[18th Anniversary] Asus Black Pearl - P5k-Premium Testing Report

[nicepun]

That's interesting. I go by what's printed on the PCB.
What's your boards serial number?

Answer:

my board is a rev 2.00g made in china with the mixed red and purple caps,but my box and manual are the new ones from the pics above.i've not tried raid,but it seems to work fine.i'm at 3.7ghz/465fsb at 1.45vcore with my E6750.

my serial no. 77M0ACT82687

i just noticed,mine says along the edge,it says pcb made in taiwan.does that mean its a china or taiwan board?(sorry if its a daft question) coz on the serial no. sticker on the bottom pci slot,it says made in china.

means mine would be a taiwan 2.00g.caps are mixed purple and red.

Hey man we have the same type mobo, I haven't tried BIOS 0402 and RAID yet.

[jamiee]

Here's two pic's showing the different coloured capacitors used between my two boards. Also note that the larger sized cap's have slightly different numbering (not sure if it means anything).

[antsh]

Quick off topic question guys. I am getting a constant red light from led next to the PCI-E x16 slot. The manual says something about if that happens then the slot isn't getting full bandwidth. CPU-Z and Everest both report that slot has x16 enabled. I was wondering if any of you are also getting the red LED going off? Thanks.

2.00G China board with all red caps by the way, no hard drive trouble since day one.

[Machinus]

What is a safe 24/7 voltage for P5K+6850?

In order to prevent long-term electromigration etc.?

[sesdave]

OK so my 6850 can hit 8 x 487 at around 1.45V. However, I can't get it to go above 8x490 despite having fine temps and plenty of voltage headroom. Any ideas?

Also, is it better to run the FSB at like 475 and go 1:1 on the memory or use the 9x and a divider?

They dont all do 4.0ghz plus- mine had a 500 FSB wall. Try increasing vcore and PLL.

Different views on that one - higher bandwidth vs speed or a nice combination. Read this and make your own mind up - very educational. http://www.thetechrepository.com/showthread.php?t=195

[sesdave]

sesdave,
Now is all that baldness due to puters or is it really the wife/girlfriend/kids ??
A..hummmm...

Now...., have you tried disabling some of the graphical features/effects in vista?
Some of them can tend to make programs seem more sluggish at times.

I wouldn't characterize my Vista Ultimate 32bit experience with my first P5K-P as being/feeling slow exactly... if anything it was maybe on par to slightly slower than when running the Striker Extreme, yet did seem a bit slow compared to the experience I remember when running my older P5W DH Board.
I'm not sure what it was about the P5W, it just felt snappier in certain situations. The new P5K-P certainly has that feel to it and maybe a little improvement to boot.

One interesting thing to note is that with the first Premium I could noticeably see a difference in boot times depending on the settings used in the BIOS. With this new board it seems to boot consistently every time.

Baldness is for real men - especially ones with wife and kids- lol!

I had a P5W and it was very zippy with winxp , e6600 3.6 and 2x1GB compared with this one with Vistax64,q6600 3.6 and 4x1GB ram. I had hoped for more on this setup - course at my age it could be my memory of the P5W performance letting me down. Maybe SP1 will cure(in my dreams!). I have done all the tweaks and service disabling that are around. Anyways its time for a Vistax64 reinstall -its been weeks and I have nothing else to do! This time I will try the matrix raid 0/1 and see what that does for me. Probably nothing apart from improving my HD tune pictures -lol!. !

[nicepun]

Here's two pic's showing the different coloured capacitors used between my two boards. Also note that the larger sized cap's have slightly different numbering (not sure if it means anything).

my mobo has combo color caps and the pcb is made in Taiwan.....

[TI66ER]

same as mine nicepun.

there seems to be an inbetween board which we have.with mixed caps but a taiwan board.

[jamiee]

Baldness is for real men - especially ones with wife and kids- lol!

I had a P5W and it was very zippy with winxp , e6600 3.6 and 2x1GB compared with this one with Vistax64,q6600 3.6 and 4x1GB ram. I had hoped for more on this setup - course at my age it could be my memory of the P5W performance letting me down. Maybe SP1 will cure(in my dreams!). I have done all the tweaks and service disabling that are around. Anyways its time for a Vistax64 reinstall -its been weeks and I have nothing else to do! This time I will try the matrix raid 0/1 and see what that does for me. Probably nothing apart from improving my HD tune pictures -lol!. !

