Making your Asus P5WDH (Deluxe) Ready for Conroe: An Illustrative Guide
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There's no doubt about it. Intel's new Core2 Duo "Conroe" has brought the enthusiast community interest to new, never before seen heights. Not in many years has there been such a monumental architectural change such as this one. Along with that change comes a new peak in performance. There's also no doubt about it; this new CPU family has gotten the attention of many new people, that well....don't have that much experience with "xtreme systems." We're here to help change that. Who knows....you may be our next XL in waiting.
Like most skills (and I do mean that), overclocking has a good foundation in science, math and just good plain old common sense. Increase the voltage, remove the heat, set the right parameters and you have a fast system with a little patience, some practice and a little good guidance too. This guide is intended to provide those that have little to no experience with overclocking with a solid reference for some of the more basic fundamentals needed to succeed.
With that being said, let's move on to the goods!
Our victim (i.e. candidate) is a brand new Asus P5W DH Deluxe. Of course you can substitute just about any motherboard here although the illustrative part is obviously catered to those with this board. A special thanks for EnJoY for supplying the board, thought I still think he's getting these best deal here.
Note: Always place the MB or any other hardware/electronics on some type of anti-static surface when working on them. The bag that the MB comes in is a great surface.
In these first few pictures I've laid out everything I think you will need to do this job correctly. You can make substitutions for some items, others are crucial (like the rubbing alcohol). Yep, two things I could never do without: isopropyl alcohol (I recommend 90% or better) and q-tips...that's cotton swabs for you foreign boys. You can most likely find Goo Gone in stores like Target. Brand names aren't that important, just get some kind of adhesive solvent remover, if it smells like citrus that's a bonus! The Artic Silver Thermal Surface Purifier is something that I like. Others don't think it's worth it. Enough said about that. In the end it's your choice.
The first thing we're going to do is remove the stock chipset (Northbridge and Southbridge on Intel) cooling solutions and re-install them with some better thermal compound. Installing new cooling solutions is always nice though. We'll talk about this in another guide sometimes. It all just depends on how crazy you want to go. I have found this guide will do you 99% to where I am with the system in my signature. The only other thing remaining is a volt-mod for vMCH (which we will do later, too).
First, flip that bad boy over and locate the SB heatsinks retaining pins. Give them a little squeeze with your needle-nose pliers to push the wings in. The natural spring force from the other side should suck them through the board. If they need a little help just give them a nudge with your finger. They will go right through.
Now flip the board back over and position a large flat-head screwdriver as seen below. The trick is to get the tip under the edge of the heatsink and to leverage against the IDE header. Just give it a little pressure while making sure not to make contact with the board. There are a lot of small, delicate traces and SMD components that we would hate to damage so early in the game. The heatsink should come off with a little 'pop.' Notice Asus' use of what we can only describe as "crappy" thermal compound (I'm told by the manufacturer that that's the technical name.)
Flip the board over yet again. This time target the pins for the NB heatsink located are the MOSFET seating area. Using the same technique as descrived above, compress them and push them through the board. Back on the topside again you can now complete the task of removing the NB heatsink by pushing down, then in on the U-clips so that they clear the retaining rings. Spring pressure will bring them up and out of the way. You are now free to move the cooler out of the way. There should be noticeable less resistance here as the heatsink is not really affixed in any way now.
Now to learn one of your more timeless skills. Cleaning/prepping for thermal solution installation. If there's one thing I can't stress enough its that you MUST WORK CLEAN. Thermal junctions become thermal barriers when foreign material and other resistances to heatflow are present. This includes, but is not limited to: hair, lint, dirt, old and dry thermal compounds, even the natural oil from your fingers! So again, WORK CLEAN!
Here's how you do it. (1) Take a clean q-tip, (2) dip it into your rubbing alcohol, (3) start cleaning! Really, it's that simple. And don't think you need to clean an entire core, etc. with only one q-tip. Seriously, there's 500 in the damn box. Feel free to throw that dirty one in the trash while you grab another. I'll probably go though about 30 of these prepping one MB.
Clean the NB. Use a little pressure. The only part you need to worry about is knocking those SMD capacitors of the top of the chipset wafer. Even that's going to take A LOT of force though. Be gentle, yet forceful (whatever the hell that means). After I clean with alcohol, including the top of the chipset, I always finish off with the AS thermal surface purifier. I find it removes any final traces of any chemicals that may have been deposited on the bare die surface.
Now clean the SB. Using a small flat-head screwdriver to scrap off the caked up layer of thermal compound will make this task go by faster. Don't worry about scratching the surface of the SB (if you do). You won't hurt anything, that's just the plastic casing. The actual chip is tucked safely away inside. Once you're done scrapping, clean with q-tips and rubbing alcohol again. We add one step: use some of your adhesive compound remover to finish the job off. Then one more clean with the alcohol followed by the thermal surface purifier (if you decide to use it). Here are the results. Clean!
