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

[komseh]

You get it with a 70mm noisemaker
I just removed this one put on a 80mm Papst with some silicone kit (works like glue only if you want to, you can still remove it without breaking things).
I even attached another 90mm to cool the NB.
I love my silicone kit

Could you tell me more about this "silicone kit" and where to get it? Also how much CFM should I have blowing on these FBDIMMs to keep them at a reasonable temp? I picked up a Noctua R8 for this and it blows 31CFM.

[Madman666]

Could you tell me more about this "silicone kit" and where to get it? Also how much CFM should I have blowing on these FBDIMMs to keep them at a reasonable temp? I picked up a Noctua R8 for this and it blows 31CFM.

Just use plain Silicone kit you can buy at your local DIY shop.
BTW: Let it sufficiently dry, so for at least 4 hours.

I use a Papst fan (80mm), ± 20CFM, temps of my 4x2 Gb FBDimms are 50C Idle, 65C Load. So your fan will be fine.

[drewhemm]

Hi,

I am having another issue with this board now - the Intel RAID controller. I have an Adaptec 2405 hardware RAID controller but it didn't come with the cable so I now have to wait another couple of weeks for that to arrive...

I am using 2 x OCZ Core 60GB SSD's in RAID0, two Hitachi 160GB Deskstars in RAID0 and 1 x WD 250GB hard drive as a standalone. I've heard that other people are having bad performance with the OCZ SSD's while running RAID on an on-board controller, but my system seems to be having problems with the Hitachi's as well.

The symptoms of the problem appears to be related to writing data. As soon as the controller starts to write a large amount of data on one drive (not necessarily the SSD's), for example 1GB+ during an install of a program, the whole system freezes and the HD activity light stays on solid. This freeze can last for a few seconds up to a minute, typically as long as there is write activity going on. Everything else grinds to a halt and it is like having only one CPU core and it being maxxed out, there's no hourglass and I can move the mouse, just when I click on things, nothing happens.

Has anyone else had problems similar to this? I know I have the Adaptec nearly ready to install, but my curiosity wants to know why I am having problems with the on-board on a high-end motherboard like this. I was able to use the on-board RAID on my old HP motherboard and never had this problem.

I have the Intel Matrix Storage Manager installed and have tried with the write-back cache enabled and disabled and it seems to make no difference.

Any advice?

Regards,

Andrew

[jcool]

The onboard raid gave me trouble as well, I'd steer clear from it especially when using fast raid setups. Also the ICH9R isn't really optimized for SSDs... neither is the 2405 I'ma fraid, but for 2 SSDs it will work fine.

[drewhemm]

Happy new year!!

I picked up the 2405 in a hurry for a good price on eBay, but if the performance isn't up to par, I'm not against upgrading to something more powerful at a later date, especially as the 2405 only supports up to four drives, I may wish to add another two SSD's later in the year.

What controller would you recommend for maximum speed with SSD's in RAID0?

[jcool]

That's currently the big problem, no controller that I/we here at XS know of is really optimized for SSDs yet. Or, it highly depends on the specific SSD/controller combination, some work better together than others. If you got the money, go for the Areca 1231ML and put 2GB cache in it, that's about the only controller that will scale all the way up to 8+ drives.
Check out NapalmV5's benches, he has different SSDs and lots of controllers and posts benches regularly.

The 2405 will work perfectly fine with 2 SSDs and is very strong on writes even with 4, however the read speed could be tuned better yet. Again it depends on which SSDs you have... which ones do you have?

[drewhemm]

The 2405 will work perfectly fine with 2 SSDs and is very strong on writes even with 4, however the read speed could be tuned better yet. Again it depends on which SSDs you have... which ones do you have?

I have two of these:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...ata_ii_2_5-ssd

[jcool]

Should work ok I guess.. please report back and do some write benches if at all possible (HDtune/HDTach, works only when there are no partitions on the array tho)

[komseh]

I got my new heatsinks installed. The noctua cpu sinks are quite wide and made it so I had to mount my HR-05 IFX at the edge of the northbridge chip. Is this going to make the northbridge sink inefficient for heat dissipation? I'll post a picture if needed.

[komseh]

If anyone is interested in some great deals on DDR2 667 FBDIMMs:
2x2GB for $75: http://www.provantage.com/kingston-t...g~7KIN90UA.htm
2x4GB for $132: http://shop.kingston.com/partsinfo.a...667D2Q8F5K2/8G

[Jaco]

The heastpreader of the northbridge is very large , so you have some room to move the HS a little.
But you better post a pic, if possible.

[komseh]

Here it is... as you can see it's basically touching my CPU sinks. The fins on the NB sink get pretty hot so it does seem to be working, but the other problem is that I don't have clearance between the FBDIMMs and NB sink to mount a 80mmX25mm fan. It's going to be even worse once I have a memory cooler.

