Asus P5N-E SLI small review

[carey8]

Can anyone give me a step by step guide f how to overclock on this board please. Ive been lookingbut cant find alot of info.

If any of u have MSN or the likes, can i have you email so you can help me through IM?

[lowfat]

you guys weren't lying when you said the chipset runs hot. I never used the stock one. When i purchased it it went straight to a NH-06, with a 120mm fan blowing over it. I had the fan unhooked for about 2 minutes, and the sink was at least 60C when i touched it.

[Merc14]

My 8800GTS arrived today, so now I am just waiting on the RAM which is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday. This rig will be comprised of he following:

e4300 - OEM cooler for now
P5N-E SLI - OEM cooling for now
Corsair DDR2 800 RAM (4-4-4-12 1T 2.1v)
XFX 8800GTS
2x80GB RAID 0 array
PC P&C 750 Silencer

My plan is to assemble everything on a bench (RAM in yellow slots) and after intial boot, flash to 0401 BIOS. After a good flash (from floppy) I'll load a slipstreamed XP (RAID drivers from the mobo CD) load on a 10GB partition and then install 8.26 chipset driver and 97.92 (8800 series) vid driver in a separate partition.

This, from everything I have read here, should be stable.
The case won't be ready for a few days so just light overclocking till I get everything on water in the new case.

Does anyone have anything to add to the above or warn me about?

[james111]

lowfat, do you have any pics of your setup? (inside)

[lowfat]

lowfat, do you have any pics of your setup? (inside)

sure..

[P@N]

I seem to be stuck at a fsb of 1368 fsb with nb @ 1,7v ...with nb @ 1,5v I can reach 1333 fsb. Howcome you are all reaching 1600+ ?

e4300
gskill 1gb x2 GBNZ 5-5-5-12 -2t
northbridge has been equipped with artic silver 5 and a 12 cm fan blowing on it
southbridge has been equipped with artic silver 5 and a zalman nb47j

[BNDMOD]

Nice... i'd like to have Xeon core!

[lowfat]

E4300s seem to have a FSB wall. I couldn't take my E4300 higher than 367FSB. Yet i can do 520FSB with the same system & E6400.

[Sickapotamus]

I am running an e6300 and so far have hit 500fsb (3500MHz) by setting all voltages to auto. While using the 0202 bios i was only able to get maybe 450 or so regardless of bios settings.

[skootyloops]

I am running an e6300 and so far have hit 500fsb (3500MHz) by setting all voltages to auto. While using the 0202 bios i was only able to get maybe 450 or so regardless of bios settings.

I hit 486FSB with Bios rev 202



I just flashed it to 401 today. I guess I might have a go at getting over 500FSB.

Thats with the stock northbridge cooler only running at 1.563v

[P@N]

I just had the strangest crash... The system was running 3000 mhz (9x333), which was tested orthos stable for 12 + hours. And just while I was browsing in Internet Explorer it freezed. Trying to reboot gave me a black screen and only the lights of the hd and system were on.
So I thought resetting the bios would do the trick and it did, however when I enter the bios to adjust only the time and date and then save and reboot; it gave me a black screen again ....

I'm thinking my bios is somewhat messed up ....

Any thoughts?

----------------------------
Okay just tried reflashing my bios back to 0202 and I can get into the bios and save the time and date, however when I try overclocking it to 1333 (qdr)fsb it will save those setting but still boot up as standard. Also when rebooting from windows the system will show a black screen and nothing more ....

[uly166]

I have the E4300 and P5N-E SLI at 100% oc,easy.



The CPu make 3200Mhz with 1´3375 Vcore.

[Ron 61]

I just had the strangest crash... The system was running 3000 mhz (9x333), which was tested orthos stable for 12 + hours. And just while I was browsing in Internet Explorer it freezed. Trying to reboot gave me a black screen and only the lights of the hd and system were on.
So I thought resetting the bios would do the trick and it did, however when I enter the bios to adjust only the time and date and then save and reboot; it gave me a black screen again ....

I'm thinking my bios is somewhat messed up ....

Any thoughts?

