Asus Striker Extreme .. or something else?

J

johnw18

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Jun 26, 2007
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I'm building a new PC, currently looking to go for the Striker, but all the bad reviews and horror stories I've read are instilling quite a bit of doubt. Basically I'm wondering if most of the bugs of the Striker have been ironed out, or if its worth going for another motherboard?

I've been looking at the BFG, eVGA, and the other ASUS P5N32-E board and I really can't make up my mind.

I'm looking for a board with fairly decent overclocking, stability, SLI ability(another 8800 GTX down the road) and with some decent features(not barebones).

Other particulars for the system are:
E6600 Conroe
BFG 8800 GTX OC
OCZ 850W GameXStream PSU
2x1gb PC-8500 DDR2-1066
Antec P182

Also, I was wondering if the P182 would house all the parts comfortably, with the option of upgrading to SLI later.

Any suggestions/tips/flames will be considered and appreciated :D
 
EVGA's A1 board is often agreed to be the best 680i board on the market. I can personally vouch for mine. Zero issues... always has worked perfectly.

Mark.
 
If you wouldn't mind dropping a newegg/other pricing link so I know I'm getting the right one would be cool too :)
 
Dan_D said:
... I also own a Striker Extreme and though it's nice the EVGA boards have been more stable and vastly superior in the overclocking department.
Click to expand...

Dan is the man. My (full price) Striker Extreme was wonderful until it died for no apparent reason at the tender age of 5 weeks. Wasn't even overclocked at the time either, as I was awaiting better cooling. It also hated my Corsair 8500C5D Dominators, wouldn't work with them until an RMA and SPD flash of the modules got them and the Striker to play nice-nice. It's the only board I've used (out of 8 or 9 I've used with this RAM) that wouldn't boot off the Corsair. If you're going 680i, the eVGA certainly is the one to get, based on user feedback.
 
I can't say for certain that I would recommend the Striker yet as my first board appeared arrive DOA from newegg (cpu init error) and strangely enough, i have the 8500 c5d as well.

Maybe I will have to go and buy a stick of cheap 1.8v stuff just to get to bios and bump the voltage.

What I can say about the SE is that it's pretty, well laid out and comes with a good bundle. I have a feeling with the regular releases of bios images, we will see the stability and OCability of this board climb.

I still am very miffed that DFI did not release a regular 680i SLI LP board. Why they continue to focus on ATI chipsets is beyond me.
 
J4M3S0N79 said:
I can't say for certain that I would recommend the Striker yet as my first board appeared arrive DOA from newegg (cpu init error) and strangely enough, i have the 8500 c5d as well.

Maybe I will have to go and buy a stick of cheap 1.8v stuff just to get to bios and bump the voltage.

What I can say about the SE is that it's pretty, well laid out and comes with a good bundle. I have a feeling with the regular releases of bios images, we will see the stability and OCability of this board climb.

I still am very miffed that DFI did not release a regular 680i SLI LP board. Why they continue to focus on ATI chipsets is beyond me.
Click to expand...

Dude the Striker Extreme has been out for about as long as the 8800GTS/GTX and it really hasn't improved all that much. I suspect it won't get much if any better.

The EVGA board is a shit load better.
 
J4M3S0N79 said:
I can't say for certain that I would recommend the Striker yet as my first board appeared arrive DOA from newegg (cpu init error) and strangely enough, i have the 8500 c5d as well.

Maybe I will have to go and buy a stick of cheap 1.8v stuff just to get to bios and bump the voltage.

What I can say about the SE is that it's pretty, well laid out and comes with a good bundle. I have a feeling with the regular releases of bios images, we will see the stability and OCability of this board climb.

I still am very miffed that DFI did not release a regular 680i SLI LP board. Why they continue to focus on ATI chipsets is beyond me.
Click to expand...

I have the Striker, and I would not recomend it over the EVGA.

That said, CPU INIT error is not DOA at all.

CPU INIT error comes up because the default BIOS settings of the striker simply don't work with a lot of performance RAM.

At times you have to place the RAM in slot 4, just one stick, boot to bios and set everything. At times you have to put in a stick of 1.8v RAM boot with that and set everything.

The board is also extremely finicky with the dominator series of memory. Mines working 4gb 6400 c4d but it took a while and I had to set everything maunally and disable SLI memory.

I wouldn't put to much faith in BIOS updates. It's been a flawed product since launch and that hasn't really changed.