[Jaco]

try to find a 70 or 80mm x 15mm fan. like this one

[komseh]

try to find a 70 or 80mm x 15mm fan. like this one

Thanks. I didn't even know 15mm fans were made. I went with a Hiper fan from performance-pcs.com. I wanted to do SilenX but I know they have a reputation for producing crap.

I can't wait for my Lian-Li PC-A70B to get here. The only thing that irks me about that case is the fact that only seven hard drives fit in their cages that have push/pull fans on them. Why not just engineer it to have an even eight? It will be a lot better for noise and airflow than my current setup, so I'll get over it

[angelshonnny]

Hey Everyone
Just got my system up and running Runs great, but gets sooo hot that it gets unstable. This is cause i only have the stock passive sinks that i just screwed 2 fans onto. It's winter here, so i just leave my window open, then the temps stay in the low or mid 40's. Can't get propper coolers here in Denmark Anybody got some they wanna sell or know where to get them for reasonable prices? It has been running BOINC for 2 days, but i can't see any points yet? How long does it take before it shows? It is also running all the projects (cancer, rice, proteome, AIDS), is it supposed to run all of them at once?
Another problem is that when the system starts up and i have my USB mouse plugged in, I get a message at post that it can't detect the keyboard. Windows loads fine but i just can't use the kboard. Then i remove the usb for the mouse and it post no problem. After windows has loaded then I can connect the mouse again. I'm using a MS wireless mouse and kboard, that uses a single receiver. Anybody have/had the same problem?
@jcool Thx for the ram
@colombodk Thx for lending me the cpu and chip sending it on monday

[colombodk]

Angelshonnny: glad you got your rig up and running.
I use the ThermalRight HR-01 coolers http://shg.dk/p/2114178 (the one slightly modded to fit next to the north bridge cooler) with the Xeon bolt thru-kit which I got here: http://shg.dk/p/2114177
You might be able to get them faster from coolerkit.dk

[colombodk]

Anyone successfully got the PCI-X slot running at 133Mhz?

My 3Ware 9550SXU-12MI controller firmware reposts it running at 100Mhz even though I used the jumper on the Z7S SW for setting the PCI-X to 133Mhz?

Any comments?

[jcool]

Hey Everyone
Just got my system up and running Runs great, but gets sooo hot that it gets unstable. This is cause i only have the stock passive sinks that i just screwed 2 fans onto. It's winter here, so i just leave my window open, then the temps stay in the low or mid 40's. Can't get propper coolers here in Denmark Anybody got some they wanna sell or know where to get them for reasonable prices? It has been running BOINC for 2 days, but i can't see any points yet? How long does it take before it shows? It is also running all the projects (cancer, rice, proteome, AIDS), is it supposed to run all of them at once?
Another problem is that when the system starts up and i have my USB mouse plugged in, I get a message at post that it can't detect the keyboard. Windows loads fine but i just can't use the kboard. Then i remove the usb for the mouse and it post no problem. After windows has loaded then I can connect the mouse again. I'm using a MS wireless mouse and kboard, that uses a single receiver. Anybody have/had the same problem?
@jcool Thx for the ram
@colombodk Thx for lending me the cpu and chip sending it on monday

Glad you got it running
Yes, BOINC points need a while to show up, but after 2 days the points should start pouring in.
About your problem, did you enable USB keyboard support in bios?

[angelshonnny]

Glad you got it running
Yes, BOINC points need a while to show up, but after 2 days the points should start pouring in.
About your problem, did you enable USB keyboard support in bios?

Not sure, but the keyboard has a normal PS/2 plug, so should I then still enable it?

[D_A]

You could, but it won't make any difference to that keyboard. Just make sure it's properly plugged in BEFORE you power on the system and it should work fine.

[angelshonnny]

You could, but it won't make any difference to that keyboard. Just make sure it's properly plugged in BEFORE you power on the system and it should work fine.

It is propperly plugged, but it still can't detect the keyboard if I, at startup, have the mouse usb plugged in. It's this one http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mo...s.aspx?pid=016
The receiver has 2 plugs, the usb for the mouse and then a PS/2 for the keyboard. I've also tried with only the usb, as i would on my laptop, no luck. It's of course not fatal, but still quite annoying

[D_A]

How odd. Mic <gag> micro <heave> ... THEY usually make pretty good keyboards and mouses (yes that is correct grammar ... this time).

[D_A]

As far as I can tell from the docs from THEM, you shouldn't need the ps/2 connection at all. Have you tried the whole set up with just the USB connection in and not the ps/2?

[angelshonnny]

As far as I can tell from the docs from THEM, you shouldn't need the ps/2 connection at all. Have you tried the whole set up with just the USB connection in and not the ps/2?

Yes, tried that, doesn't work

[D_A]

Have you tried in in a ... less auspicious system?