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

[Leeghoofd]

most peeps agree for 24/7 stay below 1.45Vcore with decent water cooling on 45nm...

[jonny_ftm]

ahah! thanks for that. thought so myself too lol. anyhow, i updated my thread on the 9650. i'm getting 400x11 at 1.485V actual stable. is that considered high?

Like Leeghoofd said, 1.45v should be ok, but...
Intel specs are of 1.36v, so 1.45v will be 6% out of margin, so safe acceptable if it is a bios setting with vdroop present. Now, 1.45v is rather very high if you use a vdroop workaround in bios, since it will give you up to 1.55v "invisible" overshoot (14% out of intel specs, so like overshooting a 65nm chip with 14% of 1.5v = 1.71v ). Overshooting will depend on your motherboard components quality, but it is not documented for any product existing yet. Only vdroop is implemented by manufactures to remain on safe side. Your 1.48v for a 45nm chips is considered too high if you enable vdroop mods. Without them, you're still at 9% out of spec, so really also on the extreme limit. You can test though, if you're lucky, your chip will survive some months, maybe more, maybe less, but it is risky.

[HermS]

Just a question....

What is the likelihood of being able to fit a 9800GX2 to the P5K-Premium with all six SATA slots occupied? No chance?

[jonny_ftm]

All SATA slots will be covered, at least the first 4 ones belonging to the intel SB. So, you'll loose at least two connectors. A workaround, that should be tested, is to use 4 angled 90°C connectors and force two of them a bit (the distal ones) to be covered by the two others (proximal connectors)

This possibility should be confirmed by owners of the card

[HermS]

Thanks for the reply, I expected it'd be a pain. Oh well new board time, but I have to say this P5K-P has been great.

[jonny_ftm]

Before change MB (really not worth it few months before nehalem when you see the performance of P35, and the GX2 adding SLI performance to intel chips), just unmount your GPU and try connecting 90°C cables to the SATA1 to 4 ports. If they can mount, than it will be no problem. Also, to mount a 27cm card, often the case will be the issue on most mid and full towers

[SiGfever]

Just a question....

What is the likelihood of being able to fit a 9800GX2 to the P5K-Premium with all six SATA slots occupied? No chance?

I lost one SATA port just using an eVGA 8800GTS. Damn SATA placement.

[pollythecat]

Thanks for the reply, I expected it'd be a pain. Oh well new board time, but I have to say this P5K-P has been great.

Do a search for "left angle SATA cables". There are a number of sites in the US that sell them. They are the reverse of the standard 90 degree cable and will allow you to use the inner SATA ports. They can be plugged in and looped back to plug into the HD.
Make sure that they are a low profile design though; if they are too tall they will not allow you to plug the video card in.

[jonny_ftm]

Do a search for "left angle SATA cables". There are a number of sites in the US that sell them. They are the reverse of the standard 90 degree cable and will allow you to use the inner SATA ports. They can be plugged in and looped back to plug into the HD.
Make sure that they are a low profile design though; if they are too tall they will not allow you to plug the video card in.

Nice find, didn't think such cables exist

[haoster]

hi guys, i just have a short question.
i believe i have a board with sata port problem.(sn: 77xxxxxx, and used to have lots of hard disk error in system viewer until i swtiched to raptor).
the questions is: will the bugged board work well with 2 raptors in intel matrix raid(raid 0+1)? now i have 1 raptor, everything is fine, but i am not sure if it will work in raid 0.
thank you

[jonny_ftm]

hi guys, i just have a short question.
i believe i have a board with sata port problem.(sn: 77xxxxxx, and used to have lots of hard disk error in system viewer until i swtiched to raptor).
the questions is: will the bugged board work well with 2 raptors in intel matrix raid(raid 0+1)? now i have 1 raptor, everything is fine, but i am not sure if it will work in raid 0.
thank you

Bugged SATA2 boards, usually won't work with samsung and WD SATA2 drives and many reported problems in RAID mode while others reported no problem, so a risky deal

[haoster]

Bugged SATA2 boards, usually won't work with samsung and WD SATA2 drives and many reported problems in RAID mode while others reported no problem, so a risky deal

thanks for the fast reply....
i guess ill take the risky chance, see if it will work with no problem in raid... if not, i guess ill have to rma the board..i am just too lazy to take out all the waterblocks.
btw, if i rma the buggy board, and get a new one with no problem at all, do you think 2 wd6400aaks in matrix raid 0+1 will out perform 2 raptors in matrix 0+1? i have been read so many articles and benches showing the new wd 640g aaks has same or better performance than the raptors.

[jonny_ftm]

thanks for the fast reply....
i guess ill take the risky chance, see if it will work with no problem in raid... if not, i guess ill have to rma the board..i am just too lazy to take out all the waterblocks.
btw, if i rma the buggy board, and get a new one with no problem at all, do you think 2 wd6400aaks in matrix raid 0+1 will out perform 2 raptors in matrix 0+1? i have been read so many articles and benches showing the new wd 640g aaks has same or better performance than the raptors.

