**Official ASUS Striker II Formula Discussion/Review/Overclock/Guide/BIOS Thread**

[cstkl1]

Thanks Hor$eman.

Will try +30 and see if it helps.

eh i wouldnt if i was u

he is letting his vtt on auto.. so must be hitting 1.5v

u guys should reduce the GTL..

500fsb vtt 1.2
gtl cpu/nb -70
try it..
it works for me

[cstkl1]

will post later when i am free also this is for 45nm c2d
u dont need to go more than 1.2v for vtt for 500fsb
and also the pll should be at 1.6
nb at 1.5v

hmm but really curious how the heck did that guy with 4.5ghz manage to do such low latencies

[nugzo]

Alot of people are talking about how bad this board is. I'm having absolutely no problems. I am using air only with stock heat pipes. I removed heat pipes and added arctic silver to the chips, left the tape on the voltage regulators. I'm running my CPU at 4200, 1868 (467) fsb, SLI 9800GTX, (my 3rd 9800 will be here tomorrow) I've been able to do the same settings on all bios that i have tried. I play Age of Conan every night for 3-6 hours with all settings on high and haven't had a single hiccup. No blue screens, no restarts, no freezes. My point is... That i don't think the striker II formula is crap overall as a board. But i'm sure there are a few bad boards in the bunch. There always is. For those that are having problems play close attention to hot spots, this board like alot of boards need some extra help keeping cool when overclocking. If you are sure that cooling isn't an issue, maybe you do have a sub par overclocker. Get another board and try again.

[cstkl1]

Alot of people are talking about how bad this board is. I'm having absolutely no problems. I am using air only with stock heat pipes. I removed heat pipes and added arctic silver to the chips, left the tape on the voltage regulators. I'm running my CPU at 4200, 1868 (467) fsb, SLI 9800GTX, (my 3rd 9800 will be here tomorrow) I've been able to do the same settings on all bios that i have tried. I play Age of Conan every night for 3-6 hours with all settings on high and haven't had a single hiccup. No blue screens, no restarts, no freezes. My point is... That i don't think the striker II formula is crap overall as a board. But i'm sure there are a few bad boards in the bunch. There always is. For those that are having problems play close attention to hot spots, this board like alot of boards need some extra help keeping cool when overclocking. If you are sure that cooling isn't an issue, maybe you do have a sub par overclocker. Get another board and try again.

same here..
been running 500x8.5 for nearly 3 months with COD4, Assassin Creed, torrenting and few other games.. 24/7 without shutdown.. other than flashing bioses.. no bsod etc.. on a 9800gx2

but i seriously been reading this thread
those with c2d 45nm .. u guys shouldnt be running the vtt on auto.
they should be less than 1.2 for 500fsb and below
and try reducing the gtl's not increasing it..

also this board has the same traits as other asus mobo u need to run the pll at 1.6v

[Leeghoofd]

Alot of people are talking about how bad this board is. I'm having absolutely no problems. I am using air only with stock heat pipes. I removed heat pipes and added arctic silver to the chips, left the tape on the voltage regulators. I'm running my CPU at 4200, 1868 (467) fsb, SLI 9800GTX, (my 3rd 9800 will be here tomorrow) I've been able to do the same settings on all bios that i have tried. I play Age of Conan every night for 3-6 hours with all settings on high and haven't had a single hiccup. No blue screens, no restarts, no freezes.

You also tamed the Striker 680i , I think you can master any board with that knowledge Was that a hard nut ot crack or what lol.... ... Iraqian Striker board still runs super duper lol...

[CBird28]

what voltage you boys running your nb at?

[Hor$eman]

what voltage you boys running your nb at?

1.40 to 1.44

[Hor$eman]

Well I've got my third board installed, and this time I think I have the cooling kinks worked out, hehe. Tech where I replaced second board confirmed the SLI (NF200) and PCI-3 were cooked. They replaced it with new as soon as they tested it. I paid for IPR (Instant product Replacement) insurance when I bought the second board. Good thing too... Second board only survived a month of abuse, hehe.

I looked at different options for air cooling, but I think what i came up with (for air) is about on par with best possible, for sure better than what comes stock. I lapped all parts prior to re-installation, including the entire copper plate which I use as the heat transferral heatsink for the NF200/sb. I pulled the rest of (what I haven't already scavenged) stock cooling unit apart completely, and note that the block on top of the nb, with the fins, is made of aluminum. Below that is a copper heatsink that is of two thicknesses, which the nb chip sits dead center between each thickness (1/2 chip has thick heatsink; 1/2 chip has think heatsink). It wouldn't have taken much to design a better cooling solution to what they have. I could roughly draw one up in about ten minutes.

My sensor on the nb seems to be working spot on and , and I agree that the MCP temp in Everest is the same as the nb temp . My nb is now running at no hotter than 44c using active cooling.

Sensor on the sb is slower to react (perhaps it doesn't fluctuate temps like the nb), but shows a little higher (1 to 2c) temp than I had before, indicating that my new solution to cooling the NF200 is working.

