P2-AE2: Special BIOS options

The BIOS allows the Acoustic performance to be set on the HDD. Normally this has to be done using Hitachi's HDD Feature Tool utility which has to be run from a boot disk/CD, this is the first time I've seen it in a BIOS.
Checking with Feature Tool, the BIOS does in fact set the Acoustic Management level on the Samsung harddisk. For those not familiar with this option, this will help reduce the head seek noise on the hard disk. This maybe at the cost of some performance loss, the effectiveness of this mode depends on the HDD, and not all models have this. According to the Feature Tool utility, the range for AM setting is from 128-254. The BIOS settings result as follows:
PERFORMANCE=254
MEDIUM=130
SILENT=128

On Chip SATA BOOTROM nicely allows you to boot/install Windows directly on a SATA HDD without the need to load drivers from a floppy. Unfortunately there are still boards out there without this useful function.
The Q-FAN (automatic fan speed control) option unfortunately is very sparse only allowing ENABLED or DISABLED. Unlike ASUS's A8NVM-CSM board which nicely lets you set the high and low temperature targets so fans throttling can be customized.






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