Well now, we can't both be wrong in thinking the P5W was a zippy little board.
FYI, I just enabled the "Intel Robson Technology" option in the BIOS, and I swear its given my drives an extra little kick in the pants.
I wonder why Asus hasn't made this setting available in the 0302, 0402 betas?



One thing I've been thinking is that just because the boards PCB may be made in a particular location, it doesn't necessarily mean that the motherboard was assembled in that same location.
Infact, take a close look at the bottom of PCI slot#3 in the pic of the "NEW" board. there's a sticker that shows the boards serial number and if I'm not mistaking it says Made In China

-EDIT- I can confirm that the sticker does indeed say made in china.

[TI66ER]

i notice on the new version pictured above,all red caps and made in taiwan on the pcb,but made in china on the sticker.

EDIT-weres the serial no. sticker on the "old" board?,mine has the sticker on the bottom of pci3,and is exactly the same as the "new" one apart from the mixed caps.

what is intel robson tech?

[sesdave]

what is intel robson tech?

Read all about it http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/381 I thought it was mainly for laptops and hadn't noticed it in the BIOS but I am now on 0402 so the option has gone
I did read this about using matrix storage raid0/1 with 2 disks only for some very zippy I/O performance and the benefit of raid 1 for photos,music etc so I am going to give that a try.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848

edit - according to manual robson option only shows when you enable AHCI so no wonder I never saw it!. setup raid 0/1 on my 2 sata HDD's. Yes it gives me faster read response times and I load a little quicker but I cant see what real pupose it will serve if I am not doing a load of disk reading/writing. Still I had to suck it and see - it was an interesting exercise . I may go back and setup to run with AHCI just to try that out as well. You can tell I am getting bored waiting for new games. The COD4 demo look too good to be true - so intense. I wait for the full game release with anticipation - something to finally use my severely overclocked machine for-lol!

[Devious]

Ive got my WD Caviar 500GB working, it just needed to be in SATA 1 port, my 76GB Raptor(boot) and 300GBMaxtor then work in any of the other SATA ports

Maybe SATA2 drives need to be in SATA1 port.

[jamiee]

i notice on the new version pictured above,all red caps and made in taiwan on the pcb,but made in china on the sticker.

EDIT-weres the serial no. sticker on the "old" board?,mine has the sticker on the bottom of pci3,and is exactly the same as the "new" one apart from the mixed caps.

what is intel robson tech?

The sticker on the older board is on the PCB right between the ram slots and CPU socket

[jamiee]

Read all about it http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/381 I thought it was mainly for laptops and hadn't noticed it in the BIOS but I am now on 0402 so the option has gone
I did read this about using matrix storage raid0/1 with 2 disks only for some very zippy I/O performance and the benefit of raid 1 for photos,music etc so I am going to give that a try.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848

edit - according to manual robson option only shows when you enable AHCI so no wonder I never saw it!. setup raid 0/1 on my 2 sata HDD's. Yes it gives me faster read response times and I load a little quicker but I cant see what real pupose it will serve if I am not doing a load of disk reading/writing. Still I had to suck it and see - it was an interesting exercise . I may go back and setup to run with AHCI just to try that out as well. You can tell I am getting bored waiting for new games. The COD4 demo look too good to be true - so intense. I wait for the full game release with anticipation - something to finally use my severely overclocked machine for-lol!

I'm using AHCI which has similar performance characteristics to a RAID setup.
I think if I ever decide the need to go to a RAID setup in the future, I'll be sure to buy a dedicated card because on-board RAID can be somewhat flaky and RAID arrays rarely work between different motherboards boards (I.e. when doing an upgrade).

[Machinus]

They dont all do 4.0ghz plus- mine had a 500 FSB wall. Try increasing vcore and PLL.

Different views on that one - higher bandwidth vs speed or a nice combination. Read this and make your own mind up - very educational. http://www.thetechrepository.com/showthread.php?t=195

I really appreciate the link.

I'll have more info when I tame this beast!

[Budwise]

anyone have any clue why if you unplug the computer and then plug back in why it would all of a sudden refuse to post? I built a rig for a customer and he went to unplug his computer to move it to another room and then remember he needed to do one more thing so he plugged it back in and poof, no video/post. I told him to plug his speakers back in to see if he gets Windows sounds when it boots, nope. I told him to check the DVI cable at both ends, both are fine. He said it is having power surges of some kind. When he turns it on it powers on, then powers down, then powers back up again and then just sits as the fans run but doesnt post or boot into windows. Anyone have any clue here? I told him hed prolly have to ship it back to me for testing but man what a pain in the ass.

