ASUS Maximus Formula SE

[TheSamurai]

Old myth, some believe in it, never seen a definite test
The VID should be measured at idle, on default settings. It is the lowest vcore intel built in the CPU internal settings that the CPU could run.
Theorically, the lowest it is, the better OC headroom you have
My Q6600 G0 has a VID of 1.16v, so theorically, I could reach higher OC before increasing the vcore than a VID of 1.21 (I can't test, since I'm FSB limited)
Personally, I'm not convinced as my chip needs 1.39 vcore on load for 3.51GHz, not a world record... despite my VID

i checked mine under load so i'll check it again for the hell of it.

Wouldn't you be able to just take some fishing string and run it under the heatsink to cut through the glue?

neat idea!!!





okay, so right now i'm installing xp64 on my raptors in raid 0 with no slices/partitions so i can compare to when i slice/partition it. for some reason i can only get one slice so i guess i'll have to partition the rest to meet my needs. what are decent programs to test my HDs with? HD Tune?

[btdvox]

Update your bios, to 0802 or 0901, Then Come talk to us, The bios update fixes alot of problems i was having.

fine you win, Ive been not wanting to update my bios from 0505 cuz ive heard people were having problems with the newer mobo's comparingly to 0802. I just want this same Clock, i have so many games to play that i dont have the time to OC anymore lol.

Any news on how 0901 is? and is it a beta bios? Cause i dont want a beta bios!

Thanks for your help warboy. let me know what you think.

But yeah i guess i read awhile back that many people on 0505 were having the OC fail for no reason, when some had primed for 10 hours or more or orthos or OCCT etc.

[Warboy]

fine you win, Ive been not wanting to update my bios from 0505 cuz ive heard people were having problems with the newer mobo's comparingly to 0802. I just want this same Clock, i have so many games to play that i dont have the time to OC anymore lol.

Any news on how 0901 is? and is it a beta bios? Cause i dont want a beta bios!

Thanks for your help warboy. let me know what you think.

But yeah i guess i read awhile back that many people on 0505 were having the OC fail for no reason, when some had primed for 10 hours or more or orthos or OCCT etc.

I've tried 0802 and 0901, get the same results but I like sticking with the new stuff so i went with 0901, and have ultra low volts atm with my overclock ^_^

[Aldy402]

does 0901 disable PECI like 0701 & 0802 did?

[DMight]

Thanks Samurai, Cuke2u, et al. Wow, I'm hoping for an experience like Cuke2u, though given my previous struggles it's little more than a hope. We'll see. The board just arrived. It's a Non-SE with the Pin Fin Thermal Module, rev. 1.03g. Perfect for me as I'm not water-cooling.

I had a hell of a time with my SE board. It overclocked well, for my purposes anyway (400x9 16hrs prime95 stable), but I kept getting this odd behavior with my PCIE video card. It was just fine in 2D, but anytime I'd run a 3D app it would run great (Crysis, Gears of War, HL2), but if I quit the program and then tried to start another 3D app again the graphics would stutter and eventually freeze. This stuttering behavior would also demonstrate itself in 3D as simple as the spinning NVIDIA logo in NIVIDA Control Panel, which became my standard test to see if the error had occured...run a game, quit to desktop, open NVIDIA Control Panel and watch the stuttering logo. Very strange. This would happen with my overclock and then again when I set it back to stock speeds. Tried enabling and disabling everything in the system, several complete re-installs of the OS (XP64) and still no luck. Same thing with 3 different PCIE cards (7900GS, and 2 8800GTs). So, I concluded that there was something wrong with the PCIE port or bridge or something on the MB and RMA'd it. Fingers crossed that this new one works.

[safan80]

rebooting to test 0901..

[JohnMike]

Where's 0901 bios to download?!

[Century Phoenix]

Where's 0901 bios to download?!

On the Asus's FTP:

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/so...aximus_Formula

file "MF0901.zip"

[safan80]

here's what I have so far on 0901 using ratio 3:5

[tiesum]

Maybe all you watercooling guys haven't noticed but the q-fan on my CPU-fan doesn't work. It keeps spinning at max speed... Anyone having the same problem?

