Commando Results by Tony and Andre (and others...)

[Alexandrus]

Here are the pics. See the lousy cooling, poor contact, poor surface, poor TIM. The darn heatsinks aren't even straight, they are concave.

[Alexandrus]

I didn't get around to the lapping job, but I've cleaned the chipset at least.

[Baer]

Those were not even coated with thermal compound. It looks from your pictures that only the edges had material. What did you do? Remove the heatpipes, clean and recoat with AS5 or Cermique?

[HermS]

Funnily enough I fitted new cooling to the NB PWM and SB today too, I'm not that confident in the PWM cooling and will probably work out something more substantial, but the Thermalright HR-05 on the NB and the Zalman NB47 on the SB should be plenty.

[Alexandrus]

The crappy TIM is on the heatsinks, too bad the heatsinks don't make proper contact with the SB and NB.
I just cleaned the TIM, and now I am trying to lap the heatsinks, then I will put them back, this time I'll make sure they make contact as they should and I'll replace the crappy TIM(tm) with some Ceramique or something like that.

[DoomSayer]

in the days of NF4 i had evercool Vc-re on my NB.
Would these cool enough for a commando ?

[MrDeeds]

I felt like the stock heatpipe setup was holding back my stability. So i went for the overkill nb sb setup. Before the change i wasnt stable longer than 3hours orthos but now.


Memory timings suck but i'll sort that out later and im probably using a little too much vcore.

[Alexandrus]

Overkill indeed, my lapping job is finished and some Ceramique did the job just fine, now the heatpipes are warm but not hot or anything.

[HermS]

So i went for the overkill nb sb setup.

No such thing as overkill when OC'ing, good job there Deeds.

[Viss]

Very nice Mrdeeds, overkill doesnt excist Might be picking up 2 of them meself, like it a lot.

[syne_24]

so anybody push max volt on this yet?

[HermS]

VDIMM or VCore?

I have a victim in mind for testing max VDIMM, but max VCore will have to wait till I get my prommie up n running again... even then I doubt I'll need it all.

I found the VCore is real wierd, there are no voltages available between 1.63v --> 1.74v and typical for asus there is massive undervolting too:-

1.6500v - 1.584v
1.6750v - 1.608v
1.7000v - 1.624v
1.7250v - 1.616v
1.7500v - 1.632v
1.7625v - 1.736v

[Alexandrus]

What did you use to measure the voltages ? Multimeter or PCProbe ?

[The Stilt]

Anyone got decent 5-5-5 clocking on this board ? 3-3-3 and 4-4-4 is looking good, but 5-5-5 stability is very very poor (lower Mhz than 4-4-4).

I have noticed the same thing.
It is pretty much impossible to get anything past DDR1200 stable no matter the latencies or voltages. Even the ram that can do DDR1200 4-4-3 on P5B or DDR1300 5-4-4 on ICFX3200 cannot do DDR1200 on Commando.

The problem is hopefully bios related, since there are still some problems with DRAM reference voltages and so.

[HermS]

Multimeter, I always use multimeter whenever possible... monitoring software is laughable usually hehe.

I should have mentioned also that this was with bios 0702. I tried 0801, but that bios would not go above 1.48v no matter what I set in bios.

It's bloody annoying too, my chip is good for 4.18GHz+ 32m at 1.64v on my P5WDG2 WS Pro and wanted to try for more with a little more VCore, but 1.74v is a little bit more than I had in mind

[Baer]

Funnily enough I fitted new cooling to the NB PWM and SB today too, I'm not that confident in the PWM cooling and will probably work out something more substantial, but the Thermalright HR-05 on the NB and the Zalman NB47 on the SB should be plenty.

Herms, when you removed the stock heatsing did the retaining pins come out easily? I am having a problem removing them. Are they push and turn? I know I am mission something simple.

[Lord_RTKK]

Herms, when you removed the stock heatsing did the retaining pins come out easily? I am having a problem removing them. Are they push and turn? I know I am mission something simple.

I have removed the retaining pins of all of the heatsinks on my commando a few minutes ago to replace the stock TIM, and hey, its a pain to remove those things... They are specially hard to remove, harder than the rest of mobos I have tried (and have tried several...)

I have done it with a little plier, pulling from the pin by the other side of the mobo, and doing a little bit of effort, finally they came off, try it.

Lord

[HermS]

Yup the board will have to come out of the case to do it, you have to pinch them together on the back of the board and then push them through. Needle nose pliers are probably best for the job.

[Ad Rock]

What are the voltages everyone is running on their NorthBridge? I still have the stock heat-pipe/TIM on my board but I would like to know what I can push when I upgrade the cooling .

[MrDeeds]

I only needed 1.35 for stability at 467fsb and i dont think i would need much more than that to push to 500. This board doesnt seem to need that much vmch. Im thinking about running 8x525 to see if thats as stable as 9x467 at the same voltages.

Be aware though that the vmch does overvolt.

[Gitsum]

Just got me a Commando a couple days ago. Sending it back for refund. Can't stand the high pitch squeal it makes under load. No "buzzing", but squeal.
Too bad. You'd think a top mobo maker like ASUS would have better quality control or use better components.

[Baer]

Yup the board will have to come out of the case to do it, you have to pinch them together on the back of the board and then push them through. Needle nose pliers are probably best for the job.

Thanks, I feel better now :-)

[Baer]

Just got me a Commando a couple days ago. Sending it back for refund. Can't stand the high pitch squeal it makes under load. No "buzzing", but squeal.
Too bad. You'd think a top mobo maker like ASUS would have better quality control or use better components.

The issue is not the componnents, actually from what I see they have use all high end componnents.

We are going to see more and more issues like this due to RoHS. Especially the lead free solder provisions of RoHS reduce reliability for far to may reasons to cover here. The key three reasons however are much higher eutectic point (25 to 30 degrees C higher in the wave soldering unit), Far lower ductility and wetting due to the much higher tin content and for long term reliability, dendritic grouth which will cause shorts in hi density circuits eventually. Also , all lead free solders are not the same with greatly differing properties as well as cost.

[cablesguy]

trying to replace the stoc hs's thermal paste with AS5 but having a tough time tho'....the pins n the rest are easily removed but the hs on the southbridge feels like its glued on....anybody?

thx in advance

[Alexandrus]

Oh come on dude, it's been asked and answered like a dozen times on a dozen topics(even here, if I recall correctly), can't you do a search ? It's not glued.