ASUS P5W DH - Problems + Fixes Thread

Hi all,

So as I mentioned before, I went through and purchased a Thermaltake Extreme 2 Northbridge cooler (copper block with integrated 40mm fan) and installed it on my board this past weekend. Everything was functioning fine until last night, when somehow one of the two clips holding the northbridge into the motherboard came off. I only noticed it when I looked in my case trying to figure out why my computer was crashing almost immediately after windows booted up.

I haven't cleaned the arctic silver off the northbridge yet to see if the chip is completely hosed, but I don't believe it is, since it is able to boot into windows before crashing (overheating?). However, I'm concerned because the hook came off and I'm unable to mount anything with only one hook.

I did take a photograph of the northbridge, and thankfully the hook that came off is in the clip 3 position, at the bottomright part of the board (next to the ram), which is only a mm or two from the existing screw. This makes it possible to engineer another solution, which I will look into as well.

I wanted to know a couple of things though:

1) Do the northbridge mounting holes go through all layers of PCB to the other end of the motherboard?

2) What is "anchoring" the hooks in place currently? I tried to do some elementary research on other, third-party, northbridge cooling products, and all seem to use the existing hooks, none explaining what to do in the dire case of one coming off.

3) If the hook that came off ends up being lost, does anyone know how I can acquire a new one, outside of manufacturing my own? I guess this is only applicable if the board is capable of modification to re-insert the hook.

Please advise.

Recently flashed to latest BIOS, sorry don't have rev num, problem is vcore adjustments don't seem to stick past 1.4. I have it set to 1.45 in BIOS but all monitoring programs read it as 1.39/1.40 in windows. I chose not to reset cmos after flash, could this have anything to do with it.

ETA This is a new system, not sure what vcore was doing before flash.

This is on p5b d, cd 6600, ST 400 mem 2 x 1g.

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Originally Posted by AlexG

This is on p5b d, cd 6600, ST 400 mem 2 x 1g.

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Ahh P5B Dlx is that way :fact:

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Originally Posted by nickfd

1) Do the northbridge mounting holes go through all layers of PCB to the other end of the motherboard?

2) What is "anchoring" the hooks in place currently? I tried to do some elementary research on other, third-party, northbridge cooling products, and all seem to use the existing hooks, none explaining what to do in the dire case of one coming off.

3) If the hook that came off ends up being lost, does anyone know how I can acquire a new one, outside of manufacturing my own? I guess this is only applicable if the board is capable of modification to re-insert the hook.

Please advise.

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bummer, man
- hook-ends go thru the board (see attached pic)
- don't know where it broke on yours...
- hook completely pulled out or did the hook break?

Possible Repairs:
- assumes excellent soldering skills and tools
- drilling a hole is out, circuit traces on top-side are too close to hook holes
- desolder (if hook broke) stubs with proper tool (heating and pulling is risky, could pull the thru-via out)
- some used properly sized paperclip and "hooked" the ends, at the back and soldering the ends together

Reminds me of old Abit BE-6 hooks yanking off, back in 1996
- caused by poor soldering or poor quality solder
- hook material was plated and hook broke away, separating from plated material
- hook/hole diameter too small to take "upward pressure"
- third party NB clips created too much tension on hooks
- did my "preventative" repair with silver solder and hooking ends, as opposed to leaving them straight
- used teflon insulating washer around "hooked" ends

Good luck!

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Originally Posted by NghtShd

Yes, but considering that you are going with 10k RPM drives in RAID 0 one would assume that you are interested in getting the best performance. If that is correct then the EZ-RAID is a bad choice because you are craming both drives into one of the ICH7R SATA II ports (what would be port 2) via the SIL4723. I think you may also lose NCQ using EZ-RAID. For best performance use the ICH7R directly.

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My other sata connectors are in use, other then getting rid of one or two of my sata drives, what else would you suggest? Can I move one or two of my sata drives to the EZ-RAID connectors and NOT run them in RAID mode?

AM

Yeah man... that would make total sense. Give you the ICH7R connectors to play with for your O/S-App's Raid0 array.

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Originally Posted by nickfd

Hi all,

So as I mentioned before, I went through and purchased a Thermaltake Extreme 2 Northbridge cooler (copper block with integrated 40mm fan) and installed it on my board this past weekend. Everything was functioning fine until last night, when somehow one of the two clips holding the northbridge into the motherboard came off. I only noticed it when I looked in my case trying to figure out why my computer was crashing almost immediately after windows booted up.

