Asus Crosshair IV Formula: Four Questions Concerning Installation

[Route44]

I am building my brother-in-law a gaming system using this board. To be honest I have never worked with such a high end board before and so I have four questions concerning the installation. Three questions are raised from the following:

The manual states: "If you use a SATA optical drive to run the OS installation, we strongly recommend you install the SATA drive to connectors 5/6 and set them to [IDE] mode."

1. Why IDE mode?

2. Once the OS is installed and since this will be a SATA DVD drive, should I then set it to SATA in the BIOS? If not, why not?

Or is is that by forcing IDE mode it ensures compatibility with 'legacy OSes' - those that don't natively support SATA? I imagine if you install something like Vista/7/or any modern kernel linux distro that there would be no problem with it in native SATA. Correct or not?

The OS is Windows 7 -64-bit so should I set the SATA DVD drive to SATA in the BIOS and then install 7?


3. Any chipset drivers that I should be aware of to avoid installing?

Thanks.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

I was going to answer all your questions individually, but then I read the others and realized it was the same fundamental issue, and not multiple issues.

All Sata ports are sata ports. There are a few settings for those ports though. IDE, RAID, and ACHI. IDE acts as a PATA drive and is the most common interface for Sata. By being in IDE mode, it is still a Sata drive, just in IDE mode. No more, no less. By going into RAID mode, you tell the motherboard to run the RAID drivers. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independant) Disks. It is used to combine multiple disks into one disk seen by the operating system. Finally, ACHI is the newest mode that can be used by Solid State Drives as well a few others. This can be used with all drives, but really has little effect unless used with a SSD.

So to answer your questions, odds are the board will come from the factory in IDE mode, and that you could plug your Sata DVD drive into any port and it would work just fine before, during and after your installation of the operating system without any need for drivers.

 

[beenthere]

^^^^ What he said with one caveat. Asus on occasion does weird things with their BIOS so it's usually best to follow their recommendations unless you know better.

Also note that many BIOS adjustments does not necessarily mean the mobo is "high end", though I understand what you're saying. Asus uses excessive BIOS adjustments as a marketing scheme because we all know "more" is better...

 

[Peeved Kitten]

Have you looked into/heard about the CHIV heatsink issues? If you find that your Mobo NB and SB temps are high you may be affected by a QC issue.

The fix is pretty simple, You remove the heatsinks and grind down the stand offs very carefully. The standoffs that were used in most CHIV's are to tall and don't allow for proper contact with the chipset.

I never changed the cd-drive around to IDE and I had no issues, however YMMV.

 

[Route44]

I very much appreciate the responses and I've learned something from all three of you. I have built systems before but like I said I have never dealt with such a high end motherboard like this one and I haven't used an Asus board since my Pentium 3 days. I just don't want to screw anything up.

@ Peeved Kitten - No, I hadn't heard of CHIV heatsink issue. Are these high temperature issues happening regardless if hardware is oced or not?

 

[QuietIce]

@ Peeved Kitten - No, I hadn't heard of CHIV heatsink issue. Are these high temperature issues happening regardless if hardware is oced or not?

Yes, it's a factory problem. If your board has a problem it will be obvious from your NB chipset temp ...

 

[Route44]

Yes, it's a factory problem. If your board has a problem it will be obvious from your NB chipset temp ...

Well that's a major pain in the back side. Especially after you get everything hooked up.

If you don't mind me asking another question has this issue ever been corrected by Asus from the assmebly end?

 

[QuietIce]

I believe it was corrected once they figured out it was a problem. But don't quote me on that, I've not seen the actual article - just heard rumors ...

 

[Peeved Kitten]

I ordered my board sometime around July of this year, I had the heatsink issue with that board.

 

[Cisco Kid]

M CHiv was okay and I got my board around Oct, to date no issues with heatsink and temps. Board is a rock w a 1055T running 4ghz flawlessly