ASUS Maximus Formula SE

[cuke2u]

OK guys, i have to say, in the beginning i loved this board, but as of late, im beginning to hate it, it might be specifically mine, but im having bunch of problems that are very annoying, mainly my specific to my ram, just wont be stable, even at rated speeds, anyway i have packaged my board and am going to return it while i still can to my local fry's..........guess my participation from this thread will probably be gone but good luck to everyone else, im going to wait it out for the 780i to SLi my 8800GT.....

Hi GAR, I'm with you there with the ram issues. This motherboard seems to be particulary finicky when it come to memory modules, I wonder if all x38 chipsets have the same issues. At the moment I've found a satifactory medium between performance and stability, but one below my expectations. I'll stick with it for a while to see if the bios matures enough, if not I'mm move on in about six months. I guess we are paying a price for being ealy adopters...
ChrisC

[thelawns]

I am having issues getting my 2x 36gb Raptors in RAID0 as my main boot disk. I have managed to get the Makedisk working on a floppy now. I have set the 2 drives up in a RAID0 config in the bios using the Intel Raid and they are the 3rd boot device after floppy and DVD. When I start setup I am able to choose the files from the floppy for the RAID driver install. Question is, which one am I supposed to be using? There are 4 options: 1, is a Desktop Computer ICH9R, 2 & 3 appear to be for Mobile PC and then 4 is just a ICH9 driver but doesn't say what its for. I have been trying to use no.1, then setup formats the drives and appears to install windows but when it restarts the Win XP Pro load screen appears briefly then I get a BSOD???

The XP Pro cd is a SP1 version. I have flashed the bios to 0701. Should I go back to 0602?? Is there a general issue with RAID?

[Leeghoofd]

you need to slipstream ya windows XP with a service pack 2 mate to avoid issues like this

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...slipstream.asp

[thelawns]

you need to slipstream ya windows XP with a service pack 2 mate to avoid issues like this

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...slipstream.asp

Will go about getting that done today then... Thanks.

[FrobinRobin]

I don't know why your XBX ate ya ram, just keep in mind that the Maximus overvolts the ram so be carefull if you need 2.2 volts set max 2.1 volt plz and for 4 dimms I would recommend a ram cooler blowing some cool air...

It MOST DEFINITELY ate my Geil ULL 800Mhz in slots 1+3.. twice! I switched to slots 2+4 and it was fine, does anyone know why some motherboards 'eat' dimms in slots 1+3 ?
(I like that expression, 'eating ram')

I'm desperate for 4gb... World In Conflict runs out of memory on Vista x64 with my current 2GB.

Has anyone had dimms being 'eaten' when in a 4 x 1GB config on any recent mobo?

[393]

Anyone tried Mushkin XP2-8500 2Gb kit with this board yet?

[devilhood]

It MOST DEFINITELY ate my Geil ULL 800Mhz in slots 1+3.. twice! I switched to slots 2+4 and it was fine, does anyone know why some motherboards 'eat' dimms in slots 1+3 ?
(I like that expression, 'eating ram')

I'm desperate for 4gb... World In Conflict runs out of memory on Vista x64 with my current 2GB.

Has anyone had dimms being 'eaten' when in a 4 x 1GB config on any recent mobo?

Yeah, it was the same with a friend of mine on his P5W-DH Deluxe. He couldn't get his Geil 800MHz stable on DIMM slots 1+3 so he switched over to 2+4 and it was 'better' but not perfect.
I've heard Geil isn't very good at reacting to small voltage changes; I remember once he added a +0.5v increase and it produced a totally insane amount of memory errors on memtest86+.
He got the RAM RMA'd as well and same results with a different batch.
On my P5W64-WS Pro, I was using OCZ DDR2-900 and performance was the same on both 1+3 and 2+4, so I'm not sure what is going on. Maybe the motherboard changes some kind of latency setting depending on which slots are occupied? or maybe this problem is only related to Geil RAM?
I think if you are using 4x1GB everything should work without the same problems.
Thank god for my Coolermaster case though, it's great having 3 very quiet AKASA 120mm's pointing at it, must be doing the RAM a good favour

[Budwise]

funny thing is OCCT and Prime Blend are stable, but Pi still gives me grief. The board is indeed picky with memory, but its still very young. Its a good enough board that i'll give it some time...