It does look pretty though.
 
sd11 said:
I have the Striker, and I would not recomend it over the EVGA.

That said, CPU INIT error is not DOA at all.

CPU INIT error comes up because the default BIOS settings of the striker simply don't work with a lot of performance RAM.

At times you have to place the RAM in slot 4, just one stick, boot to bios and set everything. At times you have to put in a stick of 1.8v RAM boot with that and set everything.

The board is also extremely finicky with the dominator series of memory. Mines working 4gb 6400 c4d but it took a while and I had to set everything maunally and disable SLI memory.

I wouldn't put to much faith in BIOS updates. It's been a flawed product since launch and that hasn't really changed.

It does look pretty though.
Click to expand...

It is a very pretty board.
 
Well, I've been praising my P5N32-E SLI board for a good long time now......

Essentially a stripped down Striker, this board has been nothing but great for me since I got it in November. It will be a bit cheaper than anything else you are considering as well.

I've been very happy, OCs well, no memory issues, great for SLI, use an X-Fi and have had no sound issues.

Currently, I dual boot with XP and Vista and the board hasn't lost a step.
e6700 at 3.35 Ghz,Corsair 6400-4GB,8800 GTX in SLi, 850W PCP&C Power.

consider this board.(its kinda pretty)
 
magoo said:
Well, I've been praising my P5N32-E SLI board for a good long time now......

Essentially a stripped down Striker, this board has been nothing but great for me since I got it in November. It will be a bit cheaper than anything else you are considering as well.

I've been very happy, OCs well, no memory issues, great for SLI, use an X-Fi and have had no sound issues.

Currently, I dual boot with XP and Vista and the board hasn't lost a step.
e6700 at 3.35 Ghz,Corsair 6400-4GB,8800 GTX in SLi, 850W PCP&C Power.

consider this board.(its kinda pretty)
Click to expand...

Glad your having good luck with yours, a friend of mine has had similar experiences with his P5N32-E SLI that I have had with the Striker Extreme. The Striker is a board I wanted to like, I just can't.
 
Dan_D said:
Dude the Striker Extreme has been out for about as long as the 8800GTS/GTX and it really hasn't improved all that much. I suspect it won't get much if any better.

The EVGA board is a shit load better.
Click to expand...

I agree that for the money, the EVGA looks more attractive however, at the moment the SE will replace my DFI NF4 SLI DR, which will replace my ABIT IC7 Max3 which will replace my DFI NFII UltraB and so on. I tend to buy the most feature rich (barring MSI) boards that are competitive (or outright best) from a performance perspective. Down the line, I will likely make use of the fact that this has DTS connect built in, that it has 6 SATA ports and 2 NICs. While they are not features that I will use today, I certainly will as all my old hardware gets dumped into my old machines. With that said, my 'old' boards are able to be OCd really well to keep performance acceptable with newer applications and I do feel very comfortable with the feature set of the SE.

I just have a feeling that the quality of construction on the asus side of things will mean that the board will last longer than most with above standard voltages and timings.

thx.
 
J4M3S0N79 said:
I agree that for the money, the EVGA looks more attractive however, at the moment the SE will replace my DFI NF4 SLI DR, which will replace my ABIT IC7 Max3 which will replace my DFI NFII UltraB and so on. I tend to buy the most feature rich (barring MSI) boards that are competitive (or outright best) from a performance perspective. Down the line, I will likely make use of the fact that this has DTS connect built in, that it has 6 SATA ports and 2 NICs. While they are not features that I will use today, I certainly will as all my old hardware gets dumped into my old machines. With that said, my 'old' boards are able to be OCd really well to keep performance acceptable with newer applications and I do feel very comfortable with the feature set of the SE.

I just have a feeling that the quality of construction on the asus side of things will mean that the board will last longer than most with above standard voltages and timings.

thx.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but I doubt it.
 
J4M3S0N79 said:
I agree that for the money, the EVGA looks more attractive however, at the moment the SE will replace my DFI NF4 SLI DR, which will replace my ABIT IC7 Max3 which will replace my DFI NFII UltraB and so on. I tend to buy the most feature rich (barring MSI) boards that are competitive (or outright best) from a performance perspective. Down the line, I will likely make use of the fact that this has DTS connect built in, that it has 6 SATA ports and 2 NICs. While they are not features that I will use today, I certainly will as all my old hardware gets dumped into my old machines. With that said, my 'old' boards are able to be OCd really well to keep performance acceptable with newer applications and I do feel very comfortable with the feature set of the SE.