[Nuckin_Futs]

@ Thelans RE: Kingston Hyper-X 2gb(2x1gb) 800mhz Low Latency 4-4-4-12. If this is the RAM in question, and was spd speced as cl4, then upto 2.20v should be sae for DDR1000. What was it needing to stable as 5-5-5-15? I don't know Kingston enough to quote, (someone here can confirm this), but good overclocker RAM of stock 4-4-4-12 should do same @ DDR1000 but w/ maybe 2.24v or at least 5-4-4-12 w/ 2.22v.

Most DDR1066 (labed) is gonna' just usually be cherry picked PC2-667 or PC2-6400 to run higher frequency but w/ more vdimm. Averages are round 2.24v for 1066 @ 5-5-5-18, but w/ potential to overclock frequency or tighten up.

[thelawns]

A few typo's there but I think I get what your saying... Gonna reboot and try better timings...

Sadly, I have already ordered the 1066mhz now... Will be here tomorrow...

[TheSamurai]

okay, i got xp64 installed with raid 0 and used the whole 300gb to try and see what i got for speeds... well, it wasn't anything good. i don't think that it even split the two drives. when i went back in to try it without raid, one of the drives wasn't even partitioned. maybe my head is just too jumbled and i'm not thinking clearly right now, but this is getting annoying. what are you guys getting for speeds with your raptors in raid 0???

[thelawns]

How would we test the speeds? I have 2x 36gb raptors set up now in RAID0. Tell me what to do and i'll test it now??

Edit: Just found a prog called DiskBench. To copy a Copy an avi file:

Size: 727961600
Time: 13797 ms
Transfer Rate: 50.318 MB/s

Hows that?

[Nuckin_Futs]

@ Thelawns, No prob, if you can swing it. Only better anywayz, since you may now have a better chance at tighter timings down to 4-4-4-10 at the same 2.2v in 1:1 @ DDR1000.

RE: HDD read/write test. I used to know of one with a online data refference sorce to compare results, but I forget, it's been too long (3yrs). I do know Nero offers a basic test speed utility, but sandra could give better results with maybe comparibles online from their user data.

I think the cool folks will come up with some new up to date transfer test utilitys for us to try.

[Sgt. Slaughter]

I have my raid setup with 2 74 gb raptors and all is well. But I have a 500gb seagate that I can see in the bios and it was shown in the Intel matrix storage manager, but I cannot see it in explorer. Also is anyone having any problems with utilities that came on the Asus CD and Vista 64. I loaded the utilities and started to experience look-ups when I went on the internet and had to delete them. I have updated my bios to 802. Thanks for the help.

[thelawns]

@ Thelawns, No prob, if you can swing it. Only better anywayz, since you may now have a better chance at tighter timings down to 4-4-4-10 at the same 2.2v in 1:1 @ DDR1000.

RE: HDD read/write test. I used to know of one with a online data refference sorce to compare results, but I forget, it's been too long (3yrs). I do know Nero offers a basic test speed utility, but sandra could give better results with maybe comparibles online from their user data.

I think the cool folks will come up with some new up to date transfer test utilitys for us to try.

Just tried upping the volts to 2.3v in Bios(2.4 real) and changing to 4-4-4-12 but no good. Got stuck on DET DRAM. I think I know I have found the max for my CPU but I am not comfortable with the volts running through my mem to do it..... Hence my purchase!

[thelawns]

I have my raid setup with 2 74 gb raptors and all is well. But I have a 500gb seagate that I can see in the bios and it was shown in the Intel matrix storage manager, but I cannot see it in explorer. Also is anyone having any problems with utilities that came on the Asus CD and Vista 64. I loaded the utilities and started to experience look-ups when I went on the internet and had to delete them. I have updated my bios to 802. Thanks for the help.

For your Seagate drive, have you been to the following:

Right Click 'My Computer' and click 'Manage'
Under the Storage tree you should see 'Disk management'
You should see a list of drives. You may need to Enable the Seagate drive or Activate it.

[btdvox]

this will be my first time flashing my bios using an asus board, using EZ flash i have formatted my USB flash drive to FAT32. Now Do i download the dos or All OS bios file, Also is the file linked on the ftp site for OS or dos.

