ASUS Striker II Extreme

[Fusion2002]

Are you guys using PCprobe to monitor temps/voltage? Im seeing huge discrepencies between PCprobe, core temp, and bios

[|SiLA|]

does our supremefx 2 supports dd live and/or dts connect?

using optical keep getting only stereo channle

under vista 64

[Trigger5521]

doesn't look like it, specs read.

SupremeFX II Audio Card
ADI 1988B 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
Coaxial / Optical S/PDIF out ports at back I/O
ASUS Noise Filter

I can tell you this even my first gen X-Fi card sounds 10X better than the supremeFX. You need a good speaker system of course.

[vladimir]

I've just checked and 15.17 is still on the NVidia download page for me, both 32 and 64 bit versions. I have had no problem with this driver.

Yep! I noticed this yesterday as well. 15.17s still available for every language except US English. So apparently, only the U.S. is having issues with these drivers?

[slim142]

Nope, I have the EK SB block. Its the SB location that prevents the SB being under water and Tri-SLI.

Exactly, for the people that decide to use 280 in Tri-SLI is almost impossible (if not impossible) to water cool the SB.

Here's a link for those who need some light shed on the 15.17 nforce chipset drivers. Kind of a "why" they were pulled off the site:

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/actu...s-vt70915.html

Also this, for instruction on how to perform a nice clean install:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/vist...0f186bcb0f97ef

Cheers

EDIT: Here is the link for XP users as well:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/actu...s-vt70968.html

I dont feel comfortable using modified drivers. If this is all related to IDE, then I guess anybody not using the IDE port shouldnt worry about using 15.17

Are you guys using PCprobe to monitor temps/voltage? Im seeing huge discrepencies between PCprobe, core temp, and bios

I like PC Probe to check CPU temps and Everest for NB/SB temps. PC Probe=BIOS afaik.

Im almost 100% sure it doesnt support DDlive. DTS Connect, it might. Are you going to be using this because of Tri-SLI? Because besides that, I dont see why you should use it.

[HurinThalion]

I checked the driver download page for Mexico before posting anything and they were gone from there too.

Also, my experience is that the "IDE drivers" also install new drivers for the SATA controller.

However, having said that, it looks like --now that I've gotten this board stable and can do so in good conscience-- I'm going to be selling it and going X48. LotRO has some SLi issues that don't appear likely to be fixed. So I might as well give Crossfire a try when the 4870X2 comes out.

H

[slim142]

Blackops is heaven
Together with 4x00 series in Crossfire, its happiness

[skinnee]

I like PC Probe to check CPU temps and Everest for NB/SB temps. PC Probe=BIOS afaik.

PC Probe uses TCase for CPU Temp, CoreTemp and RealTemp use TJunction.

[Justifire]

Slim, do yourself a favour.
Go with 1/2" barbs,fittings and tubing.
You choose a pump that has 1/2" in and outlet, don't spoil that flow with 3/8" restrictions !!
And the SB don't need watercooling, its tested and confirmed, watercooling the southbridge brings nothing more than good aircooling.
Pick up that cheap Evercool SB cooler, that's more than enough.

[slim142]

Slim, do yourself a favour.
Go with 1/2" barbs,fittings and tubing.
You choose a pump that has 1/2" in and outlet, don't spoil that flow with 3/8" restrictions !!
And the SB don't need watercooling, its tested and confirmed, watercooling the southbridge brings nothing more than good aircooling.
Pick up that cheap Evercool SB cooler, that's more than enough.

The thing is that I want to use the Fusion waterblock that comes with the motherboard. I dont want to spend more money on separate block cause that means mosfet coolers and SB heatsink and I dont want to spend money on (like you said) stuff that doesnt need more than air cooling.That 3/8 is only for the NB thats it, dont know how big the impact will be but I expect it not to be huge. Many people use stock Fusion block.

[realcyberghost]

Hey all,

My 1st post here, and right from the start a wall of text inc :p

I am not an expert, but have done several OC's in the past and wanted to share my experience with my Striker II Extreme.

