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

[jamiee]

I have a P5K-Premium made in China rev 2.00g and had a flaky boot problem....it was because the vid card wasn't seated properly, i'd bumped it when doing stuff in the case!

Aside from that one session where it caused me grief it's been running fine with 8gb of ram and my Q6600 @ 3.6GHz with 1.4v real and 4 x WD Raptors in raid 0. Overclocks set and stick fine in bios, no problems at all, great board so far after a few months use.

All the more reason to think my board is somehow defective.
I suspect it's either a flaky northbridge controller or something to do with the power regulators around the CPU.

I've been through just about everything to troubleshoot this board multiple times over with no improvement. Oddly enough the beta 0402 BIOS seems to have made the problem worse, so this does leave the possibility that it could be somehow BIOS related but then why don't many others suffer from the same fait? At the end of the day I'm kinda tired of dealing with it, so I think I'll go out today if I have the chance and see what's available. I'd kinda like to try the Maximus Formula just for a change but if it's not available then I'll likely get another P5K Premium.



-EDIT-
Just called the shop and they said they won't have the Formula in for another two weeks at least, but they do have several Premiums in stock..... So I guess it's another Premium for me.
Hopefully 2nd time is a charm.

[jamiee]

Alright folks, I picked up the new P5K Premium this morning, got it home and waisted no time installing it...

So far so good!
It booted right away and has done so after every BIOS setting change I've saved. I'm even running on a slight overclock right now

This board is ver. 2.00g : made in Taiwan and comes with BIOS 0204.

There's is some obvious differences between the two boards in terms of capacitors used as well as the box colours and graphics.

The first board has the Serial No.: 76M0AIL
And the new one is: 78M0ACL


An interesting note is that this new board feels snappier in windows, I notice programs opening quite a bit faster and I don't think its due to the mild overclock either. Strange.... but good


Well I'm off to do more testing (wish me luck).

[impar]

Greetings!

There's is some obvious differences between the two boards in terms of capacitors used as well as the box colours and graphics.

Pictures?

[jamiee]

I did take some, I'll see if I can't upload them a bit later

[Dynasty]

All the more reason to think my board is somehow defective.
I suspect it's either a flaky northbridge controller or something to do with the power regulators around the CPU.

I've been through just about everything to troubleshoot this board multiple times over with no improvement. Oddly enough the beta 0402 BIOS seems to have made the problem worse, so this does leave the possibility that it could be somehow BIOS related but then why don't many others suffer from the same fait? At the end of the day I'm kinda tired of dealing with it, so I think I'll go out today if I have the chance and see what's available. I'd kinda like to try the Maximus Formula just for a change but if it's not available then I'll likely get another P5K Premium.



-EDIT-
Just called the shop and they said they won't have the Formula in for another two weeks at least, but they do have several Premiums in stock..... So I guess it's another Premium for me.
Hopefully 2nd time is a charm.

www.ncix.com

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...nufacture=ASUS

they have asus maximus formula in stock for an decent price...

[jamiee]

www.ncix.com

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...nufacture=ASUS

they have asus maximus formula in stock for an decent price...

Local shop is $269.00 CAN for the Maximus Formula when they get stock.

Either way, I'm happy to finally have what seems to be a working Premium.

[jamiee]

Here's three shots showing the booklets, open box covers, and the front of the box covers with the boards :
(P.S. sorry for the crappy pic's... I was in a rush to get the new board installed)

[impar]

Greetings!

Interesting.
I have no problems with my P5K Premium and it came with the "old" manual and the "new" box.

[vaio]

Greetings to you too

[impar]

Greetings!

VAIO!?!?! The Vaioman?
Long time no see!

PS: My MB is version 2.00G made in Taiwan.

[vaio]

Was offline a while but me needs to crunch
Oh on topic...erm, nice board

[Cupcake]

Anyone found a working clockgen for it ?

[waynetu]

some more clear pictures for board details......please - -

seems the new one has the red capacitors in the bottom left corner...while the old one has the same color as deluxe

[jamiee]

some more clear pictures for board details......please - -

seems the new one has the red capacitors in the bottom left corner...while the old one has the same color as deluxe

You would be correct about that. The older board has a mix of red and purple coloured capacitors, while the new board is all red.



Btw, now running at 3.6Ghz, FSB=400MHZ, RAM=1000MHz.
No boot problems what so ever!!

[sesdave]

You would be correct about that. The older board has a mix of red and purple coloured capacitors, while the new board is all red.



