My Dual Harper - Asus Z7S WS living review *56K warning*

[STEvil]

redmodel - 800mhz FB-DIMM's have newer AMB chips which may account for them clocking to 400mhz+ easier.

The compatible/enhanced SATA options are so that you dont need to roll drivers into an OS install before installing the OS. Just set SATA to compatible and away you go.

[Movieman]

Finally put mine together. A few issues.

I am having the exact same issue as I did with the DSEB-DG board. Testing with two different brands of 667mhz FB-DIMMs, Prime95 will crash using high FFTs (above 2500). But it didn't do it with one piece of MacPro 800mhz ram by Hynix.

Does anyone else mind testing this? I'm interested in knowing if people with 667mhz ram is getting the same issue, and if people with 800mhz is not.

I don't understand why it's doing it, i am use e5450 cpus, which should be using the 667mhz ram anyways. but I want to overclock it to 3.6ghz, and I planned on getting 800mhz ram either way.

Other issue is with configuring the Marvell Network drivers to do link agregation. That is what was nice about the DSEB-DG. It had 4x intel Pro Network Ports. Zero issues. The Marvell works fine as a single link. But trying to team them up has been causing a lot of problems, to a point where I can't even get a proper connection anymore, even on a single link. I don't have any slots left either to get an intel network card

Third Issue, my eSATA drives freezes up the computer whenever I have it plugged in to the Jmicron port. I remember seeing this before on another build, and at the moment I don't remember how I fixed it. I have to look into it more. Just wondering if anyone has noticed this?

The other issue is changing the SATA IDE to AHCI drivers in Windows after install. This trick used to be easy on other boards, but I get iastor.sys crashes now whenever I do it. oh well.

Two points:
1) Your E5450's will BSEL mod to 3600/12mb/1600 with a tiny piece of tape put over the H30 pad. Might need a tiny boost in volts to do that speed as the E54xx's are lower voltage than the X54xx models but be carefull, only small increase, like .05-.1v IMO..
2) Toss that 667 memory away and get 800FBDimms.

[ZIO]

Hi Guys.

Also a couple questions, is anyone using the backplates in the case or do you all have the proper standoffs? The suckers are stuck on my case very well, and seem to provide ample support when the heatsinks were attached, but the mb did have some bending. Also did anyone else experience any grounding/shorts when placed in the case and vertical? I was thinking of using nylon standoffs, but asus said to simply cover the brass with an X of electrical tape. I'm open to your suggestions here as well.

Special thanks to jcool who helped me through email pick all these parts.

I should have the new Z7S this Monday, so will be ready to jump back into it then.

Dust

I used the supplied backplates exactly as jcool indicated with his pics.

Even after coming off on the tension with the supplied backplates to reduce the amount of bending there was still some bending across the rubber pieces, I secured my Heatsink towers with craft wire while the case was on it's side and then stood it up after making sure the towers wouldn't move in the downwards motion, secured by the craft wire.

Minor flexing of the MB around/towards the area of the chips was still there after proper mounting of the sinks was done, I secured the MB flat with the lateral wires you see going off to the right and the towers are supported by the wire connected to the crosspiece in the case, it works.

I had to modify the NB heatsink with my trusty dremel and cut a small chunk out of it after marking it off and trimming the fins off the HR01 heatsink tower. Otherwise the HR01 pushed it off it's mount when securing the sink. My dremel with the cutting wheel worked wonders for modifying the HR01 as well I recommend it to anyone trying this build.

I am now at 2.92Ghz on both processors, with temps of 34/36c idle, 40.5/37.7c under load for about an hour.

I don't need to go higher (yet) my machine performs well and stays cool.

[redmodel]

Two points:
1) Your E5450's will BSEL mod to 3600/12mb/1600 with a tiny piece of tape put over the H30 pad. Might need a tiny boost in volts to do that speed as the E54xx's are lower voltage than the X54xx models but be carefull, only small increase, like .05-.1v IMO..
2) Toss that 667 memory away and get 800FBDimms.

Sorry, I don't think I made it clear in my post.

I am running all stock right now. I didn't do the BSEL mod to the e5450s, because I didn't want to use Conductive Silver Pen on $1000 cpus to adjust the voltages.

I moved my DSEB-DG board to a newly created Fibre Channel SAN with a slower harpertown CPU, and I plan on using the Z7S with the e5450s to overclock to 3.6ghz.

There seems to be a very short supply of 800mhz FB-Dimms for with non-macpro heatsinks. And, since I wasted money on two separate types of 667mhz ram for the DSEB-DG board, I want to make sure I get a non crashing 800mhz ram for the Z7S.

Sorry Jcool, you probably posted it already, but what 800mhz FBDimms did you get?

And movieman, what ram do you have, I am assuming your Prime95 works fine.

The compatible/enhanced SATA options are so that you dont need to roll drivers into an OS install before installing the OS. Just set SATA to compatible and away you go.

Okay, and this lets me use AHCI drivers?

[Movieman]

Sorry, I don't think I made it clear in my post.

