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

[sesdave]

OK. Update. I called ASUS and they mentioned a problem with Antec PS and another brand I cannot remember. However, they had not seen this issue with OCZ. I got home and tried another power supply. I tried different memory. I tried one stick, two sticks, bank a, bank B. Same issue. I tried removing power to all devices except the MB, PSU, vid card, and main HD. Same issue.

I just got the board back from rma and it has 0204 bios on it. Should I try updating that?

Gotta run to take the dog to training. Be back later with more to try.

BTW. This is a 600W ps in this system. I have a new in box ocx 700w I can try tonight too. I'm stumped.

Upgrade to 0404/0504 were mainly in the hope of fixing the ICH9R/SATAII problem with AHCI/RAID. I didnt have the problem and upgraded in the hope of a higher overclock. Didnt see much difference between the BIOS's apart from some additional voltages/strap settings. I am sure others may offer a different view but I would stay on 0204 until you get to the bottom of this problem. What hard drives are u running IDE or sata or both. ? whats your full spec. Have u run any of the compnents on another MB before building this one?

[ReverendMaynard]

Upgrade to 0404/0504 were mainly in the hope of fixing the ICH9R/SATAII problem with AHCI/RAID. I didnt have the problem and upgraded in the hope of a higher overclock. Didnt see much difference between the BIOS's apart from some additional voltages/strap settings. I am sure others may offer a different view but I would stay on 0204 until you get to the bottom of this problem. What hard drives are u running IDE or sata or both. ? whats your full spec. Have u run any of the compnents on another MB before building this one?

I agree with you 100%. The poop that came with the later bios revision just isn't worth it. That being said, it might be the OP's only option. I personally have WD sata drives (not in RAID) on my board with the 0204 and it has been nothing but complete joy.

[jonny_ftm]

Upgrade to 0404/0504 were mainly in the hope of fixing the ICH9R/SATAII problem with AHCI/RAID. I didnt have the problem and upgraded in the hope of a higher overclock. Didnt see much difference between the BIOS's apart from some additional voltages/strap settings. I am sure others may offer a different view but I would stay on 0204 until you get to the bottom of this problem. What hard drives are u running IDE or sata or both. ? whats your full spec. Have u run any of the compnents on another MB before building this one?

They also added new CPU support.
http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/c...remium/WiFi-AP

Mainly, all 45nm CPUs (dual / quad) and Pentium/Celeron Dual core CPUs (E2200, E1xxx) and the G0 E4700 CPU

The strap 400 was also added with some memory dividers (but hey, hard to get it to work)

[sesdave]

They also added new CPU support.
http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5K%20Premium/WiFi-AP

Mainly, all 45nm CPUs (dual / quad) and Pentium/Celeron Dual core CPUs (E2200, E1xxx) and the G0 E4700 CPU

The strap 400 was also added with some memory dividers (but hey, hard to get it to work)

True - I didnt bother mentioning all the details as he has a q6600 which will work fine with 0204 without attempting an upgrade before the source of the problem is identified. The Sherlock Holmes approach - process of elimination without introducing anything new.

[jonny_ftm]

True - I didnt bother mentioning all the details as he has a q6600 which will work fine with 0204 without attempting an upgrade before the source of the problem is identified. The Sherlock Holmes approach - process of elimination without introducing anything new.

true but another approach:
Don't you believe in ASUS claims on every bios revision: "enhance memory compatibility" ? I know usually they worsen it, but you can't know unless you try
Personally, if downgrading bios is not an issue, I would try if a bios upgrade solves it. You can use old AFUDOS burnt on a boot dos CD emulating floppy for bios downgrading if you got screwed

[heanwi]

How does the P5k Premium work with E8400?

[w2richwood]

i would try another video card had something like this wiyh a 9500pro and a asus p4c800 e deluxe slow bios changed card and it went away
Rich

[Gitch]

Thanks guys. Just back.

The drives are all sata. No ide components at all. 2hds and 2 dvd. right now, I am only using one drive and no dvd. I have swapped out the memory with another pc. I'll try another vid card too. I am also going to play around with different sata ports.

Right now, the main drive is a WD 500GB(Rebadged Seagate). i had to get it when I orignally built the system(Around p5k prem release date) because of the issues with my original samsung drive.

[Gitch]

After all this, I finally removed the usb KVM switch from the picture and whamo. It worked. I can't believe a 2 port kvm caused that big of an issue, but it did. I have all components back in the box and its up and working.

Thanks for all the help. Sorry I did not think of that earlier. I had the Keyboard, mouse, and monitor shared with a laptop docking station. So much for that.

