Asus Maximus Formula SE X38 - Living Review.

[slats]

whats is motherboard monitoring utility your using? It looks good. Does it work with the Evga 680i SLI board

[Ixionx]

Hi Clunk,

Just wondering, will you be writing a guide similar for the Maximus Formula along the lines of the one you did for the P5K? I thought your guide you wrote on that board was excellent and I was able to overclock the board quite a bit.

I recently upgraded from a P5K Premium to the Maximus Formula SE, and I can't get it to overclock at all. The only settings it runs stable on are all the bios defaults **using the 504 bios**
specs are QX6850 and 4x1gb of OCZ 9200 Flexx ram. On the P5K I was able to get it to overclock to 3.6ghz... on this board, default everything, I can't even push the ram over 1066mhz, and it's rated to run at 1160mhz.

[Clunk]

Originally Posted by slats

whats is motherboard monitoring utility your using? It looks good. Does it work with the Evga 680i SLI board

It's Asus Probe II, it is only for Asus boards.

Welcome to the forums

[Clunk]

Originally Posted by Ixionx

Hi Clunk,

Just wondering, will you be writing a guide similar for the Maximus Formula along the lines of the one you did for the P5K? I thought your guide you wrote on that board was excellent and I was able to overclock the board quite a bit.

I recently upgraded from a P5K Premium to the Maximus Formula SE, and I can't get it to overclock at all. The only settings it runs stable on are all the bios defaults **using the 504 bios**
specs are QX6850 and 4x1gb of OCZ 9200 Flexx ram. On the P5K I was able to get it to overclock to 3.6ghz... on this board, default everything, I can't even push the ram over 1066mhz, and it's rated to run at 1160mhz.

If they release a decent BIOS in the next few days, I will, but at the moment, I don't think I will be keeping the Maximus, it's just too buggy.

Welcome to the forums

[lethial]

sorry I couldn't gt back to ya sooner, it was snooze time for me. Do you guys not sleep!? :P I know I know, the time difference

Anyway, I have a flaky P5K that I rather not try, and I don't have any more RAM to try I did manage to determine conclusively that one stick was bad. As much as I love crucial memory, I think I might have to stay away from them for the next purchase, they just runs too hot. I have good experience with OCZ before, but I might try the XMS, any thoughts? (Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I have seen, I really don't need PC-8500 memory for the P35s and E6600, I mean it is not like I can get the FSB to be over 500mhz anyway, now if I have a E6850 that might be different. Though I think Q6600 would be a better buy)

About your Maximus experience, it sucks that it is so buggy. How does your DRAM voltage look? Is it a little over what you set ? (like for me I set 2.2V and I get 2.24V)
From the looks of it all the X38 boards that are out now are all pretty buggy.

If you are to get another mobo right now what would you get Clunk? DFI's P35? Or wait for the ABIT's X38 to come out?

[lethial]

Oh I just noticed something in your Maximus report Clunk. You mentioned that you have issue restarting the PC, and there is a slight beep when you power up? I noticed that on my Blitz forumla, the restart doesn't work very well, and when I power up my system, the system would start, then all of a sudden power down for a sec then proceed to power up properly...

I wonder if this is the reason why my memory fried, and I wonder if this is something all Asus ROG owners experience. Though I have seen similar weird "double-power-up" on my P5K... I have a Corsair 620W btw, and I have measured its rails and they are fine.

[Clunk]

Originally Posted by lethial

sorry I couldn't gt back to ya sooner, it was snooze time for me. Do you guys not sleep!? :P I know I know, the time difference

Anyway, I have a flaky P5K that I rather not try, and I don't have any more RAM to try I did manage to determine conclusively that one stick was bad. As much as I love crucial memory, I think I might have to stay away from them for the next purchase, they just runs too hot. I have good experience with OCZ before, but I might try the XMS, any thoughts? (Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I have seen, I really don't need PC-8500 memory for the P35s and E6600, I mean it is not like I can get the FSB to be over 500mhz anyway, now if I have a E6850 that might be different. Though I think Q6600 would be a better buy)

About your Maximus experience, it sucks that it is so buggy. How does your DRAM voltage look? Is it a little over what you set ? (like for me I set 2.2V and I get 2.24V)
From the looks of it all the X38 boards that are out now are all pretty buggy.

If you are to get another mobo right now what would you get Clunk? DFI's P35? Or wait for the ABIT's X38 to come out?

All of the D9xxx memory that I have, has died at some point, and that includes modules thaqt havent been overvolted at all, ever.

I am on my 5th set of Ballistix, soon to be 6th, 3 sets of OCZ flexXLC, 3 sets of TEAM xtreme 9600..and whatever else I can't remember! I don't think it is so much the fact that it is Crucial, it's more trhe D9xxx chips are easy to fry, especially of you dont actively cool them (which I do).

Dram voltage is showing 2.28v when 2.2v is set in the BIOS. I havemt got access to a DM til tomorrow, and I'm not sure where the measuring points are on the Maximus.

RAM overclocking seems to be on a par with the P35 so far, pretty much identical in fact, no no gripes from me there

I'm not a fan of DFI boards to be honest. I find their quality control seriously lacking, and their RMA turnaround is horrific for us UK people - and then there is the price...so not for me

As it stands at the moment, my favourite board is still the P5K deluxe.

[Clunk]

Originally Posted by lethial

Oh I just noticed something in your Maximus report Clunk. You mentioned that you have issue restarting the PC, and there is a slight beep when you power up? I noticed that on my Blitz forumla, the restart doesn't work very well, and when I power up my system, the system would start, then all of a sudden power down for a sec then proceed to power up properly...

I wonder if this is the reason why my memory fried, and I wonder if this is something all Asus ROG owners experience. Though I have seen similar weird "double-power-up" on my P5K... I have a Corsair 620W btw, and I have measured its rails and they are fine.

The power up, then power down thing is pretty standard accross most C2D boards (that I've used), so don't worry about that, unless it is doing it a lot, and repeatedly before it boots.

[lethial]

Bah that is what I am afraid to hear I hate to have to spend so much on memory... All I want to do is to run the memory at its rated spec of 5-5-5-15 2.2V @ 1066 But, it seems that these P35 boards don't like 450+ FSB too much How are your experiences with the FSB? I try not to increase the NB or SB voltage and let them stay in AUTO (since I don't have a water cooler for them).

If you get a chance, I'd love to see your voltage settings in the BIOS for both the P5K and the maximus?

I really don't know what to make of this Blitz forumla... I had a perfectly stable E6600 @ 480 x 7 @1.375V; and 1:1 for the ram. But for some reason I cannot seem to get the same result on the "supposedly" superior Blitz forumla board...

Do you know the default voltage for NB, SB and any other tweakable voltage settings? I think I am going to have to manually set everything

[death]

for me on my p5bdeluxe it was when ever the overclock was not 100% stable i read about it before