My Dual Harper - Asus Z7S WS living review *56K warning*

[jcool]

Long overdue edit:

Do NOT buy this motherboard. It's design (probably the VRM circuitery) is flawed in such a way that it will inevitably die if you stress it for a longer period of time (for example with crunching). NO amount of cooling, caution, etc will help you here. Not even running stock Vcore will prevent your system from experiencing an untimely death. Believe me, I have tried (3 or 4 times now).

Attention: If you bought this motherboard and it comes with 0116 bios, scroll down to the bios section of this post and update to the recommended bios before you do anything else! Use EZFlash and any USB Stick, works fine. If you do not update the Bios, you'll be suffering from incredibly bad performance. This is due to the "Snoop Filter" option, so make sure that after updating, you set "SF Bypass" to "enabled".

Also note: You NEED an EPS capable PSU, meaning you HAVE to connect both an 8pin and a 4pin 12V power connector to the mobo. If any one is missing, the Z7S will NOT post if populated with 2 CPUs. For 1 CPU, the 8 pin is enough.

Hello again fellow maniacs

As some might already know, I am expecting the Asus Z7S WS Workstation-Mobo to arrive at my house tomorrow.

Update: It’s here

Packaging front:



Back:



Lots of accessories:





However, the FBDimm ramcooling fan wasn’t in the retail package… and it’s not on the manual’s list either.It does say “optional” somewhere in the manual though, so you might be able to buy it somewhere 

Shots of the mobo:







Shots of Buffalo FBDimm installed:




Those heatspreaders are a bit wide I’m afraid, but it’s ok for now.


First run:



One word on the GFX, I couldn’t find my trusty Matrox PCI card, and the only spare PCIe I have is my broken X1900XTX. Use to love that card, when it just died one day while surfing the web 
It still works, just not in 3D mode. And it produces lots of coloured pixels.
So please just ignore the red dots in the following bios screens…



Features:

- Dual S771
- Intel "Seaburg" Chipset, FSB1600
- ATI Crossfire support w/ 3x PCIe x16 (two of them PCIe 2,0 contrary to Skulltrail)
- 6 Ramslots for up to 32GB of system memory, DDR2-800 support (FBDimms only)
- standard ATX form factor, passive heatpipe cooling with mounting holes to fit watercooling (I hope)
- more to come

Bios Options:








MCH, Vdimm and even SB Voltage as promised, but no VTT and no Vcore




FSB up to 500 in 1Mhz increments








NB and memory temperature, nice (even seems to be halfway accurate)




Even has Asus OC profile.

So, what’s missing:

1. Vcore!!! Probably only with new bios, or EE CPUs only <--- available with Bios 0401
2. VTT
3. Any and all memory-related settings, there are no timings, no divider, no nothing


Bios versions:

0116 - initial Bios, sucks performance-wise, can't d/l it anywhere for a reason

0201 - fixed performance issues by allowing to enable the "SF Bypass" option, now shows individual temps for every ram installed, download here
0302 - slightly improved performance, FSB spread spectrum removed, some other minor changes, download here
0401 - fixes issues with E0 step CPUs, adds Vcore setting for each CPU individually, range 0,44-1,6V in fairly small increments, current/recommended bios, download here
0501 - seems to improve the bios reset issues that most people are having with manually set Vcore, download here


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