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In addition to bichi's suggestions, if you don't want to solder I'd suggest something like JB Weld for reattaching the original or a replacement hook. There's also the option of making a warranty claim.

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Originally Posted by ashman

My other sata connectors are in use, other then getting rid of one or two of my sata drives, what else would you suggest? Can I move one or two of my sata drives to the EZ-RAID connectors and NOT run them in RAID mode?

AM

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You can move one to an EZ port if you don't want RAID. If you move two then, as JBOD apparently doesn't, work you'll have to use RAID or 'big' mode. There is also an internal JMicron SATA port which you could use for a single drive. And you'll lose any data on any drive which gets changed from or to a RAID or big array.

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Originally Posted by bichi

bummer, man
- hook-ends go thru the board (see attached pic)
- don't know where it broke on yours...
- hook completely pulled out or did the hook break?

Possible Repairs:
- assumes excellent soldering skills and tools
- drilling a hole is out, circuit traces on top-side are too close to hook holes
- desolder (if hook broke) stubs with proper tool (heating and pulling is risky, could pull the thru-via out)
- some used properly sized paperclip and "hooked" the ends, at the back and soldering the ends together

Reminds me of old Abit BE-6 hooks yanking off, back in 1996
- caused by poor soldering or poor quality solder
- hook material was plated and hook broke away, separating from plated material
- hook/hole diameter too small to take "upward pressure"
- third party NB clips created too much tension on hooks
- did my "preventative" repair with silver solder and hooking ends, as opposed to leaving them straight
- used teflon insulating washer around "hooked" ends

Good luck!

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Hey Bichi,

Thanks a ton for the reply. It's exactly the kind of information I was looking for. Regarding my soldering skills, I have no doubt of my ability, since I've been able to mod dozens of various versions of the ps2 throughout the years. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, you'll understand the precision to be able to pull off this kind of work.

However, due the specifics of the picture, this is not the avenue I want to take. I think that this was a poor design on Asus's front, and am honestly surprised that more people have not run into it. Relying only on solder to hold the hook into place while requiring there be substancial pressure by the Northbridge cooler to place on the chipset for both cooling and booting, I think is pretty bad engineering.

What I will try to do (soon as I get some free time in the evening, thanks to last minute assignments from work), is fabricate a better solution, more than likely utilizing some sort of anchor (just like what you did to your board). The pins are extremely small, and yes, there are the traces to worry about next to them, so I'm not sure if coming up with something there would work, but I'll try. Even just having something that will go through the holes and right angle themselves at the bottom of the motherboard so they won't be just pulled right out would be good.

More than likely, I'm going to make a little bracket and hook it off the motherboard mounting screw right next to the hook area. The only crummy part of this is that when I'm going to want to remove my motherboard, the NB will have to come out and be cleaned, re-thermalled, and reapplied.

I'll take pics of what I end up doing and paste so you guys see. I know I'm pretty excited by the challenge and hope that I won't have to buy another 250$ motherboard.

Btw- I don't think I'm going to be able to send it in for warranty since I took off the original NB heatsink and cut the heatpipe next to where the MOSFETS sit. :)

Thanks again for the advice! Hope noone else will run into this problem!

do all boards after sn 68xxx have 1,85 v on mch ?

i have a unopened 6Axxx here.

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Originally Posted by BAR*B*Q

do all boards after sn 68xxx have 1,85 v on mch ?

i have a unopened 6Axxx here.

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that should be a 1.03 revision, made in china, and yes it should have 1.85v in mch

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Originally Posted by monza1412

that should be a 1.03 revision, made in china, and yes it should have 1.85v in mch

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thx ;)

Can anyone tell me if this config is possible

2 drives on the Asus EZBackup ports in Raid 1 for boot drive with OS
3 drives on ICH7 in raid 5 OR Raid 0 for data

If so what are the settings for the jumpers and how fast/slow are the EZBackup ports

Thanks in advance

Topboy

Hi guys, I just got a new mobo which is Rev 1.04G, anyone out there with the same Rev version? I'll be testing it out this weekend.

Guys...i have a question...ive noticed (im oceing right now) that after 35 minutes of orthos at 400x8 (1.4vcore) there is something in the mobo that starts making this really high pitched sound...is there anything i can do to stop this horrible whining? it really freaks me out.
Weird thing: the noise seems to stop when i switch from window to window...scroll or things like that(for a brief moment that is).