I just have a feeling that the quality of construction on the asus side of things will mean that the board will last longer than most with above standard voltages and timings.

thx.
Click to expand...

The Striker is probably the least stable of the upper end 680i boards. Dual nics and lots of sata ports are also things that other boards come with.

The "quality" of the board is extremely debatable. You really have to overvolt things to get it working properly, and it can eat RAM.

I bought the Striker for the extra features, and I use most of them.

The problem is a lot of the BIOS "fixes" have not resulted in much better stability. The EVGA board is still more stable, and OC's better.

Probably the biggest, and most widely used, BIOS update the Striker got was the ability to turn on the blue board LED's while it's in use. Which really goes back to the fact that the only real advantage the Striker has is that it looks pretty.

I'll fully admit that other then the extra features, part of the reason I took the plunge was because it looked high end, and was priced high end.

However after working with it for a while, and building friends similar systems off the EVGA and Abit boards, the Striker simply doesn't stack up in quality.

Though it does look spiffy through the case window.;)
 
Why not get the performance, solid caps, and same PCB of the Striker Extreme without all the expensive "bling", save yourself the money, and avoid some of the inexplicable issues that some have had with the eVGA board by just getting the Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus?

It's listed as a 650i. But it's actually a hybrid chipset with all the performance of the 680i. It even uses the 680i drivers (not the 650i ones). After three happy months with the eVGA 680i, then a month of inexplicable problems. . . and a replacement board with its own set of issues, I finally went with this board, and I've had zero problems since. See sig for other specs.

Some recommend the "non-plus" version of this board as a "low cost" Striker Extreme. But you don't get the solid caps. . . and you still have the 680i southbridge. And part of me wonders if it's the older southbridge on the Plus version that makes this board so much less problematic than the full 680i boards I've had and read about.

The Plus is well reviewed (here on [H] as well). Good price. And performance is great. What's not to love?
 
I gotta agree with Hurin,too. I got my son a P5N-E SLI which is the pure 650i model, not the hybrid.

It is as well rock solid, but doesnt quite OC as well as my 680i version.......e6600 goes up to 3.1 then gets flaky.......

Nonetheless, he's an MMORPG player and the board is stable to next Tuesday.

There are a boat-load of choices out there.
 
The Striker is probably the least stable of the upper end 680i boards. The "quality" of the board is extremely debatable. You really have to overvolt things to get it working properly, and it can eat RAM.

lol ever used an abit AN9max with the hot digital PWM that's insane, Striker boards have been very reliable with 1102 and now 1202 bios mate, all earlier biosses were crap besides 0402 ( voltage setting issues, ram compatability and co )...and on the overvolt part none of my chipset settings have been over 1.55 volts to get too 450mhz FSB...I don't know what settings you needed to use...

It's all about finding the correct settings and here the EVGA does miracles as it's auto settings work well and the Striker requires manual implementation....which some users really get lost in...and damage components....

And Striker didn't eat RAM, I think you got it confused with another board, although some users complain when they set 2.35 or more volts there dimms give in... plz check ya settings first before giving high voltages ( everybody knew ram voltage on the 680i was overvolting from the start) and keep all the stuff cool... heat and electricity don't go along well in the long run....

My Striker hasn't let me down once and I visited loads of LANS and my rig is 24/7 overclocked and when I'm not on it it folds proteins for Stanford at 100% CPU load , pretty happy with it...and with bios 1202 it's even better performing when overclocked.... hope this release also fixes some 4 gig and more issues...

No matter which board you will buy there's always a little luck involved.... but in case I didn't need SLI (for benching) I would go Intel P35 anyday
 
leeghoofd said:
The Striker is probably the least stable of the upper end 680i boards. The "quality" of the board is extremely debatable. You really have to overvolt things to get it working properly, and it can eat RAM.

lol ever used an abit AN9max with the hot digital PWM that's insane, Striker boards have been very reliable with 1102 and now 1202 bios mate, all earlier biosses were crap besides 0402 ( voltage setting issues, ram compatability and co )...and on the overvolt part none of my chipset settings have been over 1.55 volts to get too 450mhz FSB...I don't know what settings you needed to use...

It's all about finding the correct settings and here the EVGA does miracles as it's auto settings work well and the Striker requires manual implementation....which some users really get lost in...and damage components....

And