P5K Dilemma...

[abhong]

Well, i am building a P35 based rig that i am also going for watercooling.

QX6700
P5K Premium
Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2-1066
74GB Raptors
320GB Sata HDD
LiteOn SATA DVD
8800Ultra

and watercooling parts that are pretty much specific to the ASUS boards when it comes to NB/SB blocks...

i have on hand, all of the components and when i was putting it together, i started running into some issues.
like most folks mentioned, SATA and RAID 0 issues has been bugging me.
i admit, the obstacle was not a major one and was partially resolved... but my recent obstacle is that the SATA DVD will not read/write at all. it does recognize as a dvd drive but that's it...

i am sure this too can be resolved and while searching the internet for solution, i've come across many folks with issues on this board.

now i can simply exchange for another P35 board such as a gigabyte or a abit but then another issue i have is that the EK NB/SB water blocks are pretty much stuck for ASUS... iirc.

i'd love to RMA the board and sit and wait till the X38 but then the performance gain i hear is not significant... and i have to buy new RAM... hence that is out of the question...

shall i go back and get the Striker Extreme?
it seems folks have all but praise for it these days...

any thoughts?

thanks.

 

[NoelS]

Edit: Sorry, double posted...

 

[NoelS]

abhong,

Sorry, late on this reply, but I just joined the forum recently.

I'm not sure I would attribute the DVD SATA problem to the board - I have read many posts about DVD SATA's not working properly (or at all for that matter). I suspect that DVD SATA is not ready for prime time and I would put that DVD burner away for a while. I would give an IDE DVD drive a shot and see if that works. If it does, you're good to go. Otherwise, RMA the board (if you haven't already

Noel

 

[BoboKatt]

I can attest as well to the issues with an SATA DVD drive. In my case I am using a eVGA 680i. Everything was working flawlessly when I had 4 SATA HD and one IDE DVD-RW. I then decided to throw in a new SATA Plextor DVD-RW. The first SATA slot I put it in it work flawlessly. I then had to move some crap around and also add an eSATA connector and I ended up moving my SATA DVD to another slot.

Well heck from that point, it would show the DVD drive but I could not burn... it would not read or write. I would restart the computer, try different software, open the drive, close the drive.. some times it worked and some times it did not. Anyhow I was about to go back to my IDE one but I then just moved my DVD SATA drive back to its original slot and moved the eSATA connector to the one the SATA DVD was using.

Everything is back to perfect again. So this issue does affect more than one type of chipset. I wish I could be certain it's the fault of the SATA DVD drives... or if it's an issue with different SATA controllers on the board. Anyhow I had to play with it to find the correct setup for me.

I wish I could tell you whether the Striker Extreme is a better board than say an eVGA 680i SLI. You would think it would be pretty much the same deal considering it?s the same basic chip and mobo layout ? just different addons or cooling solutions.. maybe.