Well at 1st I could not get anything stable, that was with the rig in my sig but with 2 x 2GB Corsair 9-9-9-24 1600mhz DDR3 instead of the OCZ.
Could not even get stable at 1333mhz synced.

I kept getting memory errors and blue screens. So I RMA'd the sticks and because the supplier did not have the same sticks in stock to replace I got a refund.
Then I decided to get 2 x 2GB OCZ 7-6-6-24 1600mhz sticks, seen good reviews on them so ...

Same story, memory errors and blue screens, tried everything, so I thought I was screwed and had to RMA the board, but because I only got memory errors, I decided to buy another pair of 2GB OCZ 7-6-6-24 1600mhz sticks, worst case I would end up with 8GB of RAM :p

So I put them in my rig and lo and behold ! Everything is stable, even previous FSB holes were np, tested @ 1333mhz synced : stable, @ 1600mhz synced : stable, @ 1707mhz synced : stable. Currently testing @ 1760mhz and looking stable.

I found that the BIOS matured, 0901 is a really nice one, I used to have corruption problems at high FSB overclock. Had to reinstall Vista several times. Now these problems are gone for me.
Also couldnt boot at certain point with 7-6-6-24-2T timings, was fixed in some bios update.

Some important things that I have learned :

Memtest86 is inadequate to find memory errors, it may be nice for a 1st check, but I would never rely on it for full stability testing. I could loop this all night with no errors, then tested with memtest for windows and it would find errorsn rather quickly ( after an hour or so, depending on the OC )
Same goes for the built in memory test from Vista, just not good enough.

What I have found to be the best way to test my ram ( especially on multi core cpu's ) :

Memtest for Windows
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

For 4GB of Ram I would run 4 instances of Memtest, each testing 900MB of Ram, this would put all 4 cores at 100% load AND test most of my RAM, leaving 400MB for running Vista.

I think that if one tests RAM under DOS, the CPU is not stressed enough, and thus the communication between CPU and RAM ( NB, FSB, ... ) isnt stressed enough either.

Because both Memtest86+ ( tried different versions ) and Vista built-in memtest could run flawlessly I was under the false impression that I was running stable at some point ... until I tried to install some game and got CRC errors when extracting files, then I knew Memtest for Windows was right all along and I was back to square one.

Another thing I have learned : don't blame the board too fast, it took me 3 pairs of sticks from 2 top brands to get 1 pair without errors. It may well be that DDR3 hasn't yet matured for a full 100%, or I just may have been very unlucky.

Finally I suggest everyone to reseat their NB-SB heatsink city and put some good thermal grease on the chips. And then tighten the screws better than they were out of the box.
see guide here : http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us
Caution : Don't overtighten, I ended up having to replace the screws with metal nuts and bolts, using these can be even more dangerous if you overtighten and crush your chips.
However I got nice results :
Even tho there were some sort of thermal pads on the chips ( some people say the didnt even have those out of the box ), I used to get temps of 71c on the NB @ 1,56v and 72c on the SB @ 1,50v
When I cranked the NB up to 1,60v my system regularly shut itself down ( don't even wanna guess what my temps where at that time :p )

After the reseating and using the good thermal grease my temps went down to 62c and 65c, for me that was very nice. Perhaps some thicker thermal paste would have been even better, or I may have been able to tighten the metal nuts and bolts even more, but I was scared I would crush the chips and I thought the Zalman thermal grease was better then the Arctic Silver 3 I had lying around, plus the Zalman comes with a brush, which is really handy for the mosfets :p

However I was not sattisfied yet, and got me 2 Antec spotcool fans, now I find these thing very nice and easy to install, I pointed them at the NB and SB and the temps dropped to 57c for the NB and 56c for the SB

So that was my story, hope I did not bore you people too much, and I will give and update on the progress of my OC. ( ATM memtest has done 3 loops and everything looks stable at 1760 FSB )


Greetz

[ceevee]

Well I got my new board after the RMA and it is rock solid stable. SLI is also rock solid stable now. I have been testing for two days before posting this to be absolutely sure.

