*** Official ASUS P5B / P5B Deluxe Thread ***

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snide23

Junior Member
Feb 23, 2004
5
0
66
Seeking some info from any P5B series owners with RAID enabled: how long does it take for your board to "find" your HDD's/array? I ask because it takes mine about 2 minutes with RAID enabled, but only a second or two w/o it enabled. Wondering if the southbridge is bad or if this ICH8R POST time is typical for this board.
 

pzk

Junior Member
Oct 17, 2008
14
0
0
I have a RAID0 array and it takes only 1-3 second for the Intel controller BIOS screen to disapear.

Originally posted by: snide23
Seeking some info from any P5B series owners with RAID enabled: how long does it take for your board to "find" your HDD's/array? I ask because it takes mine about 2 minutes with RAID enabled, but only a second or two w/o it enabled. Wondering if the southbridge is bad or if this ICH8R POST time is typical for this board.
 

snide23

Junior Member
Feb 23, 2004
5
0
66
Originally posted by: pzk
I have a RAID0 array and it takes only 1-3 second for the Intel controller BIOS screen to disapear.

pzk: can you tell me which P5B board, revision and BIOS you are using? Also, which HDD manufacturer? Thanks.
 

pzk

Junior Member
Oct 17, 2008
14
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0
I dont know where to se revision but my BIOS is 1236 (the latest) and I am using two Western Digital 160GB 7200rpm drives for RAID.
 

snide23

Junior Member
Feb 23, 2004
5
0
66
Somehow, unbelievably, my problem is solved. After about 18 months of this garbage msm boot-rom post issue, it is gone. I am going to describe what I did, but somebody is going to have to tell me why the issue disappeared.
Some more details: Asus P5B-E, rev 1.02g, BIOS 1202 (I think), 2 Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB 7200.10 16MB cache SATAII HDDs in RAID 1 in SATA ports 0 and 1, 2 SATA Lite-on DVD burners in SATA ports 4 and 5, Vista Home Premium (32 bit).
The issue - 1-2 min bootROM POST time, one drive now showing as failed in intel's matrix storage manager (MSM). DVD burners disconnected from SATA ports during all troubelshooting.
Installed newest msm windows driver 8.6 in Vista. 1 drive showed as failed.
Pulled the drive marked as bad so only 1 HDD in RAID 1: msm boot-rom showed array as degraded, but bootable, still had long bootrom post time, Vista boots/runs fine.
Pulled good drive and reinstalled bad drive: still long POST, no O/S boot.
Pulled working Western Digital HDDs from a system running Vista 64 in RAID 1 on ICH9R southbridge and installed in this system: instant recognition; 1-2 secong boot-rom post time, Vista even booted to the logon screen (that's as far as I went with that setup).
Pulled WD array and reinstalled 1 working Seagate HDD: long POST.
Installed bad Seagate HDD in separate system and ran Seagate SeaTools for DOS diagnostics: both short and long tests PASSED! WTF - the drive is fine?
Reconnected "bad" HDD by itself on P5B-E: instant recognition! but no boot.
Reconnected good HDD with "bad" one: instant recognition in Boot-rom, shows RAID 1 as degraded, but bootable. Vista boots. Logon is OK and intel driver shows that RAID rebuild is in progress! After about 2 hours, rebuild is complete.
Ugh. I guess I'll know for sure if there is a compatibility issue with these HDDs in a week or two, eh?
Shutdown, reconnect DVD-burners, restart: instant boot-rom recognition, array is good, system boots normal!
Can anybody explain why the system now boots/works the way it is supposed to? Specifically how the heck testing a drive marked as bad and reinstalling it in a broken array fixes a boot-rom glitch? I would really like to know! Because I had this delay issue from the time I first assembled this system and both drives were OK in the array!
Ugh. At least it works. For the time being, anyway.

 

elconejito

Senior member
Dec 19, 2007
607
0
76
www.harvsworld.com
Originally posted by: snide23
Somehow, unbelievably, my problem is solved.