WD will win on some tests if I recall well, especially those with large files. On small files, the low latency of raptor will win. Performance/prise/silence/heat/capacity wise, the new WD clearly is the winner. Now, there are those new velociraptors, but on the ratio above, I doubt they win the WD unless some specific usage cases.

[haoster]

WD will win on some tests if I recall well, especially those with large files. On small files, the low latency of raptor will win. Performance/prise/silence/heat/capacity wise, the new WD clearly is the winner. Now, there are those new velociraptors, but on the ratio above, I doubt they win the WD unless some specific usage cases.

thank you so much jonny, i bought 2 6400aaks today, and they run very will without a single problem in raid 0+1.
heres a brief result:


is this performance considered good? or just normal...
i think this is not matrix raid tho, and i dont know how to set matrix up....gonna learn more from the net..
ill update more details tonight...
6400aaks really rocks

[ReverendMaynard]

enable "write back cache" in the Intel Storage Manager....watch your burst rate get into the gbps range.

[haoster]

enable "write back cache" in the Intel Storage Manager....watch your burst rate get into the gbps range.

damn thats crazy burst rate, i did want to enable it in the device manager, but figured out i couldnt do it there....hehe. i am very new to raid...
just have a few more questions: after plug both 6400aaks, i hit ctrl+i into raid setting, i first create raid 0 with 16k strip, then raid 1(is this the right order?). after that, just normal windows installation, followed by intel matrix storage console. does this mean i am already using intel matrix raid?
also, i have done alot of research on the net about the strip size for raid0, but different people has different ideas about it. theres no "most common" or "best" stripe size?

[ReverendMaynard]

damn thats crazy burst rate, i did want to enable it in the device manager, but figured out i couldnt do it there....hehe. i am very new to raid...
just have a few more questions: after plug both 6400aaks, i hit ctrl+i into raid setting, i first create raid 0 with 16k strip, then raid 1(is this the right order?). after that, just normal windows installation, followed by intel matrix storage console. does this mean i am already using intel matrix raid?
also, i have done alot of research on the net about the strip size for raid0, but different people has different ideas about it. theres no "most common" or "best" stripe size?

You have to install the Intel Storage Manager, then you can enable write back. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Prod...ProductID=2101

You are using matrix RAID 0/1. I tend to use a larger stripe on drives that have larger programs and files, like games. I think 64k is considered the norm.

[haoster]

new result with write back cache enabled:


how come i have such a high cpu usage...

[NIZ]

enable "write back cache" in the Intel Storage Manager....watch your burst rate get into the gbps range.

WOW!!!! Thanks for the tip mate. I gained an extra 100MB/sec average transfer speed after enabling, not to mention the burst rate . I am using 4 x WD3200AAKS (B3) hdd's Raid 0, 64kb stripe size. See results below.

Write Cache disabled


Write Cache Enabled


Also to the person who asked whether you can use all 6 SATA ports with a 9800GX2 installed. Yes it is possible but you will need 3x right angle sata cables & 3x left angle sata cables. I am currently using 5ports & have a 9800gx2. It was like trying to find a needle in a hay stack trying to get a left angle sata cable. I tried every shop near my house & was ready to order some from the US, I was lucky to find that these POS Acer PC's we repair at work actually used them so was able to steal a couple.

[sesdave]

new result with write back cache enabled:

how come i have such a high cpu usage...

Your Raid0 is way too big. Best performance is achieved by using a thin slice at the beginning of the drive platter - set it up with about 80-100GB. If you havent read this thread already do so - http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848 you will be able to glean all the info you need to setup your drives in RAID 0/1 -or 5 or 10 if you have 4 to get the best out of them. The latter end of the thread is mainly around using 640's in raid0/1 - 5 -10 setup where they are getting silly performance.

[ReverendMaynard]

new result with write back cache enabled:


how come i have such a high cpu usage...

one of the disadvantages of having a dual core.

[haoster]

after installed some applications, max, min, average transfer rate in hd tune decreased about 20-40mb/s...
also, i found sometimes its laggy when reading from or writing to both volumes...

[ReverendMaynard]

after installed some applications, max, min, average transfer rate in hd tune decreased about 20-40mb/s...
also, i found sometimes its laggy when reading from or writing to both volumes...

That has allot to do with the size of your RAID0 volume as sesdave mentioned earlier. You want a short stroke for maximum performance.

[haoster]

That has allot to do with the size of your RAID0 volume as sesdave mentioned earlier. You want a short stroke for maximum performance.

ya, i know, 400g is too big for raid0.....
but...100G raid0 and 550g ish raid1 wont be enough for my docs,video, and music etc.... thats why i put 400g into raid0....

[Dude87]

I have got two 160GBs and two 500GBs HDs, all of which are sata2. Any suggestions on how to set them up most effectively? Currenly they are in two pairs of Raid 0. but having a 1000gb Raid 0 volume kind of kills the point of it rite?

Help me out guys.