Compatibility issue with Tyan boards & Antec PSU's
by Tuan Nguyen on November 15, 2005 9:49 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
For those who are currently in the market for dual Opteron boards and are preferring products manufactured by Tyan, be sure to carefully pick power supplies with some research before purchase. We have been advised that certain Antec power supplies are having issues with the following motherboards from Tyan:
Thunder K8S Pro (S2882)
Thunder K8SD Pro (S2882-D)
Thunder K8W (S2885)
Thunder K8WE (S2895)
All the above boards are based on AMD's 8000 series chipsets except the Thunder K8WE (S2895) which uses NVIDIA's nForce Professional 2200 and 2050 south bridges.
The issues that are affecting the above motherboards have to do with a power fluctuation on the 12V rail that seems to be occurring only with Antec True Power 2 EPS power supplies. The units do not appear to be delivering consistent power -- often dropping to as low as 11.3V on the 12V rail. While some power supply units pass quality control tests initially, they end up failing after extended use. Using non-Antec power supplies solves the issue and for now we can only recommend that you use this work around until an official statement from Antec can be given. Tyan motherboards however, have always enjoyed a strong reputation for rock-solid stability -- although you may be required to be picky about which components you attach to the board.
Most power supplies have become all but commodity items on the market in the recent years but there are still companies out there that produce top-quality grade products. With all the newest high drain components coming out, the time is approaching again for us to do a power supply roundup.
Thunder K8S Pro (S2882)
Thunder K8SD Pro (S2882-D)
Thunder K8W (S2885)
Thunder K8WE (S2895)
All the above boards are based on AMD's 8000 series chipsets except the Thunder K8WE (S2895) which uses NVIDIA's nForce Professional 2200 and 2050 south bridges.
The issues that are affecting the above motherboards have to do with a power fluctuation on the 12V rail that seems to be occurring only with Antec True Power 2 EPS power supplies. The units do not appear to be delivering consistent power -- often dropping to as low as 11.3V on the 12V rail. While some power supply units pass quality control tests initially, they end up failing after extended use. Using non-Antec power supplies solves the issue and for now we can only recommend that you use this work around until an official statement from Antec can be given. Tyan motherboards however, have always enjoyed a strong reputation for rock-solid stability -- although you may be required to be picky about which components you attach to the board.
Most power supplies have become all but commodity items on the market in the recent years but there are still companies out there that produce top-quality grade products. With all the newest high drain components coming out, the time is approaching again for us to do a power supply roundup.
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Griswold - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - link
The (literally) last Antec PSU I had was a 430W TruePower and almost all rails had pretty heavy fluctuating voltage. While that never caused any trouble for my old Athlon XP box on a Asus NF2 board, I simply dont recommend Antec power supplies anymore. This is also in line with some extensive tests recently published by the c't print magazine, where also surge and burst resistance problems have been discovered - which Antec blamed on a manufacturing fault that has been fixed by now.quasarsky - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - link
yeah i'm not. my roomate's computer in college started to lock up and freeze and he noticed teh 5 volt rail dipping to 3 volts. turns out his antec power supply had melted two of the 24? or 20 pin things that connects to the motherboard. poor guy. at least his computer still worked :-D lol.michal1980 - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - link
if u are going to constantly have these pc power people pushing there products maybe anand should get some ad revenue. it seems that any and every powersupply thread/article, has these pcpc fanbois. too them i say, a quatlity psu should not have to cost 200 bucks PERIOD. pcpc is good, ok we get it. don't have to wave there flag everywhere.Phantronius - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - link
I'd blame Tyan more then Antec, tyans not what it used to be.Reflex - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - link
I would hardly blame Tyan for a power supply not putting out 12v on that line. Its not like the board is magically lowering the voltage. I have the 2885 myself and its a great board, rock solid, but then I use an OCZ power supply with it.Just out of curiosity, what did Tyan 'used to be' in your opinion? My dual Athlon board never worked right, and under Unix one CPU would never show up. My dual Opteron board works perfectly under any OS. Seems they are improving at least by my experience.
dilidolo - Monday, November 21, 2005 - link
So what UNIX are you using? What kernel are you booting into?I have different Tyan boards with dual Opterons, work fine on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris 10.
Phantronius - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - link
Oh and I have a Antec NeoPower with a Asus A8N SLI Premium with no problems.hravn - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Do you have a Neopower or a Neopower HE? It's only the HEs that have troubles with the A8N-SLI boards.Rayvn - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - link
And idea which power supplies give the problems? Don't scare people off from buying great power supplies to go with their Tyan boards because of a problem with consumer level Antec PSUs. I can say with complete certainty that this problem does not effect all Antec PSUs.Since November 2003 I've had a workstation with a Thunder K8W (s2885) and an Antec True 550 (v1) without a single problem almost 24/7.
Yes some Tyan boards are picky. I can't even get ATI video cards to run on the board because they're incompatible with the AMD chipset, but don't go scaring people into buying new PSUs without elaborating on which models are effected.
AntecRep - Friday, November 18, 2005 - link
We've done some testing with Tyan as this article was the first they'd heard of any issues. So far nothing is wrong.We're continuing to work/research this to find out exactly what's going on.
S2882 has been phased out, but Tyan tested other motherboards with TP2-550EPS12V and both 12V rail reading are around 12.03V and 11.97V
Here is the system configuration:
Dual Opteron E6 880 Dualcore 2.4G x 2
nVIDIA FX3400 Quadro FX
Memory DDR400 2G x 8 = 16G
They are running 100% burn in test and SST test at the same time. Both CPUs consume 14A during the burn in test. But I never see both 12V rails drop below 11.9V.