Good to hear that it is working now, definitely a strange one. Does the seagate tools scan and *fix* like scandisk/chkdsk does? If so, maybe there was data on a bad section and this fixed it, hence the RAID utility can now read from drive without problems. In which case, I'd keep an eye out in case it completely dies. If it doesn't, do a fix... *shrugs*
 

snide23

Junior Member
Feb 23, 2004
5
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66
SeaTools will only fix if it finds an error, and then only after you tell it to. I know this from experience using this tool on older Seagate drives. In my case, errors/disk problems were not found by the tool, so it mever gave me a prompt to fix anything.
 

pzk

Junior Member
Oct 17, 2008
14
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I finally figured out the problem with going above 310MHz fsb! I just swapped my 4x1GB RAM for 4x2GB OCZ and what do you know... after little effort I am now runing the E6400 @ 3GHz and vcore 1.35. Havent played around to much yet, but might try to lower the vcore a bit further. The RAM is running at 1:1 at 750MHz. It is PC8000 RAM so it should be good for 1000MHz. Would I see an increase in performance by raising the RAM to 4:5?
 

elconejito

Senior member
Dec 19, 2007
607
0
76
www.harvsworld.com
hey PZK, if you can get it to work you would see an increase if you do anything memory intensive (photoshop, some games, etc). The problem is trying to get 2GB sticks to run over 800mhz. I had this problem a few pages back. Turns out that to get 2GB sticks to go over 800mhz, you need one of the values (i think trfc, I'm too lazy to go look LOL) to be over 54. The P5B only lets you set it to 42 max. So it won't run. My G.Skill ram has this problem and it won't run at anything past 799mhz. I'm not sure if this is a 965 chipset issue, or just a P5B issue.

The only way around the issue is if the SPD info has that value set high enough. I think OCZ was one of the ones that sets the value in the SPD table high enough in their 2GB sticks, but I can't remember. If you get it to work, I'd like to know the model of RAM you used as I may go pick up a set myself. I'm trying to stretch the life of this motherboard until mid-late next year :)
 

loki5667

Member
Dec 11, 2006
102
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Been looking up parts for a machine I'm building for a friend and now I'm thinking if it's worth getting anything for my own rig. I'm going to put 2 gig of my Super Talent ram into his budget build and get myself an upgrade.

I currently have 4x1gb Super Talent ddr 800 in my rig.

Would some OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) be a worth while move? Or the mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 Item#:N82E16820146726?
 

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
4
81
Those sound fine.

I wouldn't get anything over DDR2-800 with a 2x2 GB pair, as you then have to deal with the tRFC-being-too-low-when-manually-setting-timings issues.

That's not to say you cannot run over that speed (i have), but it's not worth spending the extra to risk it not working.
 

loki5667

Member
Dec 11, 2006
102
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Been a while since I've played with my OC....but I know this isn't right. Updated the bios and now I have no cpu vcore options exccept auto???

 

PigLover

Junior Member
Feb 23, 2009
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Originally posted by: cr47283
Just installed this set and it runs fine, set mem speed at DDR2-1067 and timings to auto voltage at 2.0.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231166

Might add Bios ver. 1238

Have you confirmed this config using Memtest? I bought the same set and ran it at 8500 for a week or so. Thought everything was fine, long runs of primes ran OK. Then I started seeing strange failures and subtle instability. Ran Memtest and no matter what I tweeked it always got 10-20 failures in Phase 3 and Phase 5. Not many errors, but consistant - just a few in these two phases.

Basically I gave up and put it back at 6400. Was happier to have the 8Gb on a stable system than the higher memory bandwidth. I would still like to get the speed - this pair of sets (4 sticks) cost about $45 more than 6400 sticks would have cost.
 

cr47283

Junior Member
Feb 16, 2009
5
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@piglover, I have ran memtest in both xp and vista 64 (dual boot), only about an hour on each operating system, I will run an extended test and let you know if I have any issues. Seems your issues could be trying to run 4 dimms at 1066 with the 965 chipset, (if I read you post correctly) i am no expert but seems I have read this could be a problem.
 

