Is it me or is the ASUS P5B Deluxe really this bad to get even a basic config workin?

[gdavison]

Building two brand new PCs, both similar spec

Thermaltake Armor VA8003BWS Case
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 Cooled via Scythe Infinity
Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2
OCZ GameXStream 700w PSU
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X GFX card
Drive C is Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM SATA
Drive D is Western Digital Caviar 500GB SATA
Optical is Asus DRW-1608P3S DVD ReWriter (Black)

Both machines sit on Power smoothing / voltage regulating UPS units so they are getting pure 240VAC. Both machines assembled whilst wearing an earthed anti static wrist strap at all times

One machine is running on the single GPX card (as it has multiple monitors) and the others has a Crossfore config with a additional ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X Crossfire / Master Edition card

Neither overclocked .. All pretty much stock settings in BIOS except Vdimm set to 2.1 V and timings 4 4 4 12 as per Geils needs

The very first machine (lets call it A) during build lasted 2 days before the motherboad went thru more and more random crashes and eventually would not turn on .. would power on (ie fans spin and lights light up) for about 2 seconds and would then power off

Machine B never even turned on out of the box (fans would spin leds would light) .. NO post Beeps No nothing, nothing to the screen ie LCD showing no signal received

Both Motherboards RMA'd and replaced

New Motherboard put into Machine A .. runs ok ish except will still random crash .. no BSOD no nothing just crash and reboot ... maybe once or twice a day .. runs memtest86 clean for 5 hours .. runs twin Orthos clean for 2 housr (CPU went to 41C - Sits at 27C when idle) .. Found that if I disable the Sound functionality in BIOS it is more stable .. ie if the onboard sound is
enabled it often will not even boot clean ....

Machine B rebuilt with new motherboard .. again memtest86 clean and SuperPi'd to 32million no problems (not really a Stress test I know) .. 3Dmark06 as 9761 "out of the box"

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/pr...jectId=1144037

Runs the sound function with Soundmax loaded and does not suffer the random crash of machine A (would love to have some one explain that to me) .. After a day loading software and stuff went for some well earned recreation and fired up Quake III (not really a stress full environment for a machine of this spec) .. 2 mins into loading crash .. Corrupt checker board Asus Bios screen (ie major graphic corruption) .. didn't boot so I power cycled .. no nothing .. LCD again showing no signal received .. No post Bios Beeps either ..

Pull the RAM and I get RAM missing BIOS beeps

Split The Cross fire and go back to a single card ... nothing ..

Reset BIOS and only one stick of RAM in slot 3 .. nothing ..

[gdavison]

Further update ... Took Graphics card from Machine B and put it into Machine A and it worked fine .. so it looks like the Motherboard in Machine B thats gone .... That'll be the third for RMA ....

[Cappie]

I think you'r just one of these guys that gives the term 'Finagle's Law' a whole new meaning, and I don't think you'll find 2 users on this entire forum who have these kind of issues with the P5B Dlx

[cozpolt]

I think we have a serious carbon-silicon interface error here.

[wazoo99]

I know your frustration level must be maxxing out - wanting to trash the whole build-it-yourself PC mess. I reached that point once, during the nvidia/VIA "loop" prob years ago, until I figured out AGP 4X simply didnt work in that situation, and 2X just about fixed everything. Sadly, its becoming a virtual necessity to spend hours on the computer forums just to even be aware of the boobytraps that lay in your path with the untested crap being sold today as finished product - which seems to be the way of all things PC.

Tho looking at it another way - thats the only way you learn things - by fixing stuff.

However, having said that, and not trying to be mean here, I simply dont believe in a one person/3 RMA for identical mobo. Has to be user/HW error, prob some very really simple thing. I'm sure you know 10X more than the average builder, but something is wrong with your config. methods. Could even be as simple as house current - despite "UPS smoothing". Your progressively worse defects would seem to indicate voltage errors/shorts etc. BIOS chips do not like to be repeatedly asked to boot into non functioning/booting systems

At the very least you are going to have to go back to basic troubleshooting:
Remove UPS
Try dif PSU (everyone always says "its not my PS - I know that for sure")
Try dif BIOS, you usually can flash non booter from floppy
Perhaps even have power company come out and set up monitor for line droops. (Have you had recent circuit trips?)
Up RAM voltage, loosen timings - one stick bank 1
Try mobo out of case sitting on its box
Buy all new cables even if they look fine.
Disable all USB, no wireless, plain MS mouse and KB, turn off everything non essential in bios - especially legacy USB.
There is a prog that will tell you if cpu is throttling (throttlewatch), perhaps indicating non seated CPU or HSF, or bent ziff socket pins.
And the one thing everyone always ignores when I offer it - try a $50 vga PCI videocard, with PCI-e removed.