[Maglin]

Just got mine up and running. Was able to get into windows @ 425 FSB but like everyone else it needed more voltage than I was comfortable with even just benching. The EPU driver causing crazy voltages is strage. I've seen the SB go from 1.55v to 3.05v in Asus Probe. First I installed Vista 64 on the shipped BIOS 404 with 4GB of ram installed. I also installed all drivers from downloads from asus to use the newest ones. System would freeze up every now and then and it would come back alive after 30ish seconds. Was definitly strange. Loaded 701 BIOS and removed 1 2GB stick and reinstalled vista. Well the install was very lagged as others have said. It didn't do this with the 404 BIOS.

This time I installed all the drivers from the CD. It installed the AISuite which actually caused me so much grief with my Keyboard I almost threw the kb out the door. System was stable until I tried to use the keyboard when it would crash the current program that had focus. Took me lot of fudging with the BIOS to finally think about removing the AISuite which of course was the issue.

My First impressions with this board are so-so. I loved my XBX2. I upgraded to this for the 2x 16x PCIe. I'm hoping for a good showing from ATI on the new video cards and I plan to run a nice crossfire setup when they come out.

I have several different RAM's to try out. Crucial Balistick PC6400 and PC8500's to try out on top of this G Skill PC8000 2x2GB which are really nice as well. FYI I'm using a 830w Silverstone single rail PSU as to ensure I wouldn't have any power issues with a certain rail maxing out causing system instability. I hope to post back later tonight with a decent OC. So far the sweet spot for me is 365x9 with the Q6600.

[crazyea]

Will go about getting that done today then... Thanks.

you still need to know which one to chose. There is only one option for ichr8/9. that it the one you chose.

Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID Controller

[sdumper]

Beta Version 0701 2007/11/05 update

OS DOS / All OS

Description Maximus Formula BIOS 0701
1. Enable support of PECI for the detection of CPU surface temperature
2. Enhance memory compatibility

File Size 823.62 (KBytes)

Global

USA

FTP

0701 is a great bios and the only issue I have had is that it has disabled my ability to read sub zero cpu temps...not a biggie but it does annoy me.

[cuke2u]

Hi, looks like my motherboard has died, I was playing bioshock for about an hour then came out of it, which I've done with no issues before. Then I noticed all my temps were sky high, mb was at 66c, then all the voltages went red! Switched it off now I get no post, dead screen, fans whirl, no light on the motherboard aside from green, amber and red next to the dram slots, the on/off and reset switches. I've tried to reset the bios but no go,any suggestions?
ChrisC

[X@b3e]

Sorry for reemerging that X-Fi thing, but I see, that many people are using that soundcard with Maximus, but are there anyone who is using it with Xp? If it doesn't work under Xp, I will try Vista

[GAR]

Asus sure crippled this board with its EPU, even with no drivers installed i had huge problems with voltage fluctuating.....really high, double of its set voltage, ddr ref would go to 3v!!!!!! a long period of this cannot be too good for the board, fsb v would go up to 2V as well............asus should remove EPU, or someone should figure a way to short it out....and this board could really shine.

[devilhood]

Asus sure crippled this board with its EPU, even with no drivers installed i had huge problems with voltage fluctuating.....really high, double of its set voltage, ddr ref would go to 3v!!!!!! a long period of this cannot be too good for the board, fsb v would go up to 2V as well............asus should remove EPU, or someone should figure a way to short it out....and this board could really shine.

Holy crap are you serious? you sure these aren't glitches in how it reports back the info? I'm tempted to avoid putting my new machine together until this is sorted out. I don't want my RAM and everything else f!"£ing up.

Surely something as big as 3v spikes or double voltage would have been detected through testing the board before release?
Do you notice these fluctuation directly with Hardware Monitor? or is this with ASUS Probe/Everest etc, maybe it could be a deviation from the real results due to inaccurate readings. Does the board behave like this under stock settings?

If the EPU is so potentially dangerous, I'm at a loss as to why they didn't program in an EPU Bypass jumper, or switch/BIOS function.
You should log all your findings and report them to ASUS if you believe your results to be entirely genuine.

[DeViTTo]

Sorry for reemerging that X-Fi thing, but I see, that many people are using that soundcard with Maximus, but are there anyone who is using it with Xp? If it doesn't work under Xp, I will try Vista

It works fine in XP, there are new drivers available for vista which I have had loads of problems with before hand 4GB time bomb bug,

I have not tried them as yet but will soon, but the good news is they are now releasing drivers which for a lot of people seem to work fine now, check out previous posts in this thread.

[Majoram]

For any who knows OCCT, if it fails only after about 33 minutes or so stressing the RAM, is that okay?

As I understand, if your system passes after 30 minutes then it's supposed to be pretty stable?!

