ASUS Maximus Formula SE

[cadaveca]

That's about the upcoming Penryn.

Yeah, I guess sarcasm cannot be read easily...lol...

{"You'd think..." but no.} was the whole sentence...



So, like 4 sticks...lol DQ6 too(had to pull it out and try)...my issue here is heat.


I just don't get it. Well, I do, but, on stock cooling, running each ramslot and each expansion slot full creates a ton of heat. I was running like 65-70c on the chipset, southbridge as well, stock cooler, and only two ssticks would work.

Got weird reboots...in the end I powered up and down 12 times before board could complete post. I was trying to get the board to load default settings(nevermind most stuff in bios was on auto at this point, as I had just about given up). Finally it booted completely, so I started over again.

So, i test each ram stick individually in each slot.


Some sticks don't liek some slots...will error...in the exact same place. SO, in case it was ram, I upped voltage from 2.0 to 2.2v.


The error moved.


Happening just as often, almost down to the millisecond...so I lower volts, and the error moves back.

SO, I put that particular stick in a slot that it did not error on, and procedded to test another stick, with the first in a "good slot".


So, we get to that slot agian, and same error....same place....up volts, moves to the same place...


SO, I'm ready to RMA the board...but I populate all ramslots, taking the stick that had jsut errored and putting it in another slot...ram was almost too hot to touch. Burnt my finger...part of my fingerprint is now burnt .

CHipset, it's a bit cooler, but still hard to hold my finger on it for more than like 1/2 a second....

So, I grab a fan, drop it on the ram...et voila! Ce n'est pas difficile! And now it's stable.



SO like...shouldn't a board work with just stock cooling? MUST we add additional cooling to get it to work? I mean I suppose that if I watercooled the chipset, like this board was kind of intended to be used..I would not have ever noticed any issues...but...

how the hell did this board get through QC? do they not test board fully populated? do they do like the local "I'm-a-geek-that-know's-something-you-don't-so-I'm-gonna-rip-you-off-as-much-as-possible-pc-store" and test with a pci videocard and a siingle DIMM?


I think they do. They never put 4 sticks in this board and tested it...they may have put two, maybe, and in a box it went, to be sold.

BUt here I an runnning dual 2900XT's, a Phys-X, pci-e tv tuner, 4gb of D9's, and a B2 Core2. stock cooling on everything doesn't work. toss a bunch of fans all over, and it works?



SO, do I RMA, and hope to get a board that will work on stock cooling with 4 DIMMs, and all slots full, or do I go with what I got, and watercool it?