In other words, you gotta beat it down little by little to eliminate the obvious.

[ooztuncer]

my bet is on the psu (swap between A and B then give it a shot). Also don't forget to clear cmos (in case)...

[Drag]

i have the same problem with my xbox, i think its the cooling

[gdavison]

Update - Managed to get PC B to boot on One stick or RAM after clearing CMOS overnight - ran Memtest86 - failed on pass2 .. getting somewhere ... out of interest tried the other stick in and PC would not even boot (lucky I picked the other one to try first) - weird in that one of the sticks is "so bad" it wont allow a boot and the other has Mem errors - any way no need to spend time on that - RMA'd

Back to PC A ... Random instability resulting in reboot. In the cold light of a new day, remembered that std XP config has the Advanced > Settings > Automatic restart set to on as standard (been so long since i chased an XP instability problem) - so set it off and of course could now get BSODs finally some debug info to work with .. found out it was always classpnp.sys .. digging around everything indicates usually a disk caching or disk problems tried turning off write caching on all disk .. didn't help ... so searched again.. as wazoo99 says its half the fun ... found this article

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=131966

WHY OH WHY IS IT NOT A STICKY

Thanks Exo .. I had (maybe in ignorance) set the SATA interfaces in BIOS to be IDE, so decided to changed to AHCI and reinstall XP (yet) again...touching wood .. here we go again

As Asus web site was on a go slow I could not get the Audio drivers so disabled the onboard audio in BIOS and followed the rest of the instructions .. Plan was to do the Audio drivers later ... loaded up a bunch of software and ran all day crash free... hmmm maybes maybes we are out of the woods

Finally got Asus Audio drivers .. enabled Audio in Bios .. booted loaded drivers .. rebooted and damm thing wont boot to desktop - crashes and reloads half way thru windows load ARGHHH .. F8 safe mode - remove Audio drivers, disable Audio in BIOS

Tried a Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Soundcard I had spare (which I know works as it came out of another functional machine) and Damm things wont even get all the way to windows desktop so I can load drivers ..

So Audio :-) How do I get it working ??? All I need on this machine is a single Audio feed out to a Pair of Harmon Kardom Sticks and Bass unit, just plain stereo .. nothing fancy AT all

Help much appreciated

[gdavison]

Forgot to say .. Thinks to all who have contributed ideas

[Dax5]

this is my favorite board. i have two sets for my qx6700 and my oc'ed e6600 =) both work fine

[NickS]

Try the 0614 BIOS, or 0810 BIOS. I prefer 0614. Also, I'd RMA that ram it sounds funky from what you said.

[gdavison]

Spoke too soon .. still rebooting randomly this morning

@wazoo - I agree it cant be so many hardware failures .. unless one of the first MB failures damaged things ..

So its now off the UPS . (The house is the first one after a sub station so we are actually always rammed hard against the top of the spec for voltage delivery .. light bulbs dont last long here .. Will swop with PSU from other machine later today as that waiting for RAM to be replaced)

@wazoo & Nicks
re changing Bios to 0614 or 0810 the upgrade to 1004 says
**Please update AsusUpdate to V7.09.02 or later prior making this update.**
**This BIOS does not support roll back to older BIOS**

Has any one managed to roll back from 1004 ???

@wazoo
RAMs at 4 4 4 12 and 2.1V as per Geils spec - how "slack" are you suggesting ?? and what voltage

Wondering about some of the other settings ... ie CVcore is automatic .. should i be setting that manually ??

Have killed all USB's as well

Thanks

[wazoo99]

"Light bulbs dont last long" is not a good sign for PC stability
In such a case, you may wish to investigate having an electrician installing an isolation transformer (not a UPS) for your housecurrent. You may also want to purchase a "irock steady" voltage PSU, like the PCPower and Cooling, or some other model that does not change V output under any condition - heat/load/idle. There are a few.