[w2richwood]

:lol live and learn
Rich

[Gitch]

At any rate, I got it working and appreciate the help. THe machine was stable all night and is working fine today. The KVM is in the closet.

[sesdave]

At any rate, I got it working and appreciate the help. THe machine was stable all night and is working fine today. The KVM is in the closet.

Damn - it looked like it might be fun to try and solve. We havent really got anything else to do now

[ReverendMaynard]

Damn - it looked like it might be fun to try and solve. We havent really got anything else to do now

so true

well could be worse....we could all own Strikers. Oh wait I do and no troubleshooting on the planet will bring that dead fish back from the compost pile lol.

[sesdave]

so true

well could be worse....we could all own Strikers. Oh wait I do and no troubleshooting on the planet will bring that dead fish back from the compost pile lol.

Last time I ran out of things to do I tried this http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848 I might just get some more drives and try the RAID10 setup - check page 43 - the resulting read/write speeds just looks silly on HD tune or Tach.

[ReverendMaynard]

Last time I ran out of things to do I tried this http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848 I might just get some more drives and try the RAID10 setup - check page 43 - the resulting read/write speeds just looks silly on HD tune or Tach.

That's almost wrong lol. 1gbps burst rates lol.

[ReverendMaynard]

will do. yeah man those hdtach charts look like drunk-connect-the-dots lol.

[sesdave]

will do. yeah man those hdtach charts look like drunk-connect-the-dots lol.

As you will have to do a operating system reinstall download the the latest ICH9R raid driver for F6 (winxp) or vista load and the latest intel MAtrix storage manager.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Prod...ProductID=2101

Once setup remember to enable write back cache in the Matrix storage manager - thats where the burst speed comes in. Under storage manager you select advanced view and right click on the raid volume name which will give you the options.

I setup my RAid 0 with 80GB on 2 x 320GB disks so thats 40GB on each with theremaining as RAID 1. reading the thread it would appear that thinner slicing of RAID0 over more disks gives phenomenal R/W performance with the additional benefit of full resilence for all the data in RAID1/5/10. Acronis True Image 11 seems to be the software to backup the operating system with http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...cts/trueimage/.

[ReverendMaynard]

As you will have to do a operating system reinstall download the the latest ICH9R raid driver for F6 (winxp) or vista load and the latest intel MAtrix storage manager.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Prod...ProductID=2101

Once setup remember to enable write back cache in the Matrix storage manager - thats where the burst speed comes in. Under storage manager you select advanced view and right click on the raid volume name which will give you the options.

I setup my RAid 0 with 80GB on 2 x 320GB disks so thats 40GB on each with theremaining as RAID 1. reading the thread it would appear that thinner slicing of RAID0 over more disks gives phenomenal R/W performance with the additional benefit of full resilence for all the data in RAID1/5/10. Acronis True Image 11 seems to be the software to backup the operating system with http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...cts/trueimage/.

Dude, you rock. As soon as I get some time I'm all over this. Thanks for the tips.

[w2richwood]

i'll try that also when i get some new harddrives sound good tryed with my rapters but there to small only 2x 36 g
Rich

[ReverendMaynard]

bored, noticed that johnny didn't have this particular test in his compiled data previously posted.

266 strap

[jonny_ftm]

bored, noticed that johnny didn't have this particular test in his compiled data previously posted.

266 strap

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/3686/266strappj5.jpg

Strap 266 at 9x423 CAS4 and CAS5 + strap 266 at 8x475 CAS5 are there in the table of my post. You maybe missed them
I used 9x423 instead of 425FSB beacause all tests are at 3.8GHz for same processor speed comparisions

[Kilyin]

So the general consensus with this board is to enable DRAM Static Read Control for better performance? I've left the Transaction Booster on auto. The one time I tried tweaking it my board wouldn't post.

That matrix RAID stuff is sick. I read about it awhile ago briefly, and it sounded complicated to setup vs. traditional RAID. But now that I've done more research it seems fairly simple. Just wish I could implement it without doing a complete reinstall.

[ReverendMaynard]

Strap 266 at 9x423 CAS4 and CAS5 + strap 266 at 8x475 CAS5 are there in the table of my post. You maybe missed them
I used 9x423 instead of 425FSB beacause all tests are at 3.8GHz for same processor speed comparisions

I saw it in the table but the info wasn't filled in, sorry if I overlooked it.

Where my results close to what you got?

[Gitch]

So if I were upgrading my bios this weekend, which one would you guys suggest? I have heard some rumblings on each.

[ReverendMaynard]

stick with th 0204....unless you have glaring problems, bios updates should be last resort.