Asus P5K Premium Problems + fixes thread

[Biker]

Summary Page:


Bios:

New 0504 bios posted on Asus FTP here

NB: I have so far not been able to flash back to bios version 0404 with any rev of AFUdos....

Edit: downgrade now possible... thanks to Tintin.... see post #14

NB: Make sure bios is set to completely stable defaults and all (and i mean ALL = CTRL + ALT + DEL) antivirus / spyware scanners are inactive before flashing using this method.... Asus Update is notorious for destroying bios! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED


Summary of Issues:

1: ICH9R hates my HD's:

ACHI Mode:

Win XP Solution:

1: Reflash your current bios with the AFUDOS utility in dos from boot Floppy / USB / CD so as to guarantee a clean bios.

2: Attempt fresh install with SATA set in ACHI mode and use the the following driver revs:

Intel F6 floppy driver version used: 7.5.0.1017 (ACHI) - taken from Asus Download centre ....
Intel chipset update version used: 8.3.1.1009
Intel matrix storage manager version used:7.8.0.1012

If install still fails, flash bios (using only AFUDOS utility to update to 0504 beta bios and try again.

0504 bios tested working on my board with WD 120gb SATA II drives
0504 bios tested working with Samsung T166 500gb SATA II drives

Vista: not tested yet.

RAID mode:

Win XP Solution:

1: 1: Reflash your current bios with the AFUDOS utility in Dos from boot Floppy / USB / CD so as to guarantee a clean bios.

2: Attempt fresh install with SATA set in RAID mode and use the the following driver revs:

Intel F6 floppy driver version used: 7.5.0.1017 (select ICH9R RAID -not ACHI) - taken from Asus Download centre ....
Intel chipset update version used: 8.3.1.1009
Intel matrix storage manager version used:7.8.0.1012

If install still fails, flash bios (using only AFUDOS utility to update to 0504 beta bios and try again.

I experienced several slow downs and one BAD_POOL_HEADER BSOD at my first attempt.... give up only on BSOD, not 30 sec of inactivity during install

0504 cios tested successfully with 2 WDJS 120GB SATA II drives (SATA II mode) in RAID 0 with 16k stripe
0504 bios tested successfully with Samsung T166 500GB (JBOD)

Tested overclocked at 400 x 9 & 450 x 8: no i/o errors in event viewer to date.


Vista: Not tested Yet.

Samsung T166 drives Raid 0 : not tested fully (yet)

[Biker]

Hi all,

I had recently got hold of an Asus P5K Premium to play with, and was putting together a new rig for a client when I hit a game breaker: the updated ICH9R southbridge chip hated most of the hard drives I plugged into it, and really hated my RAID configurations, especially when overclocked.

After digging around I came across a few reports from various places that this board does not play nice with pretty much all hard drives except Seagate (for reasons unknown) and that compatibility was improved by using SATA I mode (or SATA I drives).

To this end I attempted a Vista install with 2 Raptors in Raid 0 which locked up completely during install, so I repeated this test 3 times - with the same result. I then repeated the test using a PCI-e 4x Raid card which worked flawlessly.

I then attempted to install XP on a single WD drive in SATA II mode which also locked up. Exact same results were observed if a Samsung T166 500gb drive was connected to the ICH9R.


Can anyone shed any light on this issue?

It is a great shame that this board which has a lot of potential and can run my Q6600 @ 500 x 7 rock solid seems crippled by this problem.

Edit : The board in question is a rev 2.0G (China) with the latest 404 bios......


Since this board has been out for a few months now, has anyone got this board stable in Raid / ACHI mode at 400fsb+ speeds with Samsung / WD SATA II drives Raid 0 ?

Also, anyone tested this board with a SSD or two?

[aznsniper911]

I haven't done Raid or SSD but my P5k Premium works perfectly fine with my two raptors and my seagates. I'm using 500FSB with a Xeon 3060 with a 6x multplier.

[IanB]

Honestly, I think the only reliable answer with the Premium is to do what you have done (and I am about to upgrade to) - use a hardware RAID card to add RAID capabilities, especially with the latest Samsung drives which are particularly recommendable right now for price/performance.

I'm also far more confident in the results: I am very suspicious of on-board RAID solutions since hearing odd reports of occasional hash errors using QuickPAR that can't easily be accounted for by overclocking or memory issues, but might be a result of poor drivers or an obscure chipset hardware bug. It's probably not an issue with the Intel Southbridge compared to nVidia, but I remain cautious. The other distinct advantages of off-board RAID make it the most sensible solution.

Note that there is a reported bug in the Intel Southbridge (not just on the Premium) restricting maximum bandwidth when connected directly to current SSDs. There has been discussion of this in the News forum.

[Biker]

I haven't done Raid or SSD but my P5k Premium works perfectly fine with my two raptors and my seagates. I'm using 500FSB with a Xeon 3060 with a 6x multplier.