Taking the above out of consideration, I am beginning to get a feel for these type of "help me" P965 threads around the internet.

I think your probs are both mem volt/timings and SATA bios/driver config. related.

For example, see this one (poor guy also using C4 RAM)
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...&enterthread=y

I think C4 that has to boot at 2.1V and tight timings is more trouble than its worth. I know low latency is important, but certain P965 bios just dont like it. These sticks usually includes "EPP ready" alternate timings which is Nvidia only - like 680i.
Were it me - with your probs, I would get Corsair XMS2 555-12-1T 2GB on sale till today w/RB @ $169 at newegg

Note "wizzard" here: (SPD tool thread)
(Quote)
you can see it all over newegg, that most people generally dont know anything about their ram, and always think something wrong, when they get some cas 4-4-4 ram, and it boots at cas 5-5-5, or they buy 1 ghz ram, and it boots at 800 mhz...

all DDR2 has to be able to boot at a reasonable speed, and since most DDR2 these days is rated near 2.2 volts, yet the default standard for DDR2 is 1.8 volts, then all ram must be able to boot at 1.8 volts... which is why the ram has a nice safe speed, like cas 5-5-5 at 800 mhz.
but read pretty much any ram review on newegg about DDR2 and you can see almost none of those guys know about this at all...
even here I sometimes see people flipping out cause thier ram is PC8500... but the SPD in CPU-Z says PC6400....

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&highlight=SPD

Also you will have to actually check vdimm with multimeter on your board (see threads on P5B) to make sure your mobo isnt undervolting RAM - so an easy thing to try is 2.2V.

At the very least you have to get memtest 86+ running overnight with no errors.

And check this comment out on Newegg about Corsair 555 12 1.9V RAM

(Quote)
Other Thoughts: In M2N-SLI Deluxe, this had to be manually set to 1.9v 5-5-5-12 AND 2T. 1T renders the system unable to boot. Non hard set 5-5-5-12 (auto) comes up with 5-5-5-18 and system boots but is unstable. At anything other than 1.9v the system is also unstable. Now, having all this set correctly... seems to work great. Just putting this info out there if someone needs it. Cheers.
=================

Finally, the whole "native SATA" "legacy SATA" thing is one of the biggest misunderstood hardware subjects with todays PC's.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device...alATA_FAQ.mspx

[gdavison]

Thanks for the comments which are all taken onboard..

If it helps you understand my own power situation at home, the UPS units I use are there for more than simple Battery back up - they all provide "Automatic Voltage Regulation" which ensure the PC(s) see 230VAC nice and clean and consistent... Apart from the 2 desktops (which is now 4 as the old machines are still running until I finish these new units off) the house has 3 permanent servers running our fileserver, email, webserver and a Media server streaming to an Executer chipped XBOX 1 running XBMC .. Accepting we could just be lucky we have never (historically) had a Power related PC problem .. however I am also of the "I have heard too many people say its not my PSU" so its not discounted

FWIW the UK spec for Electricity is 230 VAC +10% -6% so between 207 and 243.8 .. Looking at my Fluke multimeter the house is at 239.1 and PCs are at 230

I do have to smile when folks post newegg prices with rebates ... not very useful for us non USA based buyers from the UK .. with shipping , import duty and VAT buying from newegg could be a tad expensive I wish we could get mail in rebates in the UK .. however technical data is good world wide so again big

Will pump the Vdimm up to 2.2 in Bios and now that my Multimeter is sat on the desk will also measure it at the Memory in the PC

I am right with you and understand all about the DONT USE SPD or pay attention to SPD for these "radical" DDR sets .. It was one of the risks on these boards I took - could I get a boot on default 1.8V to even get into BIOS to immediately get the DDR off SPD settings and something closer to what they need .. luckily that was not a problem.. I have been a OCZ fan in all my Athlon machines .. the Geil is a new exploration

I am agreeing with you on a driver instability and was leaning to the disks as well as thats normally where classpnp.sys crashes raise there heads...