I ramped up to 4500 MHz last night within an hour, and did some testing. It definately wasn't able to run CPU cores at 100% for long without overheating, but was fairly stable aside from that. I'm looking forward to breaking my old 3DMark06 score shortly. I ran Orthos for an hour before I went ot bed to heat things up, then let it cool off overnight. At 4050, this AM, my CPU temp is at 29c idle. Everything is looking good.

Pics to follow today.

[Marios]

We shouldn't need active cooling on ΝΒ, since there are heatpipes transferring heat at the mosfet area. 44°C for the NB is great and 46°C for NF200 is unbelievable. I never managed to see less than 60°C. So I suppose it's only me having defective heatsinks.
How hot is your SB heatpipe after it leaves the NB heatsink? Any photos?

[Hor$eman]

I totally removed the stock heatpipe system.
At 4500 Mhz, right now,
NB : 43
SB/NF200 : 34

Pics
Pic 1: Possible solution for NB cooling, mounting the TT fan housing and fan on the NB.
Pic 2-5: Use of the original copper plate, with the TT unit and heat sinks installed on it.

[DPC_Bubbles]

I'm having huge problems with my setup. Before yesterday, I had a E6550 installed, running it at 10% overclock (366 Mhz x 7), but for that, I already had to up the voltages for the NB to 1,34V. That meant that when I took a look in the bios, the NB became 80-85 degrees Celcius. I've done some tests with an optical temperature meter, which showed that the outside of the heatsinks were about 60-65 degrees. Problem is I don't have much room left to install some fans on the chipset (see here for some pictures).

As my X3350 was about to be delivered I ordered watercooling, as I figured it would become even hotter. And it isn't summer yet, even.

So yesterday, the quadcore arrived and I installed it. However, on default settings, when entering windows, it was anything but stable. I tried upping some voltages, and lowering clockspeeds, which resulted in making it finally (a bit) stable. However, that was not what I had in mind with this setup, obviously. I then tried to update the bios from 1101 to 1303, but that made things even worse: when entering the bios, it would hang in a couple of seconds. Only by reinstalling the old CPU, I could flash the bios back to 1101. After that I could finally try things again with the X3350. Right now I have it (more or less) stable running at original clockspeeds. However, I had to up the voltages ridiculously, for it to keep on running. Ofcourse this has it's implications. Stressed, the processor runs very hot (core temps vary between 70 and 84 degrees). Northbridge is also very hot, but I haven't found a single program which can monitor that temperature, when in Windows.

By the way, setup is as follows:
Xeon X3350 @ 2,67 Ghz (with Scythe Mugen heatsink)
2x MSI Geforce 8800 GT Zilent OC - SLI
4x Corsair 2 GB CL4 DHX (@ 5-5-5-15-19, T2)
2x Hitachi 500GB SATA - RAID 0
Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio
Chieftec 850G-DF 850 Watt PSU

Voltages are (as far as I can remember right now) set in the BIOS at:
CPU VCore: 1,35V
CPU VTT: 1,4V
NB: 1,36V

which in windows results in:
CPU VCore: 1,2V (according to CPU-Z), or 1,28 (according to Everest)
CPU VTT: 1,3 V
NB: 1,36V

Temps:


Anyone any tips how to make this work? Maybe another bios or something?
I really don't understand why I have to up the voltages so much just to make it run stable at original clockspeeds...

[cstkl1]

just checking whether u did this when u flashed to 1303.. cause they have a bit more extra settings and new cpu support

for asus mobos
ure suppose to go the bios .. load default settings.. save and exit
then go back to bios.. ez flash 2 and then only flash..

its common if it hangs upon restart which u just have to shutdown ure computer and restart.

[Daytime Dreamer]

Nice going horseman!!! I'll try doing the same or something similar

Does anybody know what thermalright coolers for the mosfet area are compatible with the striker II?

[DPC_Bubbles]

I flashed the bios using the 'good old method': awdflash.exe from a bootable USB stick. I did not set settings back to defaults, however. Booting was not a problem, really. But for some reason when in windows, it was a bit less stable. When I wanted to change things in the BIOS, I couldn't do that, because it would hang on me in just a couple of seconds.
I guess I can try this when I get back from work.

[CBird28]

just took off the heatpipe system, and found a substance on the heatsinks that i couldnt remove, anyone else find this?

[Garrett]

A pic of it maybe, CBird28?
If it's the grey stuff that's on there usually, it wipes off easily with acetone

[Hor$eman]

just took off the heatpipe system, and found a substance on the heatsinks that i couldn't remove, anyone else find this?

They seem to use two types of thermal grease:
1) A white substance which is soft and easy to remove, It appears this was added later. To remove, use acetone or nail cleaner and Q-tips.
2) A gray substance which was put on and became very hard and dry. Though hard, it does come off without a great deal of effort. To remove from chips, use your fingernail, followed by acetone/ nail polish remover and Q-Tips. To remove from heatsinks, use your fingernail, or a scraper, or sandpaper/emery cloth, followed by acetone/ nail polish remover and Q-Tips.

A third substance, which appears to be hot glue from a hot glue gun, was used to secure the copper tubing to the various parts.