[cuke2u]

Hi, looks like my motherboard has died, I was playing bioshock for about an hour then came out of it, which I've done with no issues before. Then I noticed all my temps were sky high, mb was at 66c, then all the voltages went red! Switched it off now I get no post, dead screen, fans whirl, no light on the motherboard aside from green, amber and red next to the dram slots, the on/off and reset switches. I've tried to reset the bios but no go,any suggestions?
ChrisC

Hi, back up again, my own fault, didn't notice that whilst I fitted a uv tube I'd dislodged the connector that powers the fans for the rad, whole thing was overheating..
ChrisC

[CyberDruid]

Been messing with the Maximus. I'll post up some shots and BIOS setings in a bit.

First off I dunno if I should trust the BIOS info on the voltages...if it is corect the Board has a lot of Drop on the Vcore. (.05 at least) and overvolts the NB and the DRAM pretty drastically.

I started off using some refernces I had for theCPU...as I know it will run 4.1 at about 1.58 and spent the past 8 hours fiddling about seeing how low I can keep the volts.

I am very impressed with the Benchmark results from the Maximus...it easily bests the DFI LP UT T2R...the extra bandwidth in the PCIe lanes is probably the key.

Been running the first test with RAM in spec (1066 or thereabouts) and the GFX stock.

right now 9 x 435 seems to be a sweet spot...I can easily pass all the Marks without insane voltage.

The CPU and NB are liquid cooled so I can push a bit.

Proofs and other data to follow

[Majoram]

For daily use i only set 5/5/5/15, vcore 1.35 vdimm 2.04 everything else = auto/default. CPU tab all disabled.

Does your system pass OCCT?

[Warboy]

I think i found a crazy bug
its 46F in my room right now, and even with my Crazy Air Cooling system. The CPU stays at 40C on each core.

I only got it at 3.6Ghz @ 1.5volts, Normally i can drop under 30C with those types of volts on the P5K.

Also, I think alot of Memory dividers are bugged.

I've been trying alot of things to drop the Temp of my Quad. But It seems that The Maxiums is wearing down my Quad at a fast rate for some reason.



Sometimes on Probe II, The CPU hits 200C, but Everest reads 56C

[crazyea]

you shouldnt run probe and everest at the same time. conflicts like the 200c can happen.

[Warboy]

you shouldnt run probe and everest at the same time. conflicts like the 200c can happen.

I don't think its that, the 200C can be simple, I'm mainly looking at why the high temps, I beat its the EPU Driver, I wonder if there is a way to uninstall it.

[Majoram]

Sometimes on Probe II, The CPU hits 200C, but Everest reads 56C

you shouldnt run probe and everest at the same time. conflicts like the 200c can happen.

I don't think that is the problem. Check my posts, I've reported my temps and voltages jumping all over the place before. And looking at the quotes below, I'm not the only one.

Surely something as big as 3v spikes or double voltage would have been detected through testing the board before release?
Do you notice these fluctuation directly with Hardware Monitor? or is this with ASUS Probe/Everest etc, maybe it could be a deviation from the real results due to inaccurate readings. Does the board behave like this under stock settings?

If the EPU is so potentially dangerous, I'm at a loss as to why they didn't program in an EPU Bypass jumper, or switch/BIOS function.
You should log all your findings and report them to ASUS if you believe your results to be entirely genuine.

Asus sure crippled this board with its EPU, even with no drivers installed i had huge problems with voltage fluctuating.....really high, double of its set voltage, ddr ref would go to 3v!!!!!! a long period of this cannot be too good for the board, fsb v would go up to 2V as well............asus should remove EPU, or someone should figure a way to short it out....and this board could really shine.

The EPU driver causing crazy voltages is strage. I've seen the SB go from 1.55v to 3.05v in Asus Probe.

To add, I've noticed the jumps happening even on my optional temp sensors. Strange thing is that there is nothing connected to those!!!

Also at times (not now though), it has reported that my fan speeds dropped to zero but the fan was still running.

I have a feeling that all these jumps are just phantom readings but it still means that something else is going wrong somewhere.

I don't think its that, the 200C can be simple, I'm mainly looking at why the high temps, I beat its the EPU Driver, I wonder if there is a way to uninstall it.

Where did you install the EPU driver from? I don't think it is the driver. I believe it's the board itself.

[-=j0nnyr0773n=-]

Can anyone give any insight as to whether changing the CPU GTL: & NB GTL: values help with performance. I have made many changes to them and eliminated the ones that will not work at all. So far I have not been able to notice any gains or losses as far as bandwidth / performance goes. It seems as if just leaving them both on auto does the same as setting them manually.