AOpen AK86-L UPDATE: Uncommonly Good
by Wesley Fink on March 30, 2004 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
AOpen is the components division of Acer, the huge company that has their hand in many consumer electronics markets. They produce motherboards, chipsets with their ALI brand, optical drives, displays, memory, and on and on. AOpen has produced motherboards for AMD processors almost from the time they were first introduced. Over the years, they have produced some very solid and interesting boards, but AOpen has never been very clear or consistent in their marketing direction. In the past year, AOpen produced some interesting boards for Intel chipsets and they have once again targeted the Enthusiast market. I say "once again" because AOpen seems to shift between hot and cold regarding whether or not the Enthusiast market matters to their sales. In the past, there have been some remarkably well-designed boards that were "almost there". In most cases, however, AOpen stopped short in development to truly raise the products to outstanding.
The AK86-L is AOpen's first Athlon 64 motherboard, supporting the mainstream Socket 754 processor and using the VIA K8T800 chipset. AOpen also produces the AK89 Max, which is based on the nVidia nForce3-150 chipset. While there are several models listed in both the AK86 and AK89 families, these two models are the only two that we have actually seen for sale. The "L" in the AK86-L means that Gigabit LAN is included.
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howminn - Thursday, May 20, 2004 - link
I've got that board and am having hell with it. No matter what agp card, no matter what memory and in which memory slot, the board won't switch the monitor back on after restart. Which means it is not possible to install an OS onto it.I've returned the original board and bought another one, both boards have displayed the same trouble, and have both displayed cmos checksum error, default values loaded. Batteries have been changed, still no solution.
The vendor to whom I RMA'd the board have not given me any feedback as to what is wrong.
Has anybody else seen this before? Please!
cowdog - Sunday, April 4, 2004 - link
Good to see the update with information that AOpen "opened" up the bios options! Good job AOpen!Ditto what #14 said about the AK89 Max. Come on AOpen, don't overlook your nForce3 150 board!! DDR to 3.0v, cpu to 1.8v, fsb to 300Mhz. That would make my day, esp if AOpen also put that hyper-active watchdog on a shorter leash.
Ronnie - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
Hey TrogdorJW, I also have the MSI K8T Neo and found that OCZ pc3200 works great for my setup, I tried some kingston hyperx pc-4000 with no luck.elixia - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
Hey AMD4ME2, I had that problem on an old FIC motherboard. I simply pinned the power cable to the power supply and plugged it in. It will not hang in front of the CPU and block airflow this wayResh - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
There was mention of a new board revision (as opposed to BIOS version). Could AT post the number codes for the new and old rev. to help us in purchasing?Thanks!
AMD4ME2 - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - link
I'm a bit confused by the wording of the location of the ATX power connectors. they look to me like they are behind the processor blocking air flow, at least in my case they would be.Chuckles - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - link
There is an error on page one (Index)."Adjustments for memory voltage have now been extended from 2.5V to 3.0v in 0.5v increments. This is an extremely wide and useful range for users trying to get the most from their memory."
Should be 0.05V instead of 0.5.
Pumpkinierre - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - link
I posted my question on Feb.16(#12) and got my answer on March 30th (#13). Its never too late. Thanks for the follow-up.Venomous - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - link
Westley, re: the AK89MAX.. Have them do the same kind of BIOS mods they did on the AK86. If they can bring those voltages up to AK86 specs, im sure hitting 280 fsb wont be hard. The watchdog thing IS annoying.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - link
Pumkinierre -1.06Q was never a BIOS published by AOpen, so 1.08c is the first published BIOS that has multipliers. Ratios are the same as 1.06q, which is whole numbers - no option of 0.5 multipliers.
As I discussed in the PCI lock article and comments, the AK86-L seems to float the PCI/AGP up to 233, then at 234 it drops back to 33.3. This is a ratio arrangement very similar to what we saw in the Abit K8T800 motherboard we reviewed, and is much less flexible than a true adjustable PCI/AGP lock. If you look at the new screen captures you will see PCI/AGP now reports the rising frequency in the BIOS.
As mentioned in the update, the nForce3-150 based Gigabyte K8NNXP and the Shuttle AN50R, both nF3-150 based, are the only 2 Athlon 64 boards that I am aware of that are reported by respected writers to have AGP/PCI lock. I have not tested either with the PCI Geiger, so I can not personally confirm this. If you want fine adjustments for OC, then either of these would appear to be a better choice, at a higher price.
The AOpen AK89 Max, which is a very late nF3-150 board, also appears to have a working PCI/AGP lock, but there are some issues with high settings prematurely invoking the watchdog feature and resetting the frequency - requiring a CMOS clear. We have asked AOpen for help in resolving this issue with the AK89 Max, and if it is fixed we will post a review on Anandtech.