**Official ASUS Striker II Formula Discussion/Review/Overclock/Guide/BIOS Thread**

[Hor$eman]

The mosfet fans actually clip right onto the nb and sb, if you want to go that route. I used those prior to going with thermaltake coolers.

[Hor$eman]

Just in case no one knew:

DO NOT OC PCI bus' unless you want to fry it !!!

I've toasted my one PCI slot by OC'ing it. It worked for a month on 110, and I tried it up to what seemed a stable 118.

have to exchange the board. My goal is to fry and send as many of these boards back to Asus as is possible. I paid for the three year exchange "No questions Asked" insurance, so it's all good, hehe.

[Phil The Greek]

Finally I got in my hands a 8500 chip and prooved I was right.I easily got about 11500MB/s in everest memory benchmark.With the Kentsfield couldn't get more than 9500MB/s.I'll be back soon with screenshots and more info
EDIT:I spoke too soon.I tested the 8500 at 475(1900)fsb where I couldn't run my Kentsfield.At 450(1800)it has the sae bandwith.Its only a mater of fsb/strap/ram dividers I think.Will test further....

[Phil The Greek]

There is a huge bandwith change at 469/470fsb

[The0men]

There is a huge bandwith change at 469/470fsb

But at least the 8500 has the sweet spots, even at 469, I got the same results as your 470 with my kent.

[Sem]

Yes - a single 40x40x10mm fan attached using 3mm screws

Looks good
think that fan is the Akasa AK-160 BL-S

with that fan how hot does it get under load

[Nits]

The mosfet fans actually clip right onto the nb and sb, if you want to go that route.

Unless you have a Tuniq 120 (or other big HSF, which gets in the way) hence why I got a new 40mm fan for it.

Just in case no one knew:

DO NOT OC PCI bus' unless you want to fry it !!!

I've toasted my one PCI slot by OC'ing it. It worked for a month on 110, and I tried it up to what seemed a stable 118.

have to exchange the board. My goal is to fry and send as many of these boards back to Asus as is possible. I paid for the three year exchange "No questions Asked" insurance, so it's all good, hehe.

Thanks for the warning. OC'ing the PCI was next on my agenda!

Is there another way to OC the GPU?

Looks good
think that fan is the Akasa AK-160 BL-S

with that fan how hot does it get under load

Correct.

Not exactly sure how much, but I think it's about 3 degrees less than it was before.

[fordf250]

There is a huge bandwith change at 469/470fsb

They are not the same, one is linked and one is at 15/16.

The bw still goes up as fsb climbs.

475 fsb 11970mb/s

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo...67863468IhqJfp

487 fsb 12280mb/s

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo...67863468eGhmuu

[Marios]

Just in case no one knew:

DO NOT OC PCI bus' unless you want to fry it !!!

I've toasted my one PCI slot by OC'ing it. It worked for a month on 110, and I tried it up to what seemed a stable 118.

have to exchange the board. My goal is to fry and send as many of these boards back to Asus as is possible. I paid for the three year exchange "No questions Asked" insurance, so it's all good, hehe.

I believe it's because the heatpipes are crap, so both the southbridge and NF200 get extremely hot. Did you try anything to cool down the NF200 chip?

[CSF-INTREPID]

Hey Winter that was an awsome post on the Raid setup.
What I realy want to know is how the simulator would react with files from Vista 64 bit, BF2, COD4, and Crysis.
And what software did you use to format and set your cluster size ???

[Hor$eman]

I believe it's because the heatpipes are crap, so both the southbridge and NF200 get extremely hot. Did you try anything to cool down the NF200 chip?

I used a heatsink from a video card cooling set, but it obviously needed more. I think the only real good solution would/ will be H2O

[Marios]

I used a heatsink from a video card cooling set, but it obviously needed more. I think the only real good solution would/ will be H2O

I did the same like you. I managed to put two smal heatsinks on the left and the right side of the ASUS logo and two more on the southbridge but the NF200 is still too hot.
Thanks for the info.

[nugzo]

I'm using stock heatpipes and a TRUE with no issues. I have a small fan off of an old amd socket A HSF. It rests on the video card and goes underneath the edge of the TRUE.

Here is a pic of my NB cooling. The fan is not attached its kinda wedged underneath the TRUE.

[Marios]

The 5cm fan on the northbridge does a good job. But the NF200 is too hot. The pipes should be able to transfer the heat away from the chip, to the CPU area. Unfortunately they are just copper tubes, not heatpipes.
It is very difficult now to replace them, so I just added those blue little heatsinks (two on the SB and two on the NF200).

[nugzo]

The 5cm fan on the northbridge does a good job. But the NF200 is too hot. The pipes should be able to transfer the heat away from the chip, to the CPU area. Unfortunately they are just copper tubes, not heatpipes.
It is very difficult now to replace them, so I just added those blue little heatsinks (two on the SB and two on the NF200).

