AOpen AK86-L UPDATE: Uncommonly Good
by Wesley Fink on March 30, 2004 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
AOpen AK86-L: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our latest support evaluation procedure here:The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 72 (business) hours to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don't receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
AOpen's technical support process is very straight forward and clear. It is, in fact, one of the best that we've encountered. If you have questions about features and specifications, the best place to find an answer is on-line at Tech Inside. Once inside the Tech Inside page, you can select features and a question, and then be presented with detailed information about your question. Many questions can be answered here.
If you have a problem related to your installation and need more help, then AOpen's Problem Report is available. First, select "Service", then "Problem Reports" on the AOpen web page. Once you've opened the Problem Reports page, click on the hyperlink that refers to the country and/or language that applies to you. AOpen includes the following countries and languages:
English (Canada, USA, and Latin America)
English (Europe)
English (Asia & other regions)
Chinese
China
Japanese
German
Dutch
After clicking the hyperlink, we were taken to the "AOpen American Technical Support Center" page. Here, we were asked to fill out a detailed form where we were asked for our personal information (including name, address, phone number, etc.), the product in question, the model/serial/part number, system specifications (CPU, Operating System, BIOS version, etc.), and of course, an area for describing the problem in detail. AOpen even lists examples in green under each category, in case a user is unsure about what to type in.
In case you do not like the support form format, you can also select the Dr. Open Center, which is a web interactive Technical Support Help Center.
Our last experience with AOpen technical support was impressive. This time, we received a response from their tech support staff exactly 7 hours after we sent our email, which is an incredible response time. The answer we got was helpful and had correctly diagnosed our problem. We decided to try a tougher question with Dr. Open. This question took several days to get a complete reply, but we did receive updates at Dr. Open on the web, telling us that they were working on the problem and asking us for more information. Dr. Open did a great job of keeping us informed and making us feel that our problem was important - something very few other motherboard manufacturers have yet learned about Technical Support.
If you still have a problem and need to RMA your board, AOpen has on-line RMA Procedures, including tracking of RMA requests. You can select "Services, RMA Services" and be taken to an "OpenCare" page to fill out an RMA form or track an existing RMA Request. This is an outstanding RMA procedure and most users will find the whole AOpen Tech Support and RMA process to be easy to use and responsive.
AOpen's RMA policies and procedures are outstanding and are very rarely seen in the computer industry. Any manufacturers trying to set up a good interactive website and an RMA process should take a look at the AOpen USA site at http://usa.aopen.com.
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Pumpkinierre - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link
In your update you say the new BIOS 1.06q includes cpu multipliers. But the old BIOS had that. So does this mean a larger range ie 0.5x divisions? Also now that you've got the Geiger, could you check the PCI lock at several clockspeeds?This is important to me as my interest in purchasing an a64 is to run it at high clockspeed (with only a mild o'clock) as I believe this would substanstially improve gaming performance. Of course this is also dependent on fast low latency DDR 466-500 being available- still yet to occur!.
Boonesmi - Thursday, February 12, 2004 - link
what about agp/pci lock? have you been able to test it yet??Wesley Fink - Thursday, February 12, 2004 - link
AOpen has just sent a revised BIOS 1.06Q, which adds vDimm adjustments from 2.5 to 3.0V in .05V increments. This is an outstanding upgrade from the 2.7v max vDimm in the BIOS we tested and makes the AK86-L one of the best 754 boards available for memory overclocking.A kind soul is hosting the 1.06q BIOS and a link has been added to the review.
JTDC - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - link
Does anyone know where the 1.06 BIOS revision can be found? I cannot see it on the AOPEN site. Any suggestions as to where I can look?peonyu - Friday, February 6, 2004 - link
I have a Aopen board [not this one though,damn] and the options on it are awesome, same with its stability and performance. The only prob though is the same that this board has - VERY low voltage settings. For reasons i dont understand Aopen is very stubbern with allowing higher voltages, it happens with every board they release. So until they get past that and release a update which increases voltage I dont think it would be worth picking one of these up if your into overclocking.Shinei - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link
Does Athlon 64 rely on timings as much as the Athlon XP did? I didn't think it did, considering the bandwidth it can use eclipses even the Pentium 4's...As for the article, now I really wish I'd waited a few months to upgrade, instead of going straight for the GA-7N400P2/2800+ in December...
Pumpkinierre - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link
It would have been nice if you had included some benchmark results at the different multiplier o'clocks or even standardised to 2gig (ie 9x222,8x250) now that you have an A64 board that doesnt have memory, multiplier, HT or (from initial observations) AGP/PCI lock issues. Naturally memory latency settings would have to be kept the same. My pet theory with the A64 is that increasing the RAM speed and lowering memory latency (which appears difficult on many a64 mobo/memory combinations) would be as good as a standard o'clock which to date has'nt been the a64's strong point. This seems like the right board but we're still waiting for CAS2 DDR500.Boonesmi - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link
dang i really like that board.when are you expecting the "PCI Geiger"??
hehe i want an update :)
Wesley Fink - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link
#1 - Four "3-pin" fan headers is correct, and the typo is fixed.#2 - We will be reviewing a few of the memory brands you mention in a few weeks. A socket 754 board will be included in the tests.
bhtooefr - Thursday, February 5, 2004 - link
Damn, I want one! Of course, it would be even better if it were Micro ATX... (I've already got a mATX case, and it's very small)