Yep. The controller just falls over when you select anything other than IDE mode, I would be interested if you kept your raptor stability if you moved to RAID or ACHI mode, but please do not break your installation to do this only test if you have the time / spare hardware to plug in....

[Biker]

Note that there is a reported bug in the Intel Southbridge (not just on the Premium) restricting maximum bandwidth when connected directly to current SSDs. There has been discussion of this in the News forum.

Bandwidth caps with crappy intel chipsets I can handle, I just want to know if this board falls over with SSD's connected as well of the rest of the SATA flakiness

[Biker]

New 0504 bios posted on Asus FTP here

No idea if it is a beta but I flashed it right away anyway

Test setup:

P5K Premium rev 2.00G (China)

WD Raptor 150GB @ SATA1
WD 120GB SATAII (in SATA II mode) @ SATA6.

All bios settings stock except ram Vdimm (2.2v)

Results:

1: ICH9R set to IDE mode: System boots into XP with no problems

2: ICH9R set to SATA mode in Bios: System soft reset 2 seconds after beginning to boot XP.

3: ICH9R set to ACHI mode in bios: System soft reset 2 seconds after beginning to boot XP.


Conclusion: >.<

[Biker]

Update:

After reflashing the new beta 0504 bios (using afudos /ip5k0504.rom from a bootable usb stick) and completeing yet another fresh install of WinXP with the ICH9R set to ACHI mode () I managed to get myself a stable XP desktop with this board at default clocks.


NB: I have so far not been able to flash back to bios version 0404 with any rev of Afudos. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED


The only drives connected during the install were a raptor 150gb and a sata dvd drive.

I am now testing the ICH9R ports with various SATA II drives:

Tested so far (not as boot drive):

2 WD 120GB drives in SATA II mode have booted fine with no probs...
1 Samsung HD501LJ 500GB in SATA II mode booted fine (1st time ever!)

Progress? Lets hope so ;-)

Next: the dreaded raid mode test


Intel drivers here for xp

The precise drivers used for this round of testing were:

Intel F6 floppy driver version used: 7.5.0.1017 (ACHI) - taken from Asus Download centre ....
Intel chipset update version used: 8.3.1.1009
Intel matrix storage manager version used:7.8.0.1012


ps. this 0504 bios seems pretty flaky even after a full afudos wipe and reflash.

No overclocking attempted yet...

[Biker]

w0000t!!

Successful test completed on Win XP with 2 x 120GB WD drives in Raid 0 and SATA II mode.

This is a great stride forward as before the system would hang with these SATA II drives attatched.

Edit: Also now tested with Samsung T166 drives and hours and hours of copying 100's of GB back and forth : no lockups / slowdowns; no i/o errors in event viewer.

I had one BAD_POOL_HEADER 0x00000019 BSOD on first attempt but just after F6 part of install but second install attempt error free was fine.

I also had a couple of slowdowns during install, but once finished the system is running at expected speed with no slow downs thus far.

So far tried overclocked :

400 x 9 : stable
450 x 8 : stable

looking good folks

[foodfightr]

I have two 150GB raptors. I run IDE mode for XP and AHCI for OSX. Haven't tested them in a raid on this board. 0404 Bios.

Does this board have an auto-shut off that is temperature related? I'm looking for a bios setting but I don't see it...

[TI66ER]

I've not tried raid 0,but my two samsungs are on ahci mode.All seems ok.I'm on bios 0404 btw.

[Biker]

I've not tried raid 0,but my two samsungs are on ahci mode.All seems ok.I'm on bios 0404 btw.

That is good to know. When I first hooked up my P5KP it would freeze loading XP with a Samsung T166 (or any WD SATA II I tried) attached in RAID or ACHI mode. I could only get these drives working with the 0504 bios and the method/drivers I explained in post #1.

[Biker]

Does this board have an auto-shut off that is temperature related? I'm looking for a bios setting but I don't see it...

Nope...

[TinTin]

Way to go back old BIOS, should work with other Asus MBs,

using the uploaded file together with Asus Liveupdate
(1) load the BIOS with Asus Update as usual, remember click "downgrade" option in Asus Update Option
(2) Load the file I uploaded
(3) click the leftmost button
(4) the update button should be un-greyed, then click update, otherwise, repeat Step (3)
(5) after update successfuly, switch off the computer and clear the CMOS as usual

I already back to 404 from 504, 504 limits my rams overclocking.

[Biker]

Way to go back old BIOS, should work with other Asus MBs, ...I already back to 404 from 504, 504 limits my rams overclocking.

What an excellent little utility! Thankyou... worked for me.... just wish I could do it in dos mode...

[lowdog]

Weird, I run 4 X 150GB Raptors in raid 0 with this board under vista 64bit, with bios 0402 and 0404 without problems, also have my Q6600 at either 8 X 400fsb for 3.2GHz or 9 X 400fsb for 3.6GHz while running 8gb of ram.