As I said in first post Memtest86 has already been ran on this machine for 5 hours clean .. but will run it again for longer

Interestingly I never got around to changing the PSUs over today as I did change the SATA cables and pull the USB devices and disable Legacy USB in the BIOS as suggested first thing this morning and then ran Burnintest Pro (http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm) all day ..

Whats interesting about BIT Pro is that you can do RAM test, Multiple CPU test, Disk Test, Network Test, Graphics test all at the same time so stressing all aspects of a machine in parallel .. Seemed to be stable .... could it have been as simple as a SATA cable ??

I had been using the SATA cables that came with the P5B ... any recommendations on a change ?? (newegg links allowed) For all my old IDE based machines I used to use Akasa Round cables

Thanks for the SATA info . very informative .. will hang onto that link .. Its my first SATA machine builds .. been a IDE head for all other machines ever built so new ground for me

[[XC] Hicks121]

gdavison, Sounds like you need a TVSS (transient voltage surge suppressor). I would not get one that is only for an outlet, you need one for the meter side of your house. It will take all surges & put them directly to ground. I have one mounted on my house & have no problems.
The isolation transformer that was mentioned will be extremely expensive & need to have a place to mount, so in a residential application, this wouldnt work.

If you are interested in getting one of these TVSS's, pm me. I sell electrical supplies for a living & am also an electrician. If you need any links for specs, i can provide, just let me know.

Hicks

[gdavison]

gdavison, Sounds like you need a TVSS (transient voltage surge suppressor). I would not get one that is only for an outlet, you need one for the meter side of your house. It will take all surges & put them directly to ground. I have one mounted on my house & have no problems.
The isolation transformer that was mentioned will be extremely expensive & need to have a place to mount, so in a residential application, this wouldnt work.

If you are interested in getting one of these TVSS's, pm me. I sell electrical supplies for a living & am also an electrician. If you need any links for specs, i can provide, just let me know.

Hicks

Hicks

Details for a UK home would be of interest .. however since the 2004 regulations there is a huge grey area on working on your own house electrics

if your not from the UK and want a complete laugh to what a nanny state we are

http://www.partp.co.uk/consumer/index.asp

[wazoo99]

would be funny if all that trouble was a flaky SATA cable - heh

I notice the Gigabyte mobo come with those orange cables that have a stiff metal clip on one side - the older all plastic ones were prone to breaking, especially if you inserted at an angle - not straight in. Also fragile were mobo SATA molex, now they are encircled in plastic for rigidity. And keep in mind the 90 degree SATA connector cables to keep stress away in difficult routings.

And yes, the UK is way beyond George Orwell, with street cams that now can shout at you thru powerful speakers.

[s1rrah]

Building two brand new PCs, both similar spec

Thermaltake Armor VA8003BWS Case
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 Cooled via Scythe Infinity

sorry for the pain; most folks have a decent time with the asus boards.

i've built four different ASUS boards/machine's over the past six months and ever single one has posted flawlessly after the first build.

having read some horror stories like your own, involving *all* brands of motherboards ... i was grateful.

anyway ... hope you get it working ...

[gdavison]

Changed PSU
Vdimm at 2.25 (there is no 2.20 in the BIOS)
Timings slackened off to 5 5 5 16

still BSOD's ...

Close to giving up ........

[Kumakichi]

My first P5B Deluxe showed up DOA. Could have been a bad board. Could have been the UPS man kicked my package from the west coast to the east coast. At least thats what most of my UPS end up looking like. Fast RMA and my 2nd board showed up. Seems to work ok so far. Asus customer service bites the big one so I hope I don't ever have to deal with them.

Its just a suggestion but you might want to loosen up on your ram timings and voltage. Also if you try running bare bone components it might help you isolate the problem i.e. disconnect optical drives and only run 1 HD. Try swapping SATA cables. I think my Asus board came with 3 sets.

[wazoo99]

"close to giving up"

There are many posts on the net about 2.1 or 2.2V RAM that doesnt work at recommended voltage but works fine at 1.9 or 1.95 for some reason
Worth a shot

Maybe the ATI card is fubar - try a PCI VGA vidcard

[gdavison]

"close to giving up"

There are many posts on the net about 2.1 or 2.2V RAM that doesnt work at recommended voltage but works fine at 1.9 or 1.95 for some reason
Worth a shot

Maybe the ATI card is fubar - try a PCI VGA vidcard

Wazoo99 wont give up

Am on a second ATI card already..