It seems some of these boards may just not be very good from the factory.

However one thing I noticed about this new board: very high MCP temps reported after 2+ hours of SLI Crysis.

Is 82C too hot?

Also my understanding is that MCP = SB, is this right?

I dont know how I am going to put a fan over the SB with these two huge cards in SLI.

Any thoughts?

[slim142]

Yes, MCP=SB
Mines used to be 72c when idle sometimes lol

You can buy Antec Spot Cool, thats what Im planning to do. No point on water cooling the SB.

[realcyberghost]

Well I got my new board after the RMA and it is rock solid stable. SLI is also rock solid stable now. I have been testing for two days before posting this to be absolutely sure.

It seems some of these boards may just not be very good from the factory.

However one thing I noticed about this new board: very high MCP temps reported after 2+ hours of SLI Crysis.

Is 82C too hot?

Also my understanding is that MCP = SB, is this right?

I dont know how I am going to put a fan over the SB with these two huge cards in SLI.

Any thoughts?

I would not feel comfortable with 82c, I will quote myself for possible solutions :p ( note that I havent stress tested sli yet, so those SB temps may get higher, but I doubt it will go over 70c )

Finally I suggest everyone to reseat their NB-SB heatsink city and put some good thermal grease on the chips. And then tighten the screws better than they were out of the box.
see guide here : http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us
Caution : Don't overtighten, I ended up having to replace the screws with metal nuts and bolts, using these can be even more dangerous if you overtighten and crush your chips.
However I got nice results :
Even tho there were some sort of thermal pads on the chips ( some people say the didnt even have those out of the box ), I used to get temps of 71c on the NB @ 1,56v and 72c on the SB @ 1,50v
When I cranked the NB up to 1,60v my system regularly shut itself down ( don't even wanna guess what my temps where at that time :p )

After the reseating and using the good thermal grease my temps went down to 62c and 65c, for me that was very nice. Perhaps some thicker thermal paste would have been even better, or I may have been able to tighten the metal nuts and bolts even more, but I was scared I would crush the chips and I thought the Zalman thermal grease was better then the Arctic Silver 3 I had lying around, plus the Zalman comes with a brush, which is really handy for the mosfets :p

However I was not sattisfied yet, and got me 2 Antec spotcool fans, now I find these thing very nice and easy to install, I pointed them at the NB and SB and the temps dropped to 57c for the NB and 56c for the SB

Nice to see Slim142 agrees with me :p
Spotcool is great, you just attach them to the mounting screws of your mobo.
I'll post a pic later :p


greetz

[slim142]

I would not feel comfortable with 82c, I will quote myself for possible solutions :p ( note that I havent stress tested sli yet, so those SB temps may get higher, but I doubt it will go over 70c )

Nice to see Slim142 agrees with me :p
Spotcool is great, you just attach them to the mounting screws of your mobo.
I'll post a pic later :p

greetz

Please do man, I really want to see the Spot Cool in action

[tekjunkie]

The thing is that I want to use the Fusion waterblock that comes with the motherboard. I dont want to spend more money on separate block cause that means mosfet coolers and SB heatsink and I dont want to spend money on (like you said) stuff that doesnt need more than air cooling.That 3/8 is only for the NB thats it, dont know how big the impact will be but I expect it not to be huge. Many people use stock Fusion block.

Slim, you are my inspiration buddy. I have been doing a lot of research lately about going WC and slowly warming up to the idea. Here is a question/suggestion/idea regarding cooling the NB with the fuzion block.
How about a Y-splitter or a similar splitter(a swiftech F-fitting maybe) just before the CPU block and you can have two independent branches of the loop, one running 1/2'' or 7/16'' tubing for the CPU and the other running 3/8'' tubing for the SPP. Is this a viable solution or even possible?? Sorry for being off topic again.

