ASUS Maximus Formula SE

[jonny_ftm]

I'm absolutely loving this board so far, a complete joy to tweak having used the AnandTech guide and jonnyrotten's settings as a reference.
Thanks Kup btw for your modded BIOS again.

I'm using a Q6600 at 400x9 with a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and I've managed to get my Corsair 2 GB running 100% stable at 400 FSB to NB Strap, 4-4-4-12 timings and 5T tWR, DDR2-1066 with Ai Clocktwister on Strong and Transaction Booster enabled at 0.
The lowest I could bring the NB voltage for stable 400 FSB performance was 1.51v.

If anyone wants a list of my settings I'll post a few screenies.

Please, woul dyou post the screens, it'll help many people. Still watching this board to get one

[binormalkilla]

you better lower that voltage or those crucial's won't last long!!!!! this board likes to overvolt!!!!!!!

LOL I know, I meant the effective VDIMM ;D
I set it in the BIOS as 2.16 and it ends up as 2.212V or something...

[devilhood]

Please, woul dyou post the screens, it'll help many people. Still watching this board to get one

That setup I achieved has suddenly 'become' unstable recently.

This board is so temperemental it's like trying to feed food to a crying baby, seriously, I have no idea what is going on anymore.
Disabling DRAM Static Control at 400 FSB made Memtest86+ freeze after 20 minutes, but enabling it seemed to increases stability. That is completely the opposite of what AnandTech's review said. I'm mostly working with the 3:4 divider.

I'm still testing, but I hope the next BIOS comes out soon to fix the temp increase and voltage spikes.

[binormalkilla]

That setup I achieved has suddenly 'become' unstable recently.

This board is so temperemental it's like trying to feed food to a crying baby, seriously, I have no idea what is going on anymore.
Disabling DRAM Static Control at 400 FSB made Memtest86+ freeze after 20 minutes, but enabling it seemed to increases stability. That is completely the opposite of what AnandTech's review said. I'm mostly working with the 3:4 divider.

I'm still testing, but I hope the next BIOS comes out soon to fix the temp increase and voltage spikes.

First of all don't use Memtest86. It's total garbage for finding memory errors. It doesn't stress the RAM hard enough. OCCT is good, but this is bet ter and more precise:

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/
You can actually use up %100 of your RAM. I leave about 20Mb behind for running firefox or watching a TV show, etc so I can do something while it's running.
I would let it run to at least %400 coverage. After I do my initial stability testing I run it until %1000 while I'm at work. This typically takes ~ 8 hours.


Well I tried 0602 and I still can't OC past 400 FSB...:\
My CPU is stable at 3.6, so I'm going to set my multi back to 9 after I compare some of benches from my P5K that was at 3.4 GHz. I set the FSB to 378*8 for comparison....even though the RAM is slower it should be pretty close for Crossfire comparison.

BTW if anyone wants to have a look I'm comparing Crossfire performance between the P5K Deluxe and the Maximus. In game and 3dmark.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=165033

[devilhood]

I'm not a big fan of Memtest86+ either, but I usually use it for initial testing.
If I can clear 2 tests I then restart into Vista and run ORTHOS on Blend and Large FFT for while to be 100% certain.
I'll give that other Memtest program a go though, cheers for that.

[binormalkilla]

I'm not a big fan of Memtest86+ either, but I usually use it for initial testing.
If I can clear 2 tests I then restart into Vista and run ORTHOS on Blend and Large FFT for while to be 100% certain.
I'll give that other Memtest program a go though, cheers for that.

Hey NP man, you'll love it. I used to run Memtest bootable ISO until I had some RAM that was giving me crash to desktops......even though it passed Memtest86 for 8 hours! I downloaded HCI Memtest and it had errors within 15 seconds. Yea, Memtest86 FTL

Crossfire performance is excellent on this board. I got more than 1K points on this board compared to the P5K Deluxe. I was even running a lower FSB with a higher multi, thus lower RAM as well. I had a score of 17191 with the P5K using Crossfire and the same CPU internal clock.

[Eastcoasthandle]

What size tubing do you need for the fusion block? I haven't found any information about this if you want to water cool your chipset. This is handy if you are already watercooling. All you need to do is some re-plumbing and your done. BUT, I haven't a clue what size tubing it takes. What size tubing do those white tubular screws found inside the fusion block system accessory bag accommodate?

Edit:
It comes with 3/8" and 1/2" tubing adapters

ASUS supplies both 3/8" and 1/2" tubing adaptors together with spring clamps to hold tubing in place. Unfortunately, our high flow pumps (Petra Top DDC Ultras) were too much for the 1/2" spring clamps. Using the supplied 1/2" clamps, our tubing actually came loose and shot off the barbs. Bottom line: screw type hose clips are a safer bet for high-pressure water cooling pumps.

[Roger_D25]

I'm pretty sure it comes with a couple sets of barbs for 1/2" and 3/8" but somebody who had bought the board should verify that?

[kup]

does the 400Mhz memory strap work in 0404?

And Kup, what bios was you trying to use?

Using 0701 at the moment? Would you recommend another bios revision instead?

[Renegade5399]

Memtest on the P35 and X38 is not reliable by any means. You could be at stock and still get like 4 random errors on the X38. It's a good indicator if RAM has failed totally though. Like me, it gave 142,354 errors by test #3. LOL...