When i had all the extra room due to water cooling, i used a couple of Antec Spot cools for the hot areas. They worked wonders. They do great on the memory as well. No luck with these big arse air CPU coolers in the way though.

[Phil The Greek]

They are not the same, one is linked and one is at 15/16.

The bw still goes up as fsb climbs.

475 fsb 11970mb/s

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo...67863468IhqJfp

487 fsb 12280mb/s

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo...67863468eGhmuu

This may be happening in your Striker.I don't know why but every Striker seams to behave diferent.
I didn't have time to take screenshots but I wrote down some notes.
This is with a E8500 with memory linked synced @4-4-4-12 2T
9X400=10.100MB/s
9X420=10.600MB/s
9X430=10.900MB/s
9X440=10.300MB/s
8.5X450=9500MB/s
8.5X460=9700MB/s
8.5X470=11.800MB/s
8.5X475=11.900MB/s
8.5X480=11.300MB/s
8X485=10.700MB/s
8X490=no boot
8X495=no boot
8X500=10.200MB/s
8X505 until 7X550=no boot
In every fsb that gives higher than 10.000MB/s read,my board doesn't boot when I am using my Kentsfield.
And something also interesting is that the first board I had,was giving me a read of ~11.500MB/s at 450fsb when using my Kentsfield or a Yorkfield.
The conclusions are yours

[Garrett]

The 5cm fan on the northbridge does a good job. But the NF200 is too hot. The pipes should be able to transfer the heat away from the chip, to the CPU area. Unfortunately they are just copper tubes, not heatpipes.
It is very difficult now to replace them, so I just added those blue little heatsinks (two on the SB and two on the NF200).

Since you have watercooling you could use a 80mm fan to cool your northbridge
Explanation: the Socket 775 holes are exactly the same distance as the fan holes of a 80mm fan
This way you can put a fan at the bottom threads of your FuZion block and cool your NB with a (silent like 2000rpm) 80mm fan
See photo for my setup

[Marios]

Nice tip and nice rig. My fan is also quiet and I think smaller spot fans give better air pressure on the NB.
The fan is paired with a thermometer on mobo's OPT2 (temperature #2 and fan #2 on everest).
In quiet mode set at 45°C and a room temp of 27°C the fan stays at 3.800 RPM.
At 6000RPM it is very quiet and at max >7000 RPM it makes a nice audible sound.
In my case the NB temps are actually the NF200 temps.
The OPT2 thermometer measures the NF780 chip.
I get 65°C for the MCP (NF200?) and 45°C for OPT2 (NF780 block).
I think the BIOS NB temps (the MCP reading on Everest) measure the NF200, not the NF780 chip.

[CBird28]

why is it that 1 day i can have a stable system @ 1700, then it suddenly doesnt even want to boot??

a minute ago i managed to boot to windows at 1800, and do a 7min orthos test (which then failed), when i go to restart the pc, it just doesnt want to boot even though i changed no settings.

now the only way i can get it to boot to windows is to run everything default. this motherboard sucks. I wonder if its worth changing to the reference board

[Garrett]

I've had the same thing as you CBird28, but I solved it by pushing the RESET CMOS button... yes that was everything it took, amazed me too.

Sometimes indeed it would not boot, or not detect all of the harddrives, but now, a few weeks after resetting cmos everything is still fine

give it a try, just write down your settings or save them in the bios profile

[Daytime Dreamer]

Ok, here are my conclusions

I have tested this board with the 1303 BIOS, 2X2gb of Corsair RAM (4-4-4-12 @800) and here are my thoughts

Whatever setting I try the system locks up eventually ... I had found a setting that was stable for 2 days (browsing, HD movie playback, memtest stable) and I installed Lost Planet and went to play it

After about 40 minutes of gameplay the game froze. I went to the BIOS and the Northbridge was at 70 Celcius. I have acting cooling on SB and NB mind you

I am thinking of buying a bunch of Thermlright chipset and mosfet coolers and give this F@cker the cooling of its life ... the thing is I dont know if it will actually work or watercooling is the only way to go

Also my board works best with Loadline Calibration disabled ... with it enabled the voltage fluctuation is big

[CBird28]

just managed to run orthos for 17mins at 1800, then when it crashed, bios wouldnt even boot with the same settings, tried clearing cmos a thew times and booting the same settings again but it doesnt want to know wtf. this board is absolute crap.

[Daytime Dreamer]

just managed to run orthos for 17mins at 1800, then when it crashed, bios wouldnt even boot with the same settings, tried clearing cmos a thew times and booting the same settings again but it doesnt want to know wtf. this board is absolute crap.

Have you upgraded to 1303 bios? Whats your current bios?

[CBird28]

1301, will give 1303 a go now i think, thanks

[Garrett]

I'm on 1101 if it's any help... I see no reason (yet) to update my bios