[Fusion2002]

Ive heard that you shouldn't use a Y splitter, because depending on which block has more restriction, one will get almost no cooling. I have mine all inline in a loop, despite the fact that the fusion block is smaller than the rest of my loop, and my North bridge runs at 34C full load in PC probe (CPU 45C). I'm not using any GPU water cooling yet, but I may do so soon.

[Tyke]

The thing is that I want to use the Fusion waterblock that comes with the motherboard. I dont want to spend more money on separate block cause that means mosfet coolers and SB heatsink and I dont want to spend money on (like you said) stuff that doesnt need more than air cooling.That 3/8 is only for the NB thats it, dont know how big the impact will be but I expect it not to be huge. Many people use stock Fusion block.

Slim
I ran a 3/8" loop before I recently changed everything round and the difference between this and 1/2" is not significant. I actually use 7/16" Masterkleer on my current loop, to get a tight fit on the 1/2" barbs. Don't compromise the setup with Y fittings, stick to your guns! You are using a great pump, and you will get good flow, just don't use any more tubing than you have to in your loop. I am really looking forward to hearing what temps you get. The problem as I experienced it when I watercooled the Fusion block is that is does not work very well on the SB. Even with the Antec I don't think that the SB heatsink is a very effective one, and I am concerned that you will still get quite high temps as I did. Use a better SB cooler like one of these:
http://www.enzotechnology.com/slf_1.htm
http://www.evercool.com.tw/products/vc_re.htm
Then cool the NB with a proper block and put heatsinks on the mosfets.
Whatever you decide to do, I think it will be a lot better than air cooling!!
Also as far as I am concerned this is a S2E thread, and I don't believe that talking about watercooling specifically this board is off topic.
Good luck!!

[DaMulta]

Anyone have issues with 2Ghz ram?

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartsp...045F3BA5CA7304

If I type 2000 in it just get black screen, but it does know what the STP setting is supposed to be with the latest bios on auto with 2000.


I have tried bios 704/901 the lastest

This seems stable.

[slim142]

Slim, you are my inspiration buddy. I have been doing a lot of research lately about going WC and slowly warming up to the idea. Here is a question/suggestion/idea regarding cooling the NB with the fuzion block.
How about a Y-splitter or a similar splitter(a swiftech F-fitting maybe) just before the CPU block and you can have two independent branches of the loop, one running 1/2'' or 7/16'' tubing for the CPU and the other running 3/8'' tubing for the SPP. Is this a viable solution or even possible?? Sorry for being off topic again.

Hey Tek
Im just really excited that Im going water cooling for the first time thats why Im so into it.
Like others said, I wouldnt use a Y splitter. I think that would really affect everything as far as I know. If you really want to use the ASUS block, then I would say go ahead, but you are going to end up like me right now thinking what about the SB (in case AIR "Spot Cool" doesnt cool it good enough).

Slim
I ran a 3/8" loop before I recently changed everything round and the difference between this and 1/2" is not significant. I actually use 7/16" Masterkleer on my current loop, to get a tight fit on the 1/2" barbs. Don't compromise the setup with Y fittings, stick to your guns! You are using a great pump, and you will get good flow, just don't use any more tubing than you have to in your loop. I am really looking forward to hearing what temps you get. The problem as I experienced it when I watercooled the Fusion block is that is does not work very well on the SB. Even with the Antec I don't think that the SB heatsink is a very effective one, and I am concerned that you will still get quite high temps as I did. Use a better SB cooler like one of these:
http://www.enzotechnology.com/slf_1.htm
http://www.evercool.com.tw/products/vc_re.htm
Then cool the NB with a proper block and put heatsinks on the mosfets.
Whatever you decide to do, I think it will be a lot better than air cooling!!
Also as far as I am concerned this is a S2E thread, and I don't believe that talking about watercooling specifically this board is off topic.
Good luck!!

