What?......Cant let Merc have all the fun right?

P5K Deluxe / BX80562Q6600 SLACR b#L723A930 08/06/07

Any hints or tips on setup welcome......
Bios version?
Raid setup?

Be tackling this lil upgrade in the morning.

Way to go, Wanna! You'll love the board.

All the BIOSes are sort of the same after 0311, I'm running 05xx series just for laughs. Put the Mobo Cd in the drive at startup to make a RAID disk..Disable C1e speedstep crap..

Welcome to the club Wanna!!!! I've been wondering when you'd bite the bullet. As we have pretty much followed each other around in gear for the last year plus, I believe I know what you like and appreciate in a CPU and a mobo. I can confidently say that you will like this board better than any other you have ever owned. It is an absolute joy to work with.

First, don't be alarmed when it shuts itself off after a reboot. Scared the hell out of me the forst tme. She just shuts down completely, fans and all, and then reboots with the new settings. There is almost no drama here except a warnng about overvolting the CPU.

Second, enable teh CPU damper. This little setting removes Vdroop. On muy board I set about .03 higher Vcore than I see at boot. In other words, set 1.50 in BIOS and she boots at 1.47. After that you won't see any real Vdroop. I drift back and forth between 1.46 and 1.47 on Vcore but it isn't a whole .01v, morelike .005 that EU reports as two decimal places. I really love this as I don't have to run my CPU at 1.50v all the time just to make sure the voltage is there for Vdroop. VDroop is removed at boot.

Third, BIOS is simple and direct.

Fourth, the board likes high freqs on RAM better than low latency as far as I can see and what Paul has experienced. I set 1T and she boots at 2T anyways. Regardless, clock the shite out of your TE, the throughput is amazing.

CPU-
Woot- the Q6600 SLACR is a winner mate and it is right in our window of acceptable CPU pricing. Won't beat Paul in SuperPi, ever, but she overclocks better than our e6600s and those 4 cores are really fun to watch. Load the system up and it never blinks an eye. Like the board, you will be very very happy with that CPU, I guarantee it.

Team Extreme and the P5K are made for each other.

STORY TIME: Reading CPU tonight about the new Blackbird 2.0 with two 8800GTX Ultras, a QX6700 at 3.567GHz and Corsair PC8500 RAM scored a 13,960 in 3DM06. Mate, I nailed a 13,010 the other day with a Q6600 SLACR, P5K Deluxe and a single 8800GTS. And yes, the Blackbird is on water. The BlackBird is about $7K. Does that mean my dualie is worth $6K??? Nah, but that is what the combo you, Paul and I have right now is capable of.

BOTTOMLINE: We are on the same page about spending money on this stuff. I will guarantee that there will be absolutely no guilt about this upgrade. It will be the most satisfying rig you have ever put together and will last for a year at least. The only downside is I will never beat the Hitman in SuperPi while he has that e6850. Maybe you're later q6600 will hit 4.15 or so and challenge the Aussie. Paul has teh fas-*test*-('") CPU ever made IMHO and I really, really want one. Quads all day for me. Like the early adopters have preached, the quads really are the best chip ever made. Day to day stuff just gets swallowed by these things. That e6850 beckons like the Sirens but I am very spoiled by this Q6600G0.

C Team rides again!!! O-BTW, I just bought the Capn's XFX 8800GTX XXX so standby for some eye watering numbers.

Can't wait to see the WGF magic in action.

Very cool - Wanna!

0404 BIOS till Paul tells me different BTW. He has -*test*-('")ed them all, as a service to his buddies, and 0404 is still the safest bet.

In the immortal words of Flounder in Animal House, just before the parade, "This is gonna be great!!

PS-Maybe we can split the cost on an e6850 so we can challenge the Aussie

Also, I am betting 14k in 3D06 when I get that GTX XXX tuned.

0311 was probably the best BIOS but it didnt 'officially' support 1333FSB so I just tried these ones.. In the real world, anything after 0311 is basically the same except that after 0311 the board will run the AUTO settings a little tighter I think, which makes no difference to me because I set everything manually.
Its a pretty simple BIOS really. vcore,NBv,PLLv,voltage references,Pcie Freq,vdimm and the dividers nothing unusual..

My 6850 isnt the best in comparison to some of the golden ones..dont worry about my 6850, worry about the 6600 I have here.. I might beat my own Spi score yet

That's awesome Wanna! I was wondering where all your sage advice has been.

I've got to do a case mod before I upgrade again but will be keeping a close eye on what you get out of yours. I wish it was easier for me to recycle equipment. This is our every day PC and pulling it down to reinstall is a pain.

Ok Im totally stuck here...using the asus cd to make drivers what driver do I need to use to run raid on sata 1 and 2? Im having a terrible time with this phase of setup.

Intel ICH9R

Use the ICH9R Desktop driver (I think it is the first one on the floppy when you hit S) and I also loaded the bottom one. Don'yt load the JMicron if you won't be using them as RAID. Also, the black SATA ports (2 of them) are "slave ports" and cannot be used for a boot device.

See page 5-44 in the the manual. Do not use the drivers off the Asus website, use the CD drivers.

never mind.....I figured it out...bad floppy disk

Other then that its all good installing XP now


LOL

K thanks merc.....I only loaded the bottom "raid" drivers and it seems to be working. if it doesnt I will try it your way and install both.

thanks bud.pm me your phone # will ya.cant find it.

Benn there and done that. Had a bad floppy drive as well once (brand new out of the box)

Okay Im all up in windows....now im just boggled by all the bios settings.
Anyone wanna run through a basic bios to do list for the P5K for me?

Looking good so far... seeing 28 to 32c idle temps.....kinda warm in here.
That sound about right for running stock? Measured with core temp 0.95.4.