PigLover

Junior Member
Feb 23, 2009
2
0
0
My apologies - I was reading earlier parts of this thread and most of the recent stuff was about trying to get 8Gb at 1066. When I read your link to the G.Skill kit I guess I just assumed you were talking about 2 sets. From my experience - you can run 4 dimms on this board perfectly stable or you can run 1066, but you can't do both at the same time.
 

ecom

Senior member
Feb 25, 2009
479
0
0
I have a Asus P5B Deluxe with E6600. I have a WD1001FALS, Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, HDD connected to one of the SATA ports on the board. In the BIOS, I have set to ACI.

On each cold boot, the board does not detect the HDD. However, if I immediately reboot the system at the screen that displays some of the system configuration, the HDD is detected. I have tried 2 different SATA ports. I have attached a second 320GB HDD without changing anything in the BIOS, and the 320GB is detected the first time, every time; the WD 1TB still requires a reboot to be detected. If I hit DEL to go into the BIOS, then I don't see the drive.

After rebooting and the 1TB is detected, the system boots as if nothing was wrong.

OS is Vista Business 64 and it works fine with AHCI mode.
 

loki5667

Member
Dec 11, 2006
102
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0
Back with two questions-

Anyone here have an E8400 running on their P5B Deluxe? Looking for some direction with oc'ing. I know my oc settings for a E6400, but I haven't been able to find a guide on where to start with these newer cpus.

I also want to pick up a 2x2gb set that would be good for oc'ing with this cpu. Anyone have any suggestions?
 

elconejito

Senior member
Dec 19, 2007
607
0
76
www.harvsworld.com
@ecom - Maybe the drive is bad? Possibly not enough power being supplied?

@loki5667 - I think it's N7 who has a set of Mushkin 2x2s (don't know which model) that worked well on this board. And then I think there is another user on these boards that used same set of Mushkins, his thread was relatively recent (last few weeks).
 

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
4
81
Pretty much any 2x2 GB kit should work on this board, but just don't expect to get high speed out of them.

That's not to say you cannot get decent speeds; just don't expect them.

I've used Mushkin 996580 & G.Skill F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ.

If you want higher speeds (DDR2-900-1000+), you'll need to run AUTO/SPD settings, which can mean overly loose timings for some kits.

Otherwise you are limited by how far your kit can do with tRFC @ 42, which is usually somewhere between DDR2-800-1000.
 

loki5667

Member
Dec 11, 2006
102
0
0
Thanks for the info N7. Ends up that a family member is looking for an upgrade, so I'm going to do a few minor upgrades to my own system. They will end up with a much better system and I'll get some new stuff to play with. Not a huge upgrade, but it should be decent.

Going to replace my cpu, mb and ram with:

E8400
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066

I figure that I'll get a better OC and a system that is a little quicker. Hopefully cooler as well. I didn't want to spend money for the newest i7 stuff so this should hold me off for a while. When the time is right I can upgrade the gpu as well.
 

Strife025

Junior Member
Mar 17, 2009
17
0
0
I have a problem, I put in an e8400 to replace my e6400 last night. Everything else remains unchanged. I've had the board for 2 years and never had problems with the e6400 and using 2x 1gb sticks of OCZ Gold, then 2x 2gb sticks of OCZ Reaper.

Now after I put in the e8400, I can only boot with 1 stick of Reaper ram, not two sticks. I've tried everything from setting the ram with various timings, letting it auto set, and setting the fsb of the cpu to x8 to replicate the e6400. I've checked both sticks of ram with memtest and booted up with a stick in all 4 slots separately. I've never had a problem with the e6400 so I doubt it's hardware. And yes I reset the bios to default when the e8400 went in.

So what could be the difference between the e6400 and e8400 that is causing this? Bios is updated to 1236 a few days before I put in the e8400, and it was running fine with the e6400 in place.
 

RonAKA

Member
Feb 18, 2007
165
0
0
It looks like I will have to replace my P5B Deluxe. Suggestions as to what I should get? I currently OC the E4300 in it to about 3000. I don't want to replace any other components at this time other than the MB, but want to leave as many options open as possible.

Thanks,