Just gone for bust .. Swopped PSU and Swopped Physical drive C with the PC waiting for new RAM and just started doing a (I think 5th) XP install from a complete format (I have to do telephone activations now which is a pain .. amazed MS have not done a "err Sir why yet again ???"

[wazoo99]

you can call 100 times (Bangalore India) - doesnt matter
if anyone gives you static, just call again, dif rep

You know, I've mentioned it dozens and dozens of times on the dif BBS about using a $20 PCI VGA card (and one 256MB stick of cheap sloppy 1.8V Corsair value ram) to ESTABLISH a series of successful boots, to test for ongoing stability and to take the PCI-E vidcard out of the equation (high wattage/drivers/bad bios/poor cooling). I cant recall anyone at anytime has ever taken me up on it.
I am not saying to run Halo or Far Cry on the thing, just get system going rock solid..
If your PC wont run with VGA and crap RAM, then you do indeed have a prob.

For example - PCI-E wasnt around during XP SP0 and SP1 and isnt supported until SP2, so you really should have SP2 at install, or things can get very complicated later, with windows file protection.

And yes, I NEVER give up

[gdavison]

New install has lead to new probs which points me to ask am I wasting my time with these machines .. Wazoo and I have had a feeling this is some driver interaction related problem

Here's todays missive

Clean Install on new (fully formatted) Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM SATA disk of XP OEM SP2 from Official Gold / Bronze disks

Finish XP install
Load Intel Chipset INF Update Program v8.0.1.1010 (WHQL)
Load ACPI driver for ATK 0110 virtual device version 1.0.13.6
all OK (not looking for the old BSOD problem even yet)

Load Catalyst Drivers for 3dconnect Radeon X1950 XT-X .. latest 7.1 drivers from 3Dconnects web site

Did a minimal load ie only the Drivers : .Net2 : Catalsyst DashBoard - ignored all the VIVO and WMA fluff

OK

Loaded Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet Driver V8.56.7.3

OK

Loaded SoundMAX Audio Driver v5.10.01.4580

Crashes on boot .. can only get Safe mode to work

uninstall Catalyst drivers and SoundMax

Reboot - OK

Load Sound MAX - Ok
Load Catalyst drivers and Dashboard : BSODs and hangs

safe mode

Remove both .. reboot .. disable sound in BIOS .. Load Catalyst .. at least have something that boots

So a simple Q Has Any One got a P5B and Radeon X1950 XT-X install working ???

Wazoo .. am going to take up that challenge of one cheap stick RAM and a simple GFXs card .. I am so Pi%%ed off with trying to get two machines working with the P5B and 1950 GFX If I dont hear a thumbs up on some one else being successfull with this combo soon ... I'll do it when I order the ABIT AW9D-MAX MB's ..

[wazoo99]

your latest invites a few observations

On the surface it would seem the onboard sound and ATI card dont want to share
This brings up several possibilities:
Driver conflict, perhaps.
IRQ sharing instability
DirX 9.0c version prob (currently at Feb 07)
Still, I have that feeling........
Insufficient juice or shorting somewhere
HSF not fully seated - (are you using stock???)

Instant crashing (do you mean hard freeze or BSD?) suggests something more severe and basic than driver clash. I get an impression your install has something touching a mobo trace. You could loosen HSF retainers and hold it down by hand and see what happens. Something is physically wrong here. If you try the PCI slot vga card/crap RAM and it still crashes - its power related.

Random thoughts -
look carefully in mobo ATX 24 pin molex on connector pins (male) and same on PSU (female) with magnifying glass looking for burn marks

make sure you have 24 (0-23) IRQ's listed, not 16 (0-15)

see if sound and video sharing same IRQ

make SURE vidcard power is all the way in, 4 pin 12V CPU is on correctly and down

try mobo OUTSIDE of case - this eliminates shorting possibility and that case geometry may not be allowing full seating of vidcard.

It should be fairly easy to check event viewer after the crashes to see whats wrong (disable "auto restart after power off" in bios)
http://support.microsoft.com/default...308427&sd=tech
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/art...vent-Logs.html
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

need that event viewer info.