Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z (AM3+)-infos, experience, BIOSes

[FlanK3r]

Guys, I have one of this new board few days home. I made for us some review (srry, I used translator for most )
review of Crosshair V Formula-Z with Zambezi chip

If someone next have this board, Ilhappy for some tips and OC experience. To time, I think, BIOS is not perfectly optimized. not bad, but performance with older C5F looks a bit better sometimes, OC for CPU is better with new board a bit.

[keithlm]

I have the Z... the only quirk I've seen is that sometimes after doing an overclock... and failing... the reset causes the on-board sound to disable. You have to do a more thorough or complete reset. Then hit the "F1" at the "first boot after reset" prompt... save it with the defaults and then go back into bios and change what you want. If you try to reset... and change everything on the first boot it will stay disabled.

I have no idea what causes it but I suspect that this might have something to do with changing the NB frequency... it needs to do a reboot at "stock" before it will allow other changes.

I'm loving all the fans and temperature monitors. I had been using an external four fan controller. (A nice one... but still... it is nice to do it all with software... although you can't control them all individually. But I don't really need to.)

I'm hitting almost DDR3-1866 with my PhII X4-965 which many people says is almost impossible. I think the stability of this board is helping that overclock. (Although I've not got it totally stable yet... but I'm not really trying very hard with this old CPU... I'm waiting for a new CPU.)

BTW: The SupremeFX III no longer comes with the Creative Labs "X-Fi MB" software of any type. If you try to load the X-Fi MB2 then it says it sees no valid hardware. This is not a huge deal... but I had wanted to play with the software emulation of X-Fi on this onboard realtek chip. On the other hand I ended up putting my Xonar D2X in since it sounds better.

[BeepBeep2]

keithlm, 1800-1900 is easy with C3 CPUs on most 800 and 900 series boards. I don't know why people would say that's impossible.

[aGeoM]

I have the Z... the only quirk I've seen is that sometimes after doing an overclock... and failing... the reset causes the on-board sound to disable. You have to do a more thorough or complete reset. Then hit the "F1" at the "first boot after reset" prompt... save it with the defaults and then go back into bios and change what you want. If you try to reset... and change everything on the first boot it will stay disabled.

I have no idea what causes it but I suspect that this might have something to do with changing the NB frequency... it needs to do a reboot at "stock" before it will allow other changes.

I'm loving all the fans and temperature monitors. I had been using an external four fan controller. (A nice one... but still... it is nice to do it all with software... although you can't control them all individually. But I don't really need to.)

I'm hitting almost DDR3-1866 with my PhII X4-965 which many people says is almost impossible. I think the stability of this board is helping that overclock. (Although I've not got it totally stable yet... but I'm not really trying very hard with this old CPU... I'm waiting for a new CPU.)

BTW: The SupremeFX III no longer comes with the Creative Labs "X-Fi MB" software of any type. If you try to load the X-Fi MB2 then it says it sees no valid hardware. This is not a huge deal... but I had wanted to play with the software emulation of X-Fi on this onboard realtek chip. On the other hand I ended up putting my Xonar D2X in since it sounds better.

Maybe this could help you,

http://www.chw.net/foro/guias-f79/91...01-2012-a.html

[cdawall]

keithlm, 1800-1900 is easy with C3 CPUs on most 800 and 900 series boards. I don't know why people would say that's impossible.

People were doing it 3 years ago with C2 chips and 790FX boards...

[BeepBeep2]

People were doing it 3 years ago with C2 chips and 790FX boards...

Trust me, I know...

[keithlm]

Yes... and I was using DDR2-1066 up until two weeks ago... so I didn't pay too much attention to DDR3 overclocks since it didn't affect me at the time.

Anyway it doesn't really matter at this time since this chip will be retired as soon as possible.

[BeepBeep2]

Yes... and I was using DDR2-1066 up until two weeks ago... so I didn't pay too much attention to DDR3 overclocks since it didn't affect me at the time.

Anyway it doesn't really matter at this time since this chip will be retired as soon as possible.