Btw, now running at 3.6Ghz, FSB=400MHZ, RAM=1000MHz.
No boot problems what so ever!!

Glad you took my advice - lol! That looks more like it. Trust your initial impressions - think of all the fun you would have been having without tearing your hair out if you had RMA'd straight away- that said I am practically bald-lol!
Re your initial view of your new MB that it is snappier - One thing that has been annoying me since I put this system together with Vista x64 is that numerous applications seem to be slow to load. I had expected electric performance . Boot up and close down are fine and I have no disk problems,DVD burns in 8 minutes, Movie rendering/conversion very quick. All sandrasoft benchmarks are good. I had put it down to Vista X64 and was hoping SP1 will improve performance but you comment has got me wondering if it is the MB. Anyone else using Vistax64 on this MB suffering slow application load?

[TI66ER]

my board is a rev 2.00g made in china with the mixed red and purple caps,but my box and manual are the new ones from the pics above.i've not tried raid,but it seems to work fine.i'm at 3.7ghz/465fsb at 1.45vcore with my E6750.

my serial no. 77M0ACT82687

[TWY]

Does the 0402 fix the "problem" of the board turning off and then on again whenever you first power on the system (when it's overclocked) after you have switched off the mains previously?

[Enoc]

from what etailer did you guys got the rev2 taiwan?
i want to buy mine but don't want to get a bad rev....

[btdvox]

I dont know, It seems these problems are really really scattered and not tied to "Old or New versions of the MoBo"
there are many people with the older Chinese model that are perfectly working
Including me, while many people of the new version have working Motherbaords and ones that dont work. So it seems pretty much luck of the draw.

[sesdave]

This is a neat way of dispalying all temps using PCwizard 2008 http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=1351
kindof like everest but more compact. Thanks to Justchill for this pointer. I havent used the product for some time but will now.

[Devious]

I bought one of these today, its the new box & manual, Made in china S/N: 78MOAI. Rev2.00g

Detects my 76Gb Raptor and 300Gb Maxtor Sata 1 drive. If i connect my 500GB WD Caviars Sata II it hangs at post for a few minutes trying to detect it without success

My PC will then boot but without my Caviar .... Pfft


Just tried bios 0402 and problem persists.

[jamiee]

Does the 0402 fix the "problem" of the board turning off and then on again whenever you first power on the system (when it's overclocked) after you have switched off the mains previously?

Hmm... my new board only does this "sometimes" after setting a new overclock setting in the BIOS, but only happens the one time after I've saved the settings and the board reboots.
After I've shut down the system for a period of time and then re-start it, it just boots the one time like it would if it was at default settings.
This is with the 0204 BIOS. I haven't felt the need to flash to any of the new betas yet as everything has been solid so far.


sesdave,
Now is all that baldness due to puters or is it really the wife/girlfriend/kids ??
A..hummmm...

Now...., have you tried disabling some of the graphical features/effects in vista?
Some of them can tend to make programs seem more sluggish at times.

I wouldn't characterize my Vista Ultimate 32bit experience with my first P5K-P as being/feeling slow exactly... if anything it was maybe on par to slightly slower than when running the Striker Extreme, yet did seem a bit slow compared to the experience I remember when running my older P5W DH Board.
I'm not sure what it was about the P5W, it just felt snappier in certain situations. The new P5K-P certainly has that feel to it and maybe a little improvement to boot.

One interesting thing to note is that with the first Premium I could noticeably see a difference in boot times depending on the settings used in the BIOS. With this new board it seems to boot consistently every time.

[TI66ER]

i just noticed,mine says along the edge,it says pcb made in taiwan.does that mean its a china or taiwan board?(sorry if its a daft question) coz on the serial no. sticker on the bottom pci slot,it says made in china.

means mine would be a taiwan 2.00g.caps are mixed purple and red.

[jamiee]

i just noticed,mine says along the edge,it says pcb made in taiwan.does that mean its a china or taiwan board?(sorry if its a daft question) coz on the serial no. sticker on the bottom pci slot,it says made in china.

means mine would be a taiwan 2.00g.caps are mixed purple and red.

That's interesting. I go by what's printed on the PCB.
What's your boards serial number?

[Machinus]

OK so my 6850 can hit 8 x 487 at around 1.45V. However, I can't get it to go above 8x490 despite having fine temps and plenty of voltage headroom. Any ideas?

Also, is it better to run the FSB at like 475 and go 1:1 on the memory or use the 9x and a divider?