[sesdave]

anyone have any clue why if you unplug the computer and then plug back in why it would all of a sudden refuse to post? I built a rig for a customer and he went to unplug his computer to move it to another room and then remember he needed to do one more thing so he plugged it back in and poof, no video/post. I told him to plug his speakers back in to see if he gets Windows sounds when it boots, nope. I told him to check the DVI cable at both ends, both are fine. He said it is having power surges of some kind. When he turns it on it powers on, then powers down, then powers back up again and then just sits as the fans run but doesnt post or boot into windows. Anyone have any clue here? I told him hed prolly have to ship it back to me for testing but man what a pain in the ass.

Maybe he dropped it-lol! How computer conversant is he. Has he plugged in the keyboard and mouse again - in the right coloured connectors.? If it wont post could be loose memory,vid card,corrupt BIOS or duff PSU. If he is capable get him to check required componets are seated okay then try a boot. If it fails try a clear CMOS - if it still fails probably the PSU.

[SiGfever]

Mine has mixed color caps and is ver. 2.00G...Made in Taiwan. Box says...Made in China.

I have a WD 320GB Sata II drive and it works fine. I did buy a Seagate 320Gb Sata II drive for my XP64 boot.

[thefiddler]

Hey people,

I've been reading most of this thread in the past few days. First time posting, though. I bought this P5K Premium mobo a few days ago here in Belgium, and didn't know by then that there was so many problems reported using it.



FYI, mine has purple *and* red capacitors on it,
PCB made in Taiwan
Rev 2.00g
I can't look at the sticker at the bottom of the last PCI slot right now, so I don't know if the whole board is made in Taiwan or China.

According to the pictures I saw in this thread, I have the old box and manuals, though.



I first installed it with Hitachi SATAII drives on it, and had several errors displayed in the Windows XP Event Viewer. I'm now installing Seagate SATAII drives on it instead of the Hitachi's... we'll see if it gets better then.



I had mail contact with ASUS France tech support about the SATA problems. They answered me that they are not aware of any issues with this board (!!!) and that they'll contact ASUS Taiwan to see if they do have any informations on that...

[sesdave]

Hey people,

I've been reading most of this thread in the past few days. First time posting, though. I bought this P5K Premium mobo a few days ago here in Belgium, and didn't know by then that there was so many problems reported using it.



FYI, mine has purple *and* red capacitors on it,
PCB made in Taiwan
Rev 2.00g
I can't look at the sticker at the bottom of the last PCI slot right now, so I don't know if the whole board is made in Taiwan or China.

According to the pictures I saw in this thread, I have the old box and manuals, though.



I first installed it with Hitachi SATAII drives on it, and had several errors displayed in the Windows XP Event Viewer. I'm now installing Seagate SATAII drives on it instead of the Hitachi's... we'll see if it gets better then.



I had mail contact with ASUS France tech support about the SATA problems. They answered me that they are not aware of any issues with this board (!!!) and that they'll contact ASUS Taiwan to see if they do have any informations on that...

I have the same rev and boxes(I wouldnt get to hung up on this by the way!) I am running 2 xT7K500 on the ICHR controller with matrixs RAID 0/1 on both disks and have no problems at all. I was running them as single drives no problem before. Latest BIOS 0402 fixes most sata releated issues except for samsung.
What the rest of your setup and what do you mean by several errors? Have you run a diskscan for errors? Check drives with HD tune and HD TAch and see what performance you get.

[thefiddler]

I have the same rev and boxes(I wouldnt get to hung up on this by the way!) I am running 2 xT7K500 on the ICHR controller with matrixs RAID 0/1 on both disks and have no problems at all. I was running them as single drives no problem before. Latest BIOS 0402 fixes most sata releated issues except for samsung.
What the rest of your setup and what do you mean by several errors? Have you run a diskscan for errors? Check drives with HD tune and HD TAch and see what performance you get.

My complete setup is as follows:
Antec P180B
Asus P5K Premium /Wifi-AP (BIOS 0402, rev 2.00g)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Seagate 7200.10 320GB x2
Corsair DDR2-8500D (2x 1GB)
Creative XFi Fatality FPS
eVGA 8800GTX KO ACS³


I did actually run multiple diskscans on the drives, they're all fine.

When I say several errors, I mean Windows XP install went fine, and didn't take more time that it shoud have. Though, when I tried to install the latest Intel Chipset Driver, it returned an unknown error.
I re-installed WinXP after that, didn't get that error anymore, but after that I noticed my computer did reboot by itself during the night, so I checked the Event Viewer, which displayed several errors related to the hdd's controller drivers. Those errors were showing up many times a day, particularly when copying/writing large files to the disks.