If you don't need a major upgrade then maybe a 2012 965 would do ya well...

I've had 3x 955/965 now bought since April that do 4.2 GHz on an H70

[keithlm]

I don't really see any reason to buy another Deneb with the Piledriver due to be out soon; and getting another 200Mhz out of a PhII X4 is not enough to justify the cost.

I'm not one of those people that sweat a few percent performance decrease in single threaded applications since most of what I do utilizes all the cores; so in truth even the already released FX chips would be a very nice upgrade. (and definitely not as bad as many people have often pretended over the last year.) But I see no reason not to wait another month or two.

Plus it will be nice to see how Piledriver performs in Linux with Phoronix. And FreeBSD.

[Zeus]

Free BSOD?

[StinkEye]

I have had the Z installed since last weekend, and I have been ready to put an "Office Space" fax machine beatdown on the whole rig until today. I think I have it figured out....I upgraded from a CIVF with beta support for Bulldozer, and I was pushing 1.45v in bios to be stable at 4.6Ghz. I used that as a starting point for the CVF-Z, and I have been crashing, hard locking, blue screening constantly...very unhappy. Seems it doesn't need all that voltage on this board, set it at 1.4v and all seems well. LLC pushed it to 1.44v under load (according to cpu-z). I am also able to run 4 x 4Gb dimms at 1866 now, don't know if that was possible on the CVF, but it sure wasn't on the CIVF. I'll try for the 4.8Ghz that has elluded me this weekend, but for now I am just going to get some use out of it.

[StinkEye]

Or maybe not...immediately after my first post had another hard lock in internet explorer...WTF??? Back to pulling hair out.

[FlanK3r]

I had some issues with 0602 BIOS. I think, we need new one with some fixes un/stability after OC

[keithlm]

New 0704 bios available on the ASUS website. (No change log.)

[FlanK3r]

I could test it, next days maybe with LN2

[StinkEye]

I think I have my board sorted out. Seems it didn't play well with the 4 x 4Gb Mushkin DDR3 1866Mhz memory I have. I picked up a Patriot 2 x 8Gb kit today at Fry's and it has been running great all day now. I really thought something was wrong with my Formula-z, so I picked up a CVF also because I have the EK block for it, but the memory switch was enough. I think I am going to keep the CVF for a backup though, I don't trust this one yet. 0704 bios working well for me so far.

[felix_w]

Since you have both of them, can you check if the EK mosfet block does also fit to the Formula-Z ?

Thanx

[StinkEye]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...nd-Waterblocks

I tried the EK Crosshair V Full Board Block, didn't work.

[keithlm]

BTW: New bios out: "0806". Notes say it improves system stability and adds support for new CPU.

[FlanK3r]

ready for FX, few days, few days

[keithlm]

New bios out today... "901" but upon trying to flash it I get a message "The file is not an EFI bios file".

(And did we really need another thread about this motherboard? Or did we just need someone to pretend to make an "OFFICIAL" thread.)

EDIT: Actually the ASUS update utility (The update button in the Asus "SuiteII" utility) will allow you to flash this bios. The BIOS "EZFlash2" utility won't recognize the file as a bios file.
(I hate using the windows bios update utilities.. I'm old fashioned and prefer the bios utility... although nowadays it is probably safe to use the windows tool... I just don't like to do it.)

[StinkEye]

Wrap the word official in some parentheses and asterisks and oh how the thread value goes up.

[Vladutz20]

After I updated the bios with 0901 and the Irog Firmware I shutdown the PC for of couple a minutes. After that I get the FF code no matter what I do. The led remains on DRAM led. I have try with ELPIDA BDBG , PSC 3GA, Hynix CFR,Hynix BFR IC , CPU Reset, clear cmos. The only code I get is FF. I don't have any video signal, I can't acces the bios.
Any suggestions

[keithlm]

Try with only one stick of ram?
Try different slots?

[Vladutz20]

Try that allready. I have used even bios flashback with every bios. FF remains. I have tried also with another cpu.
I send it back to my local store. I will wait for another Crosshair Formula Z