EDIT: The noise stopped...orthos keeps running... ^o) REALLY weird...it seems to be doing it the first 35 mins or something like that.

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Originally Posted by topboy

Can anyone tell me if this config is possible

2 drives on the Asus EZBackup ports in Raid 1 for boot drive with OS
3 drives on ICH7 in raid 5 OR Raid 0 for data

If so what are the settings for the jumpers and how fast/slow are the EZBackup ports

Thanks in advance

Topboy

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Should be possible. I'll tell you what I did though. First, I have a backup on external firewire. On southbridge I have 2xWD 36gb RAID 0 and 1 250gb seagate. A second Seagate on EZ RAID and I cross configured RAID 0 for the seagate's. My OS is on the WD drives and MY Documents and all other files on the Seagates. If you want to cross configure with the EZ RAID ports just set the jumper like it tells you for RAID 10 and do what you will with the drives. It's true though that if you have 2 drives on EZ RAID they share one lane. That's why I have only one.

Maybe try to mirror your OS through the J micron controller? hmmm. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by VIctorj

Guys...i have a question...ive noticed (im oceing right now) that after 35 minutes of orthos at 400x8 (1.4vcore) there is something in the mobo that starts making this really high pitched sound...is there anything i can do to stop this horrible whining? it really freaks me out.
Weird thing: the noise seems to stop when i switch from window to window...scroll or things like that(for a brief moment that is).

EDIT: The noise stopped...orthos keeps running... ^o) REALLY weird...it seems to be doing it the first 35 mins or something like that.

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Sounds like a fans gonna' die.

why i cannot use the memset, it always shows an eror message after restart....

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Originally Posted by Romano

why i cannot use the memset, it always shows an eror message after restart....

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Which version are you using ?

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Originally Posted by iadstudio

Sounds like a fans gonna' die.

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Nop...not a fan.

@BenchZowner: Memset 3.0

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Originally Posted by BenchZowner

I'll have the site ready tomorrow. and will I publish the related article and Asus's Tech Support evaluation results article.
Gonna publish the article on TheInquirer ( sigh ) aswell :D
Hopefully that'll grab Asus's attention.
Else, I will grab the details of a high ranked Asus employee ( with the help of my friends in the industry :D ) and will have a chat with him.

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Hi BenchZowner,

Did you get anywhere with this?

Cheers.

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Originally Posted by VIctorj

Guys...i have a question...ive noticed (im oceing right now) that after 35 minutes of orthos at 400x8 (1.4vcore) there is something in the mobo that starts making this really high pitched sound...is there anything i can do to stop this horrible whining? it really freaks me out.
Weird thing: the noise seems to stop when i switch from window to window...scroll or things like that(for a brief moment that is).

EDIT: The noise stopped...orthos keeps running... ^o) REALLY weird...it seems to be doing it the first 35 mins or something like that.

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It's not the motherboard, is your graphics card...
Just take a closer look with your ears ;)

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Originally Posted by topboy

Can anyone tell me if this config is possible

2 drives on the Asus EZBackup ports in Raid 1 for boot drive with OS
3 drives on ICH7 in raid 5 OR Raid 0 for data

If so what are the settings for the jumpers and how fast/slow are the EZBackup ports

Thanks in advance

Topboy

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Hi Topboy,

No, this is not possible. The EZ-Raid ports are kind of integrated with the ICH7 chipset, so if you were to turn on RAID or AHCI on the ICH7, you won't be able to use the EZ-Raid for a RAID.

There is a good thread on the normal asus forums regarding exactly how the ez-raid/jmicron/ich7 works, what you're capable of doing, and the recommendations. I was thinking of doing something similar, since I have two 74gb raptors in raid0 on the ez-raid ports, and wanted to do a raid5 on the ich7. However, soon as I try and turn on AHCI or RAID for the ICH7, I'm unable to boot, and evenmoreso, it won't even recognize the array.

Best bet is to stay away from the ez-raid. There are many posts showing how slow it is compared to the other ports using the ICH7 chipset. Mostly, you have a i/o bandwidth issue, because those two ez-raid ports share one 300mb/sec sata2 channel. A little more effort in the beginning with loading your OS with the f6 floppy containing the intel raid drivers will go a long way in performance.

Best of luck!

ICH7 is the best for raid !
If you remove both EZ jumpers you can use the right EZ-Backup port as the 4th ICH7 port

welcom for all. yobi