Next step is an easy one. Let's remove the wireless control module. You can keep this if you want. I choose to remove it because its just more clutter than I need. Rule of thumb when going for maximum overclock: if you don't need it, ditch it! The picture explain this step pretty well. Once the screw is removed just pull the board straight up to release it from the MB.
Next, we're going to remove the CMOS (BIOS) chip and hotflash it in another board so that we can post with our Conroe. Now, if you have a different Intel LGA775 CPU that you can use to flash then you can skip this step. I find this is one of them more frequently asked questions though ("How do I hotflash?"). Those that just got a Conroe and this MB will be disappointed when they can't POST because none of the Asus shipping BIOS' are Core2 Duo compatable.
First, pop the CMOS chip out using a tiny flat-head screwdriver.
You are going to need two disk prepared. One will be a standard Windows boot disk:
(1) Put in the blank disk to be formatted in the floppy drive and start Windows Explorer.
(2) Expand the tree on the left and right click on the "(A" drive or whatever corresponds to your floppy drive.
(3) Select "Format..." from the menu.
(4) Check "Quick Format" and "Create an MS-DOS startup disk"
(5) Click Start.
(6) When completed you now have a boot disk that will allow you to boot to a psuedo-DOS prompt instead of Windows.
The second will contain 3 files. Nothing more is needed. (This disk cannot be bootable as it will not fit all the files needed to flash if it is.)
AFUDOS.EXE - Asus Flash Utility
P5WDH.ROM - Asus P5W DH Deluxe BIOS 0078 (this is the BIOS that I recommend)
FLASH.BAT - A simple batch file that I have written for flashing
Now we have everything we need. Except for another computer. By definition you need a second system if you are going to hotflash for a board that you can't boot or would otherwise need to remove a CPU from another system for booting. I'm too lazy to take apart another system just to get the CPU to flash in the P5W DH, that's why I choose to do it this way. Much quicker in the long run.
Now, boot the operating system with the boot disk we just created. When you're at the DOS prompt.....take the CMOS chip out of the running system. Yep, that's right. Use that same small screw driver to pop it right out. Be careful not to contact any other conductive surface on the rubbing MB. Now, put in the CMOS you want to update. Finally, exchange disks for the floppy containing the flash code and type "flash" and the promp and press [Enter]. You should now be flashing. Let it finish and then shutdown the operating computer. You are now free to swap the CMOS chips returning each to it's rightful place. You may need to reset the BIOS in the flashing system as the NVRAM tables get jumbled during the flash. Don't worry, nothing permanent has been changed. Note that this procedure only works if the host BIOS is of the same size as the target flash chip. In this case 8Mbit. I recommend you use another current generation Asus board if at all possible.
Once you return the CMOS chip to the P5W DH you should now clear the CMOS manually. First remove the battery, then move the jumper as shown below. Leave it for a minute just to be sure. Don't forget to return the jumper to the original position, then install the battery back into the MB.
This next step is more cleaning. This time we are cleaning the underside surfaces on both the NB abd SB coolers. I highly recommend that you remove the "covers" on these heatsinks as they are nothing but a hiderance to direct airflow if you have a fan point near them. The cover is nothing my thinly shaped gold-anodized aluminum held on with a very weak adhesive. Pull them right off...and into the trash they go.
Cleaning is performed in the same way as above. Scrapping the surface first with a small flat-head screw driver will speed up this step considerably. Follow this with a cleaning with rubbing alcohol and then finish off with the thermal surface purifier if you desire.
As a final preparation for re-installing the heatsinks we need to replace the thermal compound that we removed. I use Artic Silver 5. Use whatever you prefer. Spread the thermal compound thinly and evenly using a CLEAN razor blade. Clean the blade with rubbing alcohol and don't touch the surface just as you wouldn't touch the surface of the chips that we just made ready.
The NB core uses far less thermal compound for two reasons. One, it's much smaller. Two, it is a bare core. Spread the thermal compound as thinly as possible. The compound is only meant to fill in the small microscoping crevices in the mating surfaces. The bare core is about as flat as they come. Although the NB cooler can be a little rough it is pretty damn good for the time being.
Replace the heatinks and you are done! You now have optimal heat transfer conditions for your NB and SB (without installing after-market coolers or going with something more exotic). This is a good first step especially for those that plan on overclocking their Conroe on air. Those that want to build a budget system will be especially happy with the results.
In the next guide we will look at the vMCH mod. A MUST if you plan on pushing your Conroe to the limits.
-FCG
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