AMD retail HSF is temperature controlled
the way that P4 HSF's are. The way that works, is a thermistor inside
the fan, measures the case air temperature. Between 32C and 42C
the AMD fan might speed up, so if the case air reaches 42C, the fan
spins at max RPMs. (I can find an AMD document recommending
temperature controlled fans, but try and find a document that
talks about what AMD ships with their PIB products...)

Q-Fan is a control method based on measured CPU silicon die
temperature. At 50C die temp, Q-fan delivers the full 12V.
At lower temperatures, less voltage is delivered.

Both of the above mechanisms can be combined, to give a
wider operating range for the fan. But the question is,
would you allow your case air to reach 42C ? That isn't
the best for the disk drives, especially if the room
air humidity is above 60 percent. (Disk drives have a
temp/moisture spec - the main benefit of an air
conditioned room is moisture reduction. A humid day
in summer, in a dwelling with no humidity control, is
not good for a computer hard drive.)

APIC stands for advanced programmable interrupt controller.
The APIC hardware in a computer, allows IRQs to be steered
to multiple processors, like on a dual processor board.
PIC is an earlier version of hardware standard for handling
IRQs. Some chipsets have broken APIC implementations, and
that is a good reason for having a BIOS control available
to disable usage. In Linux, there can be a boot time option
like NOAPIC, that can do something similar. I believe,
for example, that NForce2 has a problem with interrupt
storms in APIC mode (claimed to cause time keeping problems).

ACPI is Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. I believe
the BIOS can pass some ACPI hardware information in the tables
it hands the OS at boot time. That can be used to access
FID/VID, for runtime power control, among other things. ACPI
spec also defines power states, and what to do hardware-wise
during S3 suspend to RAM or S4 Hibernate. Changing support
from ACPI 2.0 spec to the previous version, is probably
changing the format of the table passed to the OS.

APIC:
http://www.rojakpot.com/showFreeBOG....ang=0&bogno=47

BIOS options explained:
http://www.rojakpot.com/freeBOG.aspx

www.acpi.info is not responding, so this entry will have to do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACPI

You can look at an archived copy of the acpi.info site
here, until the real server is available again. web.archive.org
links will be broken, and some clever copy and pasting of
portions of URLs, is necessary to navigate the web sites
archived. This happens, because no human can keep up with
broken links on millions of archived sites.

http://web.archive.org/web/200411170...www.acpi.info/

HTH,
Paul

I personally don't have Cool-N-Quiet enabled ... a gizmo feature that can
cause crashes.

"Jody" wrote in message
.. .
Just putting together my 3800+ dual core & a8n-e motherboard.
I would like to enable cool & quiet.

Two things:
a) Do i need to enable q-fan? Concern is that it is a competing technology
and it doesn't mention requiring
it in the manual.

b) enable apic 2.0 support. the bios Power option just says apic support.
i assume they are the same

"Wookie" wrote in message
...
I personally don't have Cool-N-Quiet enabled ... a gizmo feature that can
cause crashes.

"Jody" wrote in message
.. .
Just putting together my 3800+ dual core & a8n-e motherboard.
I would like to enable cool & quiet.


Thanks for all the replies guys!

jo

Wookie wrote:
I personally don't have Cool-N-Quiet enabled ... a gizmo feature that can
cause crashes.

What's your basis for saying CnQ can cause crashes? I don't think I've
had any trouble with it but if there's documentation for what you say, I
might disable it.


"Jody" wrote in message
.. .

Just putting together my 3800+ dual core & a8n-e motherboard.
I would like to enable cool & quiet.

Two things:
a) Do i need to enable q-fan? Concern is that it is a competing technology
and it doesn't mention requiring
it in the manual.

b) enable apic 2.0 support. the bios Power option just says apic support.
i assume they are the same

"milleron" wrote in message
...
What's your basis for saying CnQ can cause crashes? I don't think I've
had any trouble with it but if there's documentation for what you say, I
might disable it.


Some people have experienced crashes if their system is not configured
properly. If your system is configured properly, you will not have any
crashes. I have been running C&Q on a A8N-E with a 3500+ Winchester for
about 10 months and it is rock solid.