[Warboy]

Using 0701 at the moment? Would you recommend another bios revision instead?

You might need to just crank up the volts to your CPU, it could be the CPU causing the instablitiy

[Budious]

Memtest on the P35 and X38 is not reliable by any means. You could be at stock and still get like 4 random errors on the X38. It's a good indicator if RAM has failed totally though. Like me, it gave 142,354 errors by test #3. LOL...

I've been using Windows Memory Diagnostic as a bootable cd for a while and find it reliable, running the extended tests can find the more difficult to detect errors but a full pass on 4GB can take a while.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

[kup]

You might need to just crank up the volts to your CPU, it could be the CPU causing the instablitiy

I was thinking this, but then I seem to get the Full Load Issue thing. It's catch 22 really...higher clocks that aren't 100% utilized or lower clocks that are? Hmm...should be an easy one...but that bigger number looks so nice!

[eSp!s0]

Hi guys,

I`m new here in this forum (from forumdeluxx.de) and english isn`t my favorite language, but I`ll try my best
Have problems to run my 2x1GB Kingston HxperX 8500 above 1000Mhz and I`m thinking about buying a new kit.
Therefor I would like to know, if Corsair Domitaor 8500 or Transcend aXeRAM 9600U runs good or if there are some same problems? Does anybody have this board-ram-combination?
Thank you a lot for replies. Regards, eSp!s0.

Any infos to this configs?

[Warboy]

I was thinking this, but then I seem to get the Full Load Issue thing. It's catch 22 really...higher clocks that aren't 100% utilized or lower clocks that are? Hmm...should be an easy one...but that bigger number looks so nice!

I can't crack 99.85% of utilized processing at these overclock, So I'm losing .15% oh well....

[binormalkilla]

Well it looks like I'm going to be stable at 400*9=3.6 GHz....DDR2-1066 5-5-5-15 42. Temps are HORRIBLE with this board though....I guess it could be that I seated the CPU poorly, but I doubt it. I've done it a hundred times...
Look at the difference between the same CPU and OC on my P5K Deluxe.....insane. THe P5K is the bottom pic.

[loften]

this may sound stupid but with all these overvolting and changing things on this board with high oc's..maybe sombody could do some mods for setting them critical areas manually to see if it still overvolts things with the high oc's.. maybe adjustable pots or stuff like that..

[devilhood]

Well it looks like I'm going to be stable at 400*9=3.6 GHz....DDR2-1066 5-5-5-15 42. Temps are HORRIBLE with this board though....I guess it could be that I seated the CPU poorly, but I doubt it. I've done it a hundred times...
Look at the difference between the same CPU and OC on my P5K Deluxe.....insane. THe P5K is the bottom pic.

What voltages have you set? tbh I wouldn't worry about temps too much, it is obviously a BIOS bug. My P5W64-WS Pro used to show over 80 degree's celcius for CPU temps and it never failed with four instances of ORTHOS all running Blend.

[Simkin]

i have this motherboard.. and a Q6600 (G0)

i run it att 3.4Ghz @ 1.42v, stable at orthos.. but when i run it on 3.6ghz @ 1.45volts, i get error after 5minutes in orthos..

what is wrong? what volt settings is important in bios? except vcore?

the temp went from 66 @ 3.4ghz to 79 on 3.6ghz

[devilhood]

With BIOS 0701 I get CPU temp of 70 celcius max on full-load with Prime95, but trying to eliminate errors at the moment whilst keeping really tight latencies.

[TheSamurai]

what bios are you running simkin? air or water cooled? i'd say SPU PLL, FSBT, NB, voltages are important. hell, all are important. what i did is looked in the manual for the highest normal settings (except for DRAM) and set it to that. i worked my way back from there to find what was stable. that was for the 3.8 though. 3.9 was another story.

[kup]

what bios are you running simkin? air or water cooled? i'd say SPU PLL, FSBT, NB, voltages are important. hell, all are important. what i did is looked in the manual for the highest normal settings (except for DRAM) and set it to that. i worked my way back from there to find what was stable. that was for the 3.8 though. 3.9 was another story.

What did it take for you to get 3.9GHz (Bios settings?)? I'm in a similar boat. 3.8GHz was a breeze, 3.9GHz is causing more headaches than I'd like to endure for a mere 100MHz...

[binormalkilla]

What voltages have you set? tbh I wouldn't worry about temps too much, it is obviously a BIOS bug. My P5W64-WS Pro used to show over 80 degree's celcius for CPU temps and it never failed with four instances of ORTHOS all running Blend.

Well I don't know how accurate the core temps are, but the X38 chipset is HOT i can touch the heatsink and it's really hot....
Intel's data sheet says that the absolute max for the X38 is 92C....I bet we would experience instability before reaching that limit.
These are all according to PC Probe when applicable, otherwise BIOS.
VCore1.400V
NBV: 1.57V
DRAM: 2.19V (seems to fluctuate....I don't like that)
FSB Term 1.54
PLL~1.60 or so

Here I am stable for OCCT @ 3.6 GHz DDR2-1066:

[ZilverPhish]

They should bundle this board with duo Deltas and earplugs oh and lets not forget Thermal Probes since every software reading is way off. My cpu just went way over 80 C.

[chocobo15]

is there anyone using the 0701 bios with a clock speed of 3.6 or more and has low core temps?

and is coretemp really 15 degrees higher than what it actually is?