[18th Anniversary] Asus Black Pearl - P5k-Premium Testing Report

[sesdave]

OK. So I put this PC together about 3 weeks ago:
E8400
Asus P5K Premium
2GB Crucial Ballistix PC6400
Seagate 500GB 7200.11
Samsung DVDR
Antec Sonata 3 case, 500w Earthwatts Power Supply

When I first booted the mobo, it detected the e8400 but said I needed to upgrade the bios to unleash its full power. So, I immediately upgraded to 0504. I was trying to get the system stable, so I did not change any bios settings, other than running my ram at 5-5-5-15 @ 500mhz @ 2.2v. Last week, I started getting the BSODs in Windows Vista. So I rebooted, and ran memtest, and got tons of errors. I put my ram back to default 4-4-4-12 and ran memtest again, and I got tons of errors again. I figured I would exchange the ram and see if that was the issue.

I came home, popped the ram in, ran memtest at default 4-4-4-12 settings, and I am still getting errors. Very few errors (maybe 1 or 2), but there shouldn't be any at all. I ran orthos for 8 hours, and no issues. I figured there was an issue with memtest, and I was reading that there were problems with bios 0504. Thats when I tried to downgrade, and no go.

So far, my system has been stable. I have not made any bios adjustments because honestly, I still have some reading to do on what the optimal settings are for this motherboard. So, any settings you recommend for this cpu/mobo combo, would be great.

Thanks,

Whilst they may run on lower volts 2.2v is the standard volts for Ballistix 6400 running stock 800 @ 4,4,4,12 . Check to see if you have the new ballistix sticks which are single sided chips which are now supposed to be D9HNL chips or the older double sided chips (D9GMH). The old ones are great overclockers - I had a pair and they would do 1100 + without increasing above 2.2v. If you have the newer single sided ones they are getting quite a lot of bad press re very high failure rate. Google and you will see. If you get any memtest86 errors on stock test - RMA and ask them to find you double sided ones from stock or offer to pay a little more for 8500s which will give you more headroom. This reminds me of the problems they had with the old DDR4000's which kept burning out - Just be thankful that Crucial dont shirk on their RMA service -lol! If no luck on either option take the RMA replacement sticks and sell them on ebay without opening and buy some 8500 sticks - they are so cheap now they are practically free -lol!. Get 4x1gb if you have Vista x64. Here a chip list so you can find some decent overclocking ones with D9GMH http://ramlist.ath.cx/ddr2/. That said my Ballistix 8500's run great.