One thing I notice though is in the Intel Matrix Storage Console in windows the Serial ATA Transfer Mode is shown as Generation 1 and I know the WD Raptors are SATA II drives....WTF?...or perhaps I'm missing something.

[turtletrax]

Weird, I run 4 X 150GB Raptors in raid 0 with this board under vista 64bit, with bios 0402 and 0404 without problems, also have my Q6600 at either 8 X 400fsb for 3.2GHz or 9 X 400fsb for 3.6GHz while running 8gb of ram.

One thing I notice though is in the Intel Matrix Storage Console in windows the Serial ATA Transfer Mode is shown as Generation 1 and I know the WD Raptors are SATA II drives....WTF?...or perhaps I'm missing something.

Raptors are not SATA II drives, so nothing is amiss

[TI66ER]

150gb raptors are sataII are'nt they? i know the older raptors are sataI

[turtletrax]

150gb raptors are sataII are'nt they? i know the older raptors are sataI

Specs from WDC.com

Performance Specifications
Rotational Speed 10,000 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 16 MB
Average Latency 2.99 ms (nominal)
Start/Stop Cycles 20,000 minimum

Seek Times
Read Seek Time 4.6 ms
Write Seek Time 5.2 ms (average)
Track-To-Track Seek Time 0.4 ms (average)
Full Stroke Seek 10.2 ms (average)

Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 1.5 Gb/s (Max)
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 84 MB/s (Sustained)



Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 150,039 MB
Capacity 150 GB
Interface SATA 1.5 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive 293,046,768

[Biker]

150gb raptors are sataII are'nt they? i know the older raptors are sataI

Yep. All Raptors are still SATA 1, regardless of generation. This thread is a discussion about compatibility problems with the P5K Premium and SATA II drives (and any other issues that are discovered); there are no known compatability issues with any SATA 1 drives and the ICH9R controller on this board to date...

[The Mutt]

I just tried to downgrade to a older bios and used TinTin&#180;s method and it just erased my bios and then something went wrong I got a message that said "unable to open flash driver" or something like that, at the end it said 100&#37; on erased and the last one but 0% on writing eeprom! Now when I try to open asusupdate again it says "Unable to get bios information" and then it crashes!

What can I do? Shall I reboot and hope for the best or is there another way to flash from windows?

PLEASE REPLY FAST!

[Biker]

I just tried to downgrade to a older bios and used TinTin&#180;s method and it just erased my bios and then something went wrong I got a message that said "unable to open flash driver" or something like that, at the end it said 100&#37; on erased and the last one but 0% on writing eeprom! Now when I try to open asusupdate again it says "Unable to get bios information" and then it crashes!

What can I do? Shall I reboot and hope for the best or is there another way to flash from windows?

PLEASE REPLY FAST!

Feck.

I am sad to recieve this news.

This is why i wish there was a way to downgrade in dos.

If your config is in any way unstable then this can happen. Make sure bios are always set to stable defaults before you flash!

Asus update is notorious for bricking boards too

If you are still in windows then run a scan of bios to see if they are present using cpuz etc then try asus update again.

If you reboot with no bios present = dead mb!

There are a couple of solutions here on XS for this including load default bios from cd - search for details as I cannot remember them..

Good luck.

[Biker]

Ok.

After struggling with this board for so long I have come to the realization that I simply do not trust it to be the basis of my main rig any more. As a result it off my test bench, packed and RMA'd.

I have picked up a DFI LP UT P35 T2R which operates it's onboard SATA raid (and everything else) flawlessly....

[Nelly]

Why do Asus insist on using soldered on bios chips?

It's not as if you can replace it without RMA'ing the motherboard, RMA process in the UK with Asus takes between 3 to 6 weeks it's absolutly disgusting because once it has been recieved they send it abroad to be repaired.

Plus the fact you cannnot revert back to an older bios via dos update is just totally stupid.

I had a bad flash of an Asus board myself & after chasing Asus up over & over again I gave up & bought a different board.

I dont think I'll ever buy an Asus motherboard EVER again especially reading whats happend here.

I just hope Mutt gets his bios sorted. . . .

[Ace123]

Hmm. Ive never encountered a sata problem with this motherboard to date. Ive installed all the hard drives I can find on this thing. Ive even gone as far as installing IDE to Sata adapters on my burner and dvd burner.
Im now running a WD raptor 74gig
2 maxtor 200gigs
1 dvd burner
1 cdrw

EDIT:
OOps, Maybe I should read this first

Yep. All Raptors are still SATA 1, regardless of generation. This thread is a discussion about compatibility problems with the P5K Premium and SATA II drives (and any other issues that are discovered); there are no known compatability issues with any SATA 1 drives and the ICH9R controller on this board to date...