THE ASUS PC-DL

For a long time now I have been going to write some thoughts on the PC-DL motherboard. There are so many good sites and info out there that I am not sure it is worth doing now. There is one very large problem with the PC-DL that if you ever learn anything from me this should be it. Use a power supply (PSU) with one 12v rail and a minimum of 30 amps. Everything is down hill from there. More problems have been caused by the power problem than anything else. People just don't seem to get it that a PSU can cause little problems. They think either it works or it doesn't. Let me tell ya there is a lot more to it than that. I spent countless hours, weeks, maybe months troubleshooting these boards and it all boiled down to PSU problems. Now these boards have been running stable a couple of years at full throttle with no problems I haven't done a lot more modding. There are pics on the previous page to some of the mods I made to get the temps down. Bottom line was the windtunnels were pretty darn good once you modded them and put 80mm fans on them instead of the 60's. I spent a lot of money on heatpipes and others just to find that out.

Now I have moved on and am now working on a video card, the Sapphire X1950 Pro AGP. The first thing I found in all the posts around the net was that most were having power problems. Some didn't realize it but I could recognize PSU problems hidden in the descriptions. All this I documented in the guide on the previous page.

THE best PSU's in the world are made by the PC Power and Cooling folks. Many years ago Jerry Pournelle used to write in Byte magazine about them and I used to just drool wishing I could afford them. Well I finally took the plunge a while back and now their silencer series is really getting pretty competitive. I think around $150 for a 49a 12v single rail PSU! That's for me and I highly recommend them. Of course the price will change as I type this... lol

Good luck!