At that time, I had three Hitachi T7K250 (160GB) SATA2 hdd's.
And I mean they really were in SATA2 mode, changed by using the Hitachi boot utility (since those drives are originally sold in SATA1 mode, which may be switched to SATA2 using that utility).

All three were in standard IDE mode. No RAID, no AHCI.

I also noticed that file transfer between two drives or two partitions was sometimes really sloooooow. Some HD Tach tests I made were reporting large speed drops at certain points, and sometimes returned really poor speed for one of the drives (below 5MB/s).


That said, I do not think BIOS 0402 fixes the SATA issues for everyone but Samsung HDD users. On Asus forums, there are still a lot of people having trouble with other hdd brands such as WD (some of them have to keep their drives to SATA1 mode for them to work fine).

[thefiddler]

And please forgive my english / mistakes, I'm Belgian... and french is my main language.

[limb0]

afternoon lads,

like many, i switched from e6600 & p5w to q6600 & p5k-p a short time ago and recently bought a TR ultra 120 to replace the ageing asus silent square i never should have bought to begin with.

i also bought a antec 900 case which i'm fairly pleased with.

a couple of weeks ago I stuck my finger into the 200mm antec 900 "big boy" fan running at full whack which broke a] one of the 9 fan blades and b] my fingernail.

after sucessfully aralditing the fan blade back into place and lapping my q6600 & ultra 120 with 1200 wet & dry, It seems to be stable at 9 x 400 and i've been playing around trying to get it stable at 9 x 412mhz but so far it can only manage about 90 minutes of prime95.

can anyone suggest some good chipset voltages to help get over 400mhz with stability?

i'm loving the black pearl and it's certainly no curse to me, however I feel for those faced with sata issues & hope the new bios has helped somewhat.

yesterday I cooked up a vlite slipstreamed vista x64 with 292 hotfixes and installed it onto a single 36gb raptor with AHCI and it's feeling much more responsive than before when it was plain old SATA IDE.

i'd like to thank everyone on the forum for all the great info and for the inspiration that lunatics like eva2000 provide to ignite the overclocking flame within us all.

cheers, limb0

[sesdave]

And please forgive my english / mistakes, I'm Belgian... and french is my main language.

Your english looks very good to me - but I am scottish-lol!.
have all the issues you were experiencing gone with using the seagates-?
Some of the point u have raised are of interest. I have slow copy on large files but that is a known vista x64 problem . I also see dips when I run HD tune and hd tach but put that down to file placement and the fact anti-virus and some other background apps were running. After a defrag and stopping most of them the graph looks a lot better. Overall performance seems good but if I can get a lot better with different drives I might consider a change.
You should consider raid 0/1 setup using only 2 drives with Matrix storage manager - you can get some crazy performance increases. Check out this thread - http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848. I tried this out as I have nothing else to do - its good fun. I also bought Acronis true image home 11 to do backup/restores to cover me for when the raid 0 fails -which it will at some point! Great software - I recommend it.

[thefiddler]

Your english looks very good to me - but I am scottish-lol!.
have all the issues you were experiencing gone with using the seagates-?
Some of the point u have raised are of interest. I have slow copy on large files but that is a known vista x64 problem . I also see dips when I run HD tune and hd tach but put that down to file placement and the fact anti-virus and some other background apps were running. After a defrag and stopping most of them the graph looks a lot better. Overall performance seems good but if I can get a lot better with different drives I might consider a change.
You should consider raid 0/1 setup using only 2 drives with Matrix storage manager - you can get some crazy performance increases. Check out this thread - http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848. I tried this out as I have nothing else to do - its good fun. I also bought Acronis true image home 11 to do backup/restores to cover me for when the raid 0 fails -which it will at some point! Great software - I recommend it.

Hey Sesdave,

I'm now running on two Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (2x 320GB, SATA2) drives instead of my three Hitachi's (3x 160GB, SATA2).

For now, everything looks fine with the new drives and the Windows XP install. I now use my Seagate drives in AHCI mode though, instead of standard IDE mode (which I was using for my Hitachi's).

I still have errors showing up in my Event Viewer, but I don't think this is harddrive or SATA-controller related. These are errors about a specific program (Sisoft Sandra), errors from the RemoteRegistry which isn't able to start (I've disabled this, so I guess this is pretty normal), and another error which I don't know anything about:

"The device Root\LEGACY_TAT\0000 disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal."



I'll check that link you gave, might be interesting