I will report temps and post a lot of pictures once I get this done.
Removing the heatsink city on the S2E would be a pain because like I said, more money on heatsinks and even more if I go for water blocks. My priority right now is to have everything set up and then check SB temps. If even with the Spot Cool I receive 65+, then I will look more into what to do to cool down the SB. You are right Tyke, I should not expect big temp drops on the SB from water cooling the NB block, so Im not into expecting much just not to be dissapointed, but I just wish the SB doesnt fail on me regarding the temps

I seriously hate the fact that if I want to water cool my system, I have to replace that huge stock heatsink that I paid for to supposedly be "efficient". Stock heatsinks do fine with mosfets, but since the heatsink is terribly designed, you have to go and replace everything. Always horrible heatsinks in the SB on all ASUS boards.

[Trigger5521]

Hey SLIM and other guys thinking of going H2o, thought I'd give a heads up re water cooling using the ASUS fusion block and a Swiftech GTX. Looks like a bad combo, this is what happend to me. Not a 100% sure what the isssue is but it's either the coating they use in the fusion or the ALU top on the GTX. I've ordered ek-blocks for the NB, SB and mosfets plus a D-Tek fusion V2. Hopefully I can cool all this in one loop and still get good flow. The most expensive MB ever gets even more expensive for me.

Details and more pics here
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=194127

[skinnee]

That is galvanic corrosion at its finest. That happens with mixed metal loops, usually takes a while and yours looks really bad! Did you run straight distilled and biocide alone?

That picture is why I do not recommend running the Fusion HeatPipe that comes on the board. But, this like most of my posts in this thread will be ignored.

[slim142]

That is galvanic corrosion at its finest. That happens with mixed metal loops, usually takes a while and yours looks really bad! Did you run straight distilled and biocide alone?

That picture is why I do not recommend running the Fusion HeatPipe that comes on the board. But, this like most of my posts in this thread will be ignored.

Did you mentioned this before?
Im kinda scare now, how many people out there are using the Striker II Fusion block? I know of many using the Maximus SE block and Blitz Extreme block, but I heard this time the S2E block has a different material (Got it from Triggers thread)

What exactly caused this? Can it really be the fusion block? I think Trigger mentioned he used this horribly liquid that looks like the main responsable.

[skinnee]

Did you mentioned this before?
Im kinda scare now, how many people out there are using the Striker II Fusion block? I know of many using the Maximus SE block and Blitz Extreme block, but I heard this time the S2E block has a different material (Got it from Triggers thread)

What exactly caused this? Can it really be the fusion block? I think Trigger mentioned he used this horribly liquid that looks like the main responsable.

No, not in this thread that I recall. Mixed metal loops are a big NO-NO in watercooling. This is because of Galvanic Corrosion. In fact, aluminium in a WC loop is a big NO-NO. Aluminum does nasty things!

There are quite a few people using the stock block, but there are also quite a few people who purchase ThermalTake Liquid Cooling kits too ().

I had heard the same thing about the SIIE block, but I am not willing to take my chances, plus I do not want to add the restriction of going from 1/2" ID to 3/8" ID just for the block. I spent far too much money on the WC loops and far too much on the board to rely on that stock block.

Just my opinion, to each is own...but my recommendation is get some EK or DangerDen blocks and do it up right, you'll be much happier in the long run.

Now, who wants to guide me in OC'ing this board. I can't find stable beyond stock clocks after upping from 0704 to 0901!!!
I had to reinstall Vista x64 because for some reason it went un-activated and would not take my key.

[Trigger5521]

Did you mentioned this before?
Im kinda scare now, how many people out there are using the Striker II Fusion block? I know of many using the Maximus SE block and Blitz Extreme block, but I heard this time the S2E block has a different material (Got it from Triggers thread)

What exactly caused this? Can it really be the fusion block? I think Trigger mentioned he used this horribly liquid that looks like the main responsable.

I used primochills prue PC fluid..supposed to be corrision inhibitor. BS. Apogee GTX is garbage aswell because it has an aluminum top.

Skinnee...I had no idea the GTX used a ALM top. Thought I had done enough homework...Live and learn.

Ordered ek blocks for the whole sha-bang now and a d-tek fusion v2. All 1/2 so I should have a top notch setup when it's said and done.