After that is there any major steps i should be taking?? I dont want to F things up.

As far as i know once the extraced file from the .zip i download is uploaded on the Flash drive, I go into EZ flash thru bios or alt-f2 and choose that file and it installs the bios...

And I should reset my bios to default before and after the install...

Anything else!??

[thelawns]

this will be my first time flashing my bios using an asus board, using EZ flash i have formatted my USB flash drive to FAT32. Now Do i download the dos or All OS bios file, Also is the file linked on the ftp site for OS or dos.

After that is there any major steps i should be taking?? I dont want to F things up.

As far as i know once the extraced file from the .zip i download is uploaded on the Flash drive, I go into EZ flash thru bios or alt-f2 and choose that file and it installs the bios...

And I should reset my bios to default before and after the install...

Anything else!??

Nope that should pretty much do you... You may want to copy the Bios you currently have onto the USB drive too, just in case...

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/so...aximus_Formula should link you to the 0802 Bios... plus the older Bios'

[Nuckin_Futs]

Speaking of raids, I have to admit I'm impressed again with this mobo. Booting into a RAID at 515FSB is smoother then I've had in the past few ASUS chipsets when OC'd this high. Usually requiring more SB volts. I do use 1.10v on SB & 1.58v on the SB 1.5v. and it keeps my OC smooth and stable. enters S3, slips into S4 then resumes from either with smoothness. S3 was iffy on my Gigabyte at 500FSB. I used to almost need 1.6v on the SB of ICH5R/6R to boot RAID 0 w/ FSB over 300 back then (ASUS P4C800-E/P5AD2-E).

So MAXIMUS on X38 is looking better every day.

[binormalkilla]

Only concern I would have for mobo, and NB/SB remps it the inverted mounting. I experienced this in the P5W-DH whe it came out and using in my SilverStone TJ-06 BTX style. Chipset was not cooling as good. But for CPU H2o, I dont understand it either. I'd check mounting, method of TIM preperation, and probe the actual waterblock to see if it reads out hot. Cause that should cool no matter it upside down or not.

Anybody else experience issues with any mobo and its onboard heatpipes when mounted in an inverted possition (upside down as in a BTX case)? I layed mine down on it back for testing and it is OK except for occassional missread of MB temp (gets stuck on 130c for a while).

Anybody locate the MB sensor, CPU PLL (clock gen) chip and DRAM clock gen yet?

@ chocobo15, What are the settings you chose. I see you are using a devider. Put strap and RAM frequency to "AUTO" and then give it a try to another FSB. May not get more then 475FSB anyways with this Q6600 unless willing to pump some more vcore, PLL, & SBT into your OC. Compare your scores w/ 1:1 v/s the devider for 1066 and see what it returns for you. 475x8 @ 1:1 for me on my P5K was nice @ 4-4-4-9 DDR950.

On BIOS v0901 now, who else?

I'm mounted using the standard ATX, and I don't have the special edition, so I'm on air cooling. I haven't reseated the heatpipes, so maybe I should try that. Is this possible to do without them being able to tell (for RMA purposes)? Those plastic clips look pretty flimsy.

[Nuckin_Futs]

Is this possible to do without them being able to tell (for RMA purposes)? Those plastic clips look pretty flimsy.

I'm sure they could tell if they wanted or cared. I did, on my P5N32-SLI. In fact I mentioned to them I had custom performance cooling onboard. I was told to remove and keep my own parts as I will not likely get them back if left on. I also sent it back as is with sinks removed and no accessories, and they gave me brand new in bos full retail and newer rev. # mobo as well w/ current BIOS at time. Not too bad. If anything, keep parts asside and replace if you need RMA. You'd have a new return before they notice I think. And these get gone through and sent out as refabbed to online stores for quick sale when repaired.

I would call to make sure, cause this was 2yrs ago.

Good luck

[Sgt. Slaughter]

Thanks thelawns. You were right. I initialized the drive and it can be seen now in explorer. Thanks again.

[safan80]

So you want to bench your array.

hdtach is better than hdtune.