I am running all stock right now. I didn't do the BSEL mod to the e5450s, because I didn't want to use Conductive Silver Pen on $1000 cpus to adjust the voltages.

I moved my DSEB-DG board to a newly created Fibre Channel SAN with a slower harpertown CPU, and I plan on using the Z7S with the e5450s to overclock to 3.6ghz.

There seems to be a very short supply of 800mhz FB-Dimms for with non-macpro heatsinks. And, since I wasted money on two separate types of 667mhz ram for the DSEB-DG board, I want to make sure I get a non crashing 800mhz ram for the Z7S.

Sorry Jcool, you probably posted it already, but what 800mhz FBDimms did you get?

And movieman, what ram do you have, I am assuming your Prime95 works fine.



Okay, and this lets me use AHCI drivers?

Sorry, I misread, the memory I tested the X5482's with was 4x2 gig Transcend DDR2-800's..5-5-5-18-22..
Stock volts and went to 450 on the SM X7DWA-N board..
Rock 100% load stable at 438, cinebench at 444 and SP1M at 450..
Bluescreened at 455
As to drivers, yes on the AHCI and as to Prime 95, not my style, I turned on WCG at 100% for 48 hours and let her rip..No errors, thats "stable " to me..

[STEvil]

Has nothing to do with AHCI, only for OS installation.

[jcool]

I used the supplied backplates exactly as jcool indicated with his pics.

Even after coming off on the tension with the supplied backplates to reduce the amount of bending there was still some bending across the rubber pieces, I secured my Heatsink towers with craft wire while the case was on it's side and then stood it up after making sure the towers wouldn't move in the downwards motion, secured by the craft wire.

Minor flexing of the MB around/towards the area of the chips was still there after proper mounting of the sinks was done, I secured the MB flat with the lateral wires you see going off to the right and the towers are supported by the wire connected to the crosspiece in the case, it works.

Yeah sorry, that backplate mod doesn't work for mobos mounted in a case... I didn't realize that before because I ran the mobo 3 weeks on a table, lol.
It might work with the stock heatsinks, but Thermalrights are way too heavy, they need to be mounted with the mobo standoffs.

@Redmodel: As far as we know, any 800Mhz FBDimm works a charm on this mobo. I am running 4x2GB Buffalo FBDimms (they had Mac Pro heatsinks though), Jaco runs Trancend 1GB sticks (also Mac pro) and a friend of mine uses Kingston Value 800. They have flat heatspreaders so they're the only ones that work w/o modifying the heatsink, I guess. Even though you can mount my Buffalos w/o modding in slots 1 and 3, if you want to go Quadchannel you need to mod them.

[neveroffline]

I used the supplied backplates exactly as jcool indicated with his pics.

Even after coming off on the tension with the supplied backplates to reduce the amount of bending there was still some bending across the rubber pieces, I secured my Heatsink towers with craft wire while the case was on it's side and then stood it up after making sure the towers wouldn't move in the downwards motion, secured by the craft wire.

Did you stick the backplates to the case with the sticky tape backside or did you leave that on? I have mine stuck on and they don't move at all. I don't see how it can be any less sturdy than the original standoffs (which I have, only for a full EATX dual XEON).

I couldn't figure out where the short/grounding was coming from, but it only happened when vertical. Would boot randomly, try to post, 08, 07, then FF on the diagnostic card, then shutoff, and even the slightest tap to the case would do the same over and over again. On it's side it booted just fine. I should get the replacement mb soon, maybe as early as tomorrow, or at the most Monday. I'm hoping it's tomorrow so I can use the weekend, they told me they would overnight it.

Should I place electrical tape on the bottom side of the mb where the largest solder points are, or just over the brass standoffs?

Here is my reply from Asus:

"The problem you are seeing could be caused by what we call a grounding/emi interference problem, start by taking the motherboard out of the case you have it in. Next set the motherboard up on top of the cardboard box it came in, straight to the cardboard(do not use the anti-static plastic, foam, or an antistatic mat as these have been known to keep a board from posting.) if you do not have the box that the board came in then use some newspaper a phonebook or some other non-conductive material. Connect to the board just the bare minimums needed to verify the problem you are having i.e.: cpu(w/heatsink and fan), memory, video card and power supply. Power the system up outside the case if the problem then seems to have resolved itself then all we need to do when mounting the board back into the case is use some added grounding/emi protection, the simplest way to resolve this type of problem is to get you some standard electrical tape and make a cross over the brass or metal stand-offs you are mounting the board into. This will do 2 things, first it will insure that we do not have a metal to metal ground and second it will lift the board up away from the case so that if you had a solder point sitting to close to the case generating an emi field the distance added between the 2 should keep this from happening. If this does not resolve the problem you are having then please contact either our tech support office at 812-282-2787 or our RMA dept. at 510-739-3777 option #2 and we will have the board sent in for repair/replacement."

[ZIO]

Did you stick the backplates to the case with the sticky tape backside or did you leave that on? I have mine stuck on and they don't move at all. I don't see how it can be any less sturdy than the original standoffs (which I have, only for a full EATX dual XEON).

