Asus SLi Deluxe mobos and PSUs

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caboosemoose

Gawd
Joined
Aug 26, 2002
Messages
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I'm kinda aware that there are a lot of issues with this board. I'm trying to get a rig going with a pair of 6800 Ultras in SLi mode and not having much luck. The thing books fine and all, and 2d desktop work seems ok, but try running any full screen 3D app and the thing just black-screen locks and reboots.

I have tried an Antec 460w PSU and also that Tagan 480w PSU that most peeps reckon is pretty decent but no go. The CPU is an FX-55. I tried downclocking the CPU to 2.0GHz and unplugging everying that wasnt essential, but still no go. On a PSU like the Tagan, does one need to use certain molex connectors for the video cards (ie there's two molexes going into one of those six pin converters for each card...). This board really blows - it can't detect my Maxtor SATA hard drive either.

So the question is - could the problem still be PSU related - should I wire up one of the cards to an altogether separate PSU?

Thanks
 
You would be very happy with a PC Power and Cooling 510 SLI, I have a similar rig, only GTs instead of Ultras but have three hard drives, a sound card, a wireless card, two DVD burners, a couple of fan/temp monitors and it is still running like a dream.
 
And about your Maxtor not being detected, you may want to try the new nVidia chipset drivers that were released today. A lot of people are reporting good things about these.
 
Thanks for that. I've just tried running one of the cards from a second 460w PSU (so a separate PSU for each card) and no-go - same problem, boots fine, but wont run any 3D app. Does this proove that I have some other problem than power supply do you think?

I may try swapping the cards round, maybe one of them would prefer being master than slave or something wacky like that, you never know...
 
caboosemoose said:
Thanks for that. I've just tried running one of the cards from a second 460w PSU (so a separate PSU for each card) and no-go - same problem, boots fine, but wont run any 3D app. Does this proove that I have some other problem than power supply do you think?

I may try swapping the cards round, maybe one of them would prefer being master than slave or something wacky like that, you never know...
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why, but ive heard you should never run a video card off a second PSU. Very risky.
 
Whacked in a pair of 6600 GTs which appear to work fine in SLi mode so presumably we are dealing with either a dodgy 6800 Ultra somewhere, or a PSU problem.
 
GRAFiZ said:
I'm not sure why, but ive heard you should never run a video card off a second PSU. Very risky.
Click to expand...

TOO LATE <fizzle pop>

Just kidding. Seemed to run the same as before - maybe the guy who had the 6800s before me tried that and that's where the problem is coming from...
 
Have you tried both of the Ultras individually to rule out a bad one?
 
caboosemoose said:
I'm kinda aware that there are a lot of issues with this board. I'm trying to get a rig going with a pair of 6800 Ultras in SLi mode and not having much luck. The thing books fine and all, and 2d desktop work seems ok, but try running any full screen 3D app and the thing just black-screen locks and reboots.

I have tried an Antec 460w PSU and also that Tagan 480w PSU that most peeps reckon is pretty decent but no go. The CPU is an FX-55. I tried downclocking the CPU to 2.0GHz and unplugging everying that wasnt essential, but still no go. On a PSU like the Tagan, does one need to use certain molex connectors for the video cards (ie there's two molexes going into one of those six pin converters for each card...). This board really blows - it can't detect my Maxtor SATA hard drive either.

So the question is - could the problem still be PSU related - should I wire up one of the cards to an altogether separate PSU?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I had the ASUS A8N-SLI before going to the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. Have two 6800GT's and a FX_55, so similar power requirments. I started off with a PC Power & Cooling 510 Deluxe, their 20 pin model. I was VERY unstable, and had a tough time going past the Windows splash screen at first. I then made sure the 6 pin to dual four pin molex connectors on my video cards had their own connectors, didn't share anything. That got me to decent stability, I only locked up on the Windows splash screen once in a while. I then switched to the PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI, same PSU as the 510 deluxe other then a) 24 pin motherboard connector and b) has two six pin PCI-E video card connectors. That got rid of almost all of my lockups on the ASUS board...at first all of them in fact, but right before I had decided to ditch the ASUS board anyway, it did have a lockup right before going into windows once in a blue moon.

So anyway, to give an idea, what might be doing it is if both of your PSU's are 20 pin perhaps...although about 480 watt and 28 to 30 amp on the 12 volt is the least I've seen of anyone posting to be stable with the ASUS board and two 6800GT's or Ultras. The PSU's I've seen used a lot are mine, the PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI, and the OCZ 520 watt unit, with some using the Antec 480's...name excapes me but it's the modular Antec 480....I think that unit might be the lowest in wattage I've seen stable with at least the ASUS. My PSU is rated something like 34 amp on the 12 volt rail at 50 celcius internal temps, 38 amps at 40 or so if I remember right....don't remember the rating for the OCZ 520 but it's close.

As an aside, Tagan makes the OCZ if memory serves...or at any rate they are both made by the same parent company, and OCZ is subcontracting them out....if you've seen ePowers, they are also the same company as Tagan...I want to say there's a 500 or 520 watt ePower Cheetah pretty similar to the OCZ 520, but costs less. Think it might be a 20 pin PSU though, the OCZ is 24 pin if I remember right.

For the record, even with a 24 pin PSU, I had a plug in the four pin molex near the video card, and of course the square four pin connector near the CPU.