----------------------------
Okay just tried reflashing my bios back to 0202 and I can get into the bios and save the time and date, however when I try overclocking it to 1333 (qdr)fsb it will save those setting but still boot up as standard. Also when rebooting from windows the system will show a black screen and nothing more ....

What method are you using to flash bios. I have used the bios flash utility twice without problems. I also shut down just after flash and clear cmos before first boot into bios. Sounds like either your bios is corrupted or could be NB is to hot or not enough volts to NB.

[P@N]

The bios 0401 was on the board when the crash occured. 0401 was flashed with the bios method.
Since the bios method couldn't downgrade to 0202 I inserted the driver cd and flashed 0202 from dos. Instead of all white blocks (meaning succesful flash), there were 2 block with a light blue color (meaning skipped). (this was withn awdflash utility)
Because It still acted weird, like: overclocked in bios, but still booting with standard settings. I flashed 0202 again, this time from within the bios.

The NB has a 12 cm fan blowing on it and after every flash I cleared the cmos with the jumper and without the battery.

Now it still acts weird, and I can only get into windows at standard clock ...

[Merc14]

So I finally got all the pieces together and set this thing up on the bench. Booted fine with RAM in yellow slots. Set BIOS and rebooted with Awdflash/0401.BIN floppy and flashed to that right off. Disabled all the unnecessaries in BIOS and loaded XP (slipstreamed) onto a RAID 0 array. Rebooted and loaded the chipset and display driver and checked CPUz. The Corsair RAM is running right at SPD speeds 400MHz 55514 1T. EPP is 44412 but I haven't played with that yet.

This is about as far as I can go till I get the case modded and put all the watercooling gear in but here is the system to date.


Yeah its a mess but don't laugh, I have built 4 rigs on this little bench setup with an ESD pad installed. I'll load virus and all the garbage on there so it will be ready to go whan the case is set up.

This was a completely troublefree install. So far I am prettty happy. I can't patch XP yet as the same load is on my Opte 165 system. One thing i noticed is that the chipsets are hot, ver yhot, even at stock everything. If you aren't cooling both of these chipsets then I can guarantee you will have problems with even a little overclocking.

[burn what?]

WORD OF CAUTION! my first board arrived DOA, that's not the caution. second board came, threw in my patriot 2x1gb ddr2 800, did burn in test 12 hours fine. went to load win xp, blue screens and lockups all over place. tested mem again and dimm 1 failed, dimm 2 fine. took out dimm 1, left dimm 2 in black slot where it was. loaded xp, then during driver installs lockups and blue screens again. test mem, dimm 2 now bad! i have no doubt this board fried my mem. i've used these same patriot sticks in at least 5 other builds and never a problem, now to have both sticks bad??!! all voltages were on auto, as i didn't even oc this thing a bit. i haven't seen anyone else post this problem in this thread, so maybe i'm just the lucky 1, but just saying watch out!

[John44]

WORD OF CAUTION! my first board arrived DOA, that's not the caution. second board came, threw in my patriot 2x1gb ddr2 800, did burn in test 12 hours fine. went to load win xp, blue screens and lockups all over place. tested mem again and dimm 1 failed, dimm 2 fine. took out dimm 1, left dimm 2 in black slot where it was. loaded xp, then during driver installs lockups and blue screens again. test mem, dimm 2 now bad! i have no doubt this board fried my mem. i've used these same patriot sticks in at least 5 other builds and never a problem, now to have both sticks bad??!! all voltages were on auto, as i didn't even oc this thing a bit. i haven't seen anyone else post this problem in this thread, so maybe i'm just the lucky 1, but just saying watch out!

Let the board cool off and test your memory in the yellow slots. The NB needs a fan on it.

[Merc14]

Thanks Burn What, I'll watch it. As I said I won't do any O/Cing or burn in till I have waterblocks on both chipsets and the CPU. This is my fourth Asus board and it is a lot different than any I have ever owned. I think that it can safely be used as an everyday board for an internet surfer type but I believe that this is a stripped down, enthusiast board that you are expected to put aftermarket cooling on and use to overclock. I bought it because I don't need chipset heatpipes, two NICs and LEDs. I wanted a no frills, stripped down model that did the basics but would O/C a CPU. The 800MHz FSB and the 9x multi make this a nice catch since I can put relatively cheap DDR2 800 RAM on it. I may be full of it since I haven't done any work with this PCB but I have high hopes. The only thing I dislike is the 4 phase power and the resultant droop that has to be accounted for. I should be up and running by early next week.