"

I left the slick paper on the backplate mounts, I suppose I could have peeled it but I was going off jcools pics on how-to and it worked So I didn't bother. Besides in retrospect it seemed like there might be a loop problem, so I figured why not leave it on?

That problem you were having sounds like a ground loop through the MB as asus was saying.

I used the supplied metal backplate mounts with the thin rubber pads cut in half, but couldn't tighten them down all the way without seeing a lot of MB bending, I had to "back-off" on my tightness by 4, half turns, there was still light bending and I could slightly turn the heat sink towers by hand when it was too loose, and when it was just right, they didn't turn, they were snug. I used Artic Silver for my thermal compound. (newegg $5 a tube, one tube per processor, then smoothed and excess removed.)

ZIO

[Jaco]

I used Artic Silver for my thermal compound. (newegg $5 a tube, one tube per processor, then smoothed and excess removed.)

ZIO

isn't that a little overkill

[Movieman]

isn't that a little overkill

a LOT overkill IMO

[littleowl]

isn't that a little overkill

That is way more then overkill!!!

[ZIO]

Overkill?

spending $10 to protect $700 worth of processors is not overkill, it is insurance besides:

I am now at 2.92Ghz on both processors, with temps of 34/36c idle, 40.5/37.7c under load.

Very cool overkilled- dead right.

ZIO

[jcool]

You drained a whole tube of AS5 PER CPU?

Sorry, must be the funniest thing I ever heard

I build like ~40 whole rigs with one 3g AS5 tube... That's CPU and GPU, sometimes also mobo

[[XC] gomeler]

Overkill?

spending $10 to protect $700 worth of processors is not overkill, it is insurance besides:

I am now at 2.92Ghz on both processors, with temps of 34/36c idle, 40.5/37.7c under load.

Very cool overkilled- dead right.

ZIO

Oh man, I'm so sorry. Typically you apply a pea-sized drop or smaller. You should end up with a VERY thin layer of TIM which should solely be used to make up for the minor surface differences between the IHS and the HS. TIM is a terrible conductor compared to metal, so the less of it between the two components the better. I've used one of those small tubes of Artic Silver Ceramique on about 20 fresh re-mounts and I have a quarter of the tube left

[Bobsama]

The more compound, the more the heat has to go through. A pea-sized drop is even too much most of the time--but just go easy on that compound! AS5 is electrically conductive--so putting on too much of that stuff IS dangerous. Depending on how much overflow, it could get into the pins and fry the processor with ease. And please--tell us you didn't spread it with a credit card, razor blade, or something else! That's the fastest way to get air bubbles.

[neveroffline]

Can someone address my questions here rather than AS5 comments? I'm using stock cooling and my Z7S backplates are now STUCK to my case mb tray. Yeah, thats what the sticky part on the bottom is for right? Heh. A tube of 3g should last you plenty of machines, a tube of 12g should last much more, I agree. Since I am using stock cooling I already have this on the cpus/heatsinks. I have a tube of AS5 12g untouched btw - standing by.

I already returned one of these boards and should get the replacement tomorrow. I was looking for suggestions and hope I can get them here.

Thanks. Dustin

[STEvil]

sticky stuff is not for holding the backplate to the tray but rather to the motherboard.

I use duct tape to hold them to the motherboard so they are removable though. That tape can stick too well sometimes.

[neveroffline]

sticky stuff is not for holding the backplate to the tray but rather to the motherboard.

I use duct tape to hold them to the motherboard so they are removable though. That tape can stick too well sometimes.

Do you have one of these boards? No the sticky tape on the back of the backplate is for sticking to the Case/Chassis vs having the mb standoffs already in place, and no, not the MB. Are you serious?

Refer to page 1 of this thread.

[jcool]

Yeah, no sense in putting the sticky side towards the mobo.
However, if mounted upright in a case these plates only stick to the tray with light heatsinks, such as the stock coolers. I tried to stick them to the tray with the HR-01's mounted but they are way too heavy, board bending is inevitable unless you screw them heavy heatsinks onto the mb tray.
Next time I'm gonna use water, EK supreme + supplied metal clips from the Z7S should work just fine as backplates, and no mounting trouble.

[jcool]

Just updated the 1st post, made some adjustments and added bios section

[[XC] Hicks121]

Just updated the 1st post, made some adjustments and added bios section

Hey man!! I thought you were gonna build another one of these

Whats taking you

[jcool]

Yeah I guess I am... "only" need to modify (speak: completely disassemble) the case so it will take 2 mobos.
My mainrig still isn't rebuilt too, plus I have next to no time thanks to work.

But I'd think my current output isn't too shabby either

[STEvil]

Do you have one of these boards? No the sticky tape on the back of the backplate is for sticking to the Case/Chassis vs having the mb standoffs already in place, and no, not the MB. Are you serious?

Refer to page 1 of this thread.

Never had an issue doing it the way I detailed.

And I do have a Z7S-WS.. in the mail.

[[XC] serlv]

Never had an issue doing it the way I detailed.

And I do have a Z7S-WS.. in the mail.

Hmmm.


sees about what it would take to intercept and reroute that package... heh-heh!