[CBird28]

yeah it does look like superglue, and i tried using the arctic silver thermal remover to get rid but wouldnt come off

[nugzo]

but i seriously been reading this thread
those with c2d 45nm .. u guys shouldnt be running the vtt on auto.
they should be less than 1.2 for 500fsb and below
and try reducing the gtl's not increasing it..

also this board has the same traits as other asus mobo u need to run the pll at 1.6v

This is very true about the auto vtt/ on auto it gave me 1.68 and i get errors trying to unpack anything. reduced to 1.2 and errors gone.

You also tamed the Striker 680i , I think you can master any board with that knowledge Was that a hard nut ot crack or what lol.... ... Iraqian Striker board still runs super duper lol...

Thanks!! The striker wasnt realy that hard after 15 evga 680i boards

[cstkl1]

oh yeah and just want to reiterate when i meant 1.2 i mean set 1.28v bios read 1.2v/ vmm reading around 1.196

[Kevin1970]

First off most of the bios settings are on auto. Cause i have no idea what else to change them to.

So for some reason my pc froze up while playing a game and i heard a whine coming thru the speakers. I held in the power button and turned off the pc and when i tried to reboot it frooze at the republic of gamers screen. For 2 weeks i've tried and tried to figure out what the issue is but no luck. It will always freeze but sometimes if i turn off the pc and let it sit it will make it to windows, other times it wont. Sometimes it wont even do anything. Like the monitor will be in standby and yet the fans are spinning. The lcd poster will give me a few different messages, cpu init, vga bios(or something like that) testvram. It seems where ever it decides to freeze thats the message i get, cause it's in the middle of booting and many things fly by on the poster. Here's the list of things i've tried. Keep in mind all bios settings are stock, no overclock and most items are on auto.

Removed the sound card.
Tried each video card on it's own.
Tried each stick of ram on it's own.
Unhooked the main hard drive thinking the main drive failed.
Reinstalled the OS on a different drive. It actually let me do that once without freezing. Yet apon reboot it frooze.
Tried updating the bios. it froze mid way thru the bios update, cause me to need to buy a floppy and force a bios update the really hard way. Long story, it was hell.

I figure the only things left that could be causing this is the motherboard, the ram or the powersupply or the cpu.
The powesupply sound and looks and feels fine. So i think thats not it.
The ram dont make sense unless all 4 sticks are bad, all of a sudden.
The cpu is a possibility but i dont think it's that.
The motherboard itself seems to be problematic for many people so could be that.

But i am not sure given the issue what is wrong. Anyone know what this issue sounds like. Cause i'm lost.

I know i should know more about bios settings to run a board like this but i just dont yet. I'm new to all this. Perhaps it ran fine with bios settings on auto for a while and those settings fried it. It would be helpfull to know what settings i should use just for basic stock performance. I like power but i also dont like noise.

Please someone help. I don't wanna try another board.
Bios 1101 is loaded right now. It also was the bios i had for a while when everything was running nice.

ZALMAN Z-MACHINE GT1000-B Black Case, Striker 2 Formula, Intel E8400 CPU, ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120, X-fi Extremegame, PC Power & Cooling 750W PSU, 3x Western Digital 750GB, 2x BFG GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, ASUS 20X DVD±R, Crucial Ballistix 4GB, Vista 32 SP1

[Hor$eman]

Try this:

1) When you can get to the bios, press F5 to set all settings to default. Save/Exit.

2) Flash to 1303 using AWDFlash.

3) Start to bios. Enter it. Don't change anything. Press F10. Save/Exit.

4) See what happens. Try entering the bios and changing what you need to. If that doesn't work, let us know what the poster says (what it stops on).

You can help by answering these questions:
- What CPU?
- What RAM?

[Hor$eman]

Nice going horseman!!! I'll try doing the same or something similar

Does anybody know what thermalright coolers for the mosfet area are compatible with the striker II?

HR-09 Type 4 132-CK-NF78-A1 should work.

If you are willing to scrap the original heatpipe system, you can cut the originals off.

[Marios]

Did anyone try to "repair" the heatpipes?
This is my idea. I am going to drill a small hole on the upper end of all heatpipes, fill them with water to measure how much they can get, then fill them half way and close the tiny hole by soldering.
Could this possibly work? What do you think?

[DPC_Bubbles]

[..]
but i seriously been reading this thread
those with c2d 45nm .. u guys shouldnt be running the vtt on auto.
they should be less than 1.2 for 500fsb and below
and try reducing the gtl's not increasing it..

also this board has the same traits as other asus mobo u need to run the pll at 1.6v

Thank you so very much.

After flashing my bios again to 1303 (this time with EZFlash2), I set my CPU PLL to 1,6V, and the CPU VTT to 1,3V (which results in 1,2V actual). Furthermore I upped the CPU voltage a tad to 1,2V resulting in 1,072V when stressed and 1,188V when idle.

For the moment, my system seems to be stable at original (intended) clockspeeds, including my RAM at 4-4-4-13 2T.

I'm happy again.