[Sickapotamus]

The bios 0401 was on the board when the crash occured. 0401 was flashed with the bios method.
Since the bios method couldn't downgrade to 0202 I inserted the driver cd and flashed 0202 from dos. Instead of all white blocks (meaning succesful flash), there were 2 block with a light blue color (meaning skipped). (this was withn awdflash utility)
Because It still acted weird, like: overclocked in bios, but still booting with standard settings. I flashed 0202 again, this time from within the bios.

The NB has a 12 cm fan blowing on it and after every flash I cleared the cmos with the jumper and without the battery.

Now it still acts weird, and I can only get into windows at standard clock ...

i just recovered my rig from the same problem i think. i even had little stability at the stock clock speeds. i thought i may have fried the cpu or the nb.

to fix the problem i cleared the cmos then removed the cmos battery and unplugged the power supply cord and even removed the cpu (for some reason removing the cpu forces a reset on some motherboards. not sure if it helped or not on this one.) after that i let the machine sit for about 12 hours to be sure all settings were completely cleared. after that i put the cmos battery back in, put my thermal goop & heat sink etc. back on, plugged it in and.....it's stable at 450fsb 800mem so far. it seems the instability problems are gone now.


P.S. use caution when setting the voltages to auto at high overclocks! the cpu voltage went as high as 1.47v on my machine! i was 8 hrs prime stable at 500fsb 820mem and after i shut off my machine and turned it on the next day i had all sorts of instability problems until i did the above to fix it.

[burn what?]

Let the board cool off and test your memory in the yellow slots. The NB needs a fan on it.

i had a fan on NB but not SB. unbelievable that not even a heat sink on the SB. i tried this board cause gbyte ds3 doesn't always hold the oc during a cold boot, but it's rock solid and cheaper now than this board. going back to ds3, hope they fix that cold boot issue.

[Merc14]

This is an exception but not having decent coolers on the chipsets is a plus for me. I didn't have to pay for something that I was going to remove anyways. I have waterblocks for both the NB and SB since my present board is an A8N32 SLI Deluxe mounted in a Lian Li V1000 case which means it is upside down and the heatpipe doesn't work very well. Hopefully I get the new case modded and everything set up this weekend.

[John44]

Here's something worth mentioning that may also help when you can't boot. It works great for tweaking. Its from dlxmax

Some people are complaining about the CMOS reset. I haven't reset the CMOS since I learned two better techniques.

1) Hit the reset button a couple times in quick sucession. Often than will cause it to boot up.

2) Keep the battery out. If you want to save your bios settings, use "ASUS O.C. Profile" tool to write it directly to the NVRAM of the bios. Then start to tweak. If you can't post, just hit the power switch on the power supply. Keep it off for 5-10 seconds and the CMOS will corrupt, causing you to post with default settings when you power up. Then you can reload your basic bios settings profile from the NVRAM. Put the battery back in when you find a stable clock and load your settings from the OC profile.

[Sickapotamus]

i agree that using that method while finding your max o.c. is a great idea. i once had a bios corrupted from a battery with too little voltage. when i tried to save settings and the battery didn't have the power.....well instantly corrupt bios.

[Lestat]

thats too bad you guys are having these problems.
i have not had one problem since day 1.

but i refuse to update the bios from 0202. after seeing what you guys are saying about this crap, i definately can find no reason to update.

475x8 24/7 is fine with me. ram at 1050mhz 5-4-4-12

i think you should just go back to 0202 and see what happens.

[uly166]

thats too bad you guys are having these problems.
i have not had one problem since day 1.

but i refuse to update the bios from 0202. after seeing what you guys are saying about this crap, i definately can find no reason to update.

475x8 24/7 is fine with me. ram at 1050mhz 5-4-4-12

i think you should just go back to 0202 and see what happens.

With that configuration (475x8)
¿what speed marks coretemp to you?