Opinions on the Fatal1ty AA8XE?

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
What are your thoughts on the AA8XE? At first, I was worried it would just be a cheap marketing gimmick, but for a P4 board, it does have some great features.

It has some downsides as well, possibly the price. I am not really into P4's, but this board is pretty cool.
 

Will Nave

E.M.I.
Looks pretty, and worthy of the drool, but I'd probably wait. As far as I'm concerned the technology is still too new for me to spend that kind of money to upgrade. Not to mention you'll spend close to double that price on a decent PCIe VC.

In the end it is up to you, but I'd wait to see what other manufacturers have to offer before deciding, especially since there is no refund... :?
 

brettmar

Obliviot
Well, the board is an Abit from my knowledge.

Right now, abit has a class action suit against them for having a known issue of leaking/exploading MOSFET capacitors, hence the new OTES systems. I had an ABIT IC7-MAX3 board that did exactly the same. It seems though their boards are the fastest in overclocking, the stability isnt there yet.
 

Tech-Daddy

Tech Monkey
The capacitor bursting was actually not vendor specific, ifthey are suing Abit for the boards manufactured back in the late 90's!

The supposed story (which seems to make all of this gell together) is that a capacitance gell formula was swiped by an employee who left the #1 capacitor manufacturer and went to work for the #2 producer. Then he sold them this formula. Then #3 heard about this and the guy got greedy. Sold it to them too...

unbeknownst to him, he did *not* have the full recipe. The component that was missing, caused the caps to fill with hydrogen (as a byproduct of the chemical reaction), build up pressure, and then cause the caps to pop!

2 of the top 3 cap producers in Taiwan were producing faulty caps! Problem did not become wide spread until roughly 2001-02. They were supplying EVERYONE! The mobo manufacturers are not at fault, it is the cap manufacturers. That is why it is such a big deal to be using "All Japaneese" caps... no quality concerns and better stability. All manufacturers had the issue. I have swapped 3 MSI boards, one EPoX, and an Abit. ALl were handled. Most vendors just extended my warranty, no questions asked, once they saw the popped caps.

Class action I dont feel is needed or justified, since Abit did not do this maliciously, and has been handling the repairs fairly.
 
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