As for the Maxtor hard drives, known issue...any BIOS after 1002 final drops the Maxtor Diamond Max 10's. There is a firmware update for them, but I got the idea it's HARD to get Maxtor to even admit such exists in e-mail or to get them to e-mail it to someone, I haven't seen a link to it on their webpage.
 
OK, thanks. Whats the drill for getting two PSUs running in a single rig properly- I'm thinking about trying to run both of the video cards off of a single separate dedicated PSU (I have the Ultra xconnect 500w unit, surely that has enoguh juice by itself to run the two cards and nothing else!)

I know that there are devices that plug into the main 20/24 pin power rail to enable switching the PSU on and off, but I saw a reference somewhere else to perhaps some way of plugging a secondary PSU in and getting it running in tandem with the main one. Any ideas?
 
ohnnyj said:
And about your Maxtor not being detected, you may want to try the new nVidia chipset drivers that were released today. A lot of people are reporting good things about these.
Click to expand...

I dont think that driver is going to help since the drive isnt there in the bios menus.
 
caboosemoose said:
I dont think that driver is going to help since the drive isnt there in the bios menus.
Click to expand...


LOL, got into a flame war last night with someone over this issue, and yes I agree with you, the other gentleman didn't. Oh well, seems silly today...even if I know I'm right. ;)

Anyway, apparently one has to really e-mail Maxtor to even get it from them, but there is a firmware upgrade to the Maxtor Diamond Max 10's w/NCQ support. Won't list the user ID of the guy who sent this since I want to respect his privacy, but he PMed me here on HardOCP's forum and said that he contacted them in e-mail four days straight, they finally e-mailed him the firmware.
 
Of course you are the left with the problem of how to get the firmware onto the drive - if you dont have another system / mobo that does recognise the drive I dont think you are going to have much luck!
 
caboosemoose said:
Of course you are the left with the problem of how to get the firmware onto the drive - if you dont have another system / mobo that does recognise the drive I dont think you are going to have much luck!
Click to expand...


Saw a possible answer to this. Apparently there are some Nforce 3 boards also doing the same thing, during my flame war I was trying to find the NForce 4 posts on MSI's board that I had seen to prove to the gentleman that I was correct, couldn't find them but did find some about the Neo 2 Platinum doing the same thing. Anyway, the directions they got were to put the drives on ports other then the NVidia SATA ports. Mind you, the Neo2 has only NVidia SATA ports if memory serves me right, and thus he had to use a SATA RAID PCI card that he had in another system for a bit. I assume this means that you could use your Silicon Image SATA ports...but again I don't know, since the one I found last night, the guy used his SATA PCI card.

As an aside, same thread as the flame war, a post by someone saying that they did flash the drive as per Maxtor's instructions, it didn't work so thus they had to RMA the drive. But, they then bought a drive locally at a CompUSA, and it does work for them. I'll do an edit in just a second of his post, since he lists the part numbers of the older Diamond Max 10 he flashed to no effect, and the newer one that does work for him.

EDIT: forgive me, these are firmware codes, not part numbers, but anyway, from his post:

"As an FYI the firmware on my original drive was BANC1B10. I just purchased a new one at CompUsa and it had code rev BANC1B70."

Don't know if there is a label to see the firmware code on the drive, or if it just shows up when one uses the flash utility I assumed would be part of the firmware download.
 
Yeah, thanks for that info. I am loathe to flash the drive, it has data on it I dont want to use, and the drive itself is fine with every other system I've used it on.
 
caboosemoose said:
Yeah, thanks for that info. I am loathe to flash the drive, it has data on it I dont want to use, and the drive itself is fine with every other system I've used it on.
Click to expand...


I don't blame you at all really, generally I'd rather not...and not like these drives are all that inexpensive.

As an aside, if you do wish to use it, I do know of some software that's very good for cloning drives, Acronis True Image 8.0. I used it to go the other way, cloned my Maxtor NCQ Drives in a RAID 0 to my Western Digital Raptors I got to replace them when this hard drive issue reared it's ugly head so to speak. Took all of 5 minutes, and two or three reboots, I was using the two Maxtor NCQ's in a RAID 0 as my Windows install, so it handled that no problem. One thing they forget to tell you with the program is to remove the drive you cloned from, and reboot one more time to finish the process. Anyway, you could clone your Maxtor before you flash it, so you at least don't lose the data.

Here's a link, it's to a 15 day trial version, but the trial is fully functional except for one or two minor features:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

And no, I don't work for them, just like the software. ;)
 
Interesting -can you use that software to restore images to SATA drives? When I reinstalled my rig a little while ago I made the effort to get a nice image of it after I had it all set up just as I liked it using DriveImage, only to fine that that *crappy* software doesn't support the SATA drive interface. Doh!
 
caboosemoose said:
Interesting -can you use that software to restore images to SATA drives? When I reinstalled my rig a little while ago I made the effort to get a nice image of it after I had it all set up just as I liked it using DriveImage, only to fine that that *crappy* software doesn't support the SATA drive interface. Doh!
Click to expand...

It should, both single SATA drives and ones in a RAID array, I had two Maxtor SATA drives in a RAID 0 array, cloned them to two WD 74GB Raptors which of course are SATA and were in a RAID 0 array. I went ahead and bought the retail download, think it was $49.95 since I know I'll want to clone a drive sometime after the 15 days are up, but the trial version should do it also, I did my drive cloning via the trial version then after a couple days figured if it was that simple, this was actually software I wanted to support.

But in short yes, it sees SATA drives fine, or did for the cloning, so I'd assume so. :)
 
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