Bios Setup vs. Jumpers

[Thurrdome]

I have a question about my newly arrived MoBo. My MoBo is a DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard. It is a truly wonderful machine: I just got it and will start building!
I do, however, have one question. The board's setup is slightly confusing, but I have been managing to understand most of it by reading the manual. It has both an excellent BIOS setup and lots of jumpers. Do I even need to use the jumpers to configure the board? I think the manual implies that both the jumpers and the BIOS setup are needed, but this is not stated directly. Can I get by only using the BIOS?

[blue60007]

Jumpers? I didn't know that motherboards still come with jumpers (at least not very many). There are jumpers for CMOS and for the front panel audio pins, but what jumpers are you talking about?

[Panama Red]

The jumpers normally come preconfigured on today's motherboards but it's best to check them just to make sure they match the manual info. You should be able to make all your adjustments in the bios.

[doctorgonzo]

The only way to make sure is to check your motherboard manual. Most settings can be made in the BIOS, but some enabling/disabling of features may be done using jumpers. I noticed that my Abit board controls wake on keyboard/USB via jumpers.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by blue60007 Jumpers? I didn't know that motherboards still come with jumpers (at least not very many).

The last few ASUS motherboards I built with had a bunch of jumpers for stuff like the CPU fan power mode, USB power, wake-on-whatever, chassis intrusion, clear CMOS, etc...so yes, motherboards still do have jumpers on them. Just none of them are used to set motherboard FSB and memory timings and such, those are still handled in the BIOS.

Cricket

[Thurrdome]

Yes, I think that the jumpers are for CMOS. For example, referencing my manual in front of me, it says here, "JP7 is used to select the power of the PS/2 keyboard/mouse port. Selecting 5VSB will allow you to use the PS/2 keyboard or PS/2 mouse to wake up the system." That was quoted directly from the manual. Also from the manual: "JP5 and JP6 are used to select the power of the USB ports. Selecting 5VSB will allow you to use the USB keyboard or USB
mouse to wake up the system."
Am I correct in saying that these setting are for CMOS? If not, what are they for?

[doctorgonzo]

Those settings are for the wakeup controls like Crickey and myself talked about. Setting the jumpers a certain way would allow you to power on the computer by just hitting a key on the keyboard.

Generally, the only CMOS jumper present is used to clear it.

[Thurrdome]

Thanks for all the help, guys. So you think that I don't really have to worry about the jumpers; rather, I should just leave them in default setting (as mentioned in my manual) and make all changes from the BIOS?

[Thurrdome]

Oh, and I'm assuming that if I make a change in the BIOS, I will need to configure the jumpers on the MoBo accordingly. Right?

[doctorgonzo]

Originally Posted by Thurrdome Oh, and I'm assuming that if I make a change in the BIOS, I will need to configure the jumpers on the MoBo accordingly. Right?

No. It's unlikely that any one particular setting would be controlled by both jumpers and the BIOS; that would cause too many problems. You either adjust things in the BIOS or with jumpers.

[Thurrdome]

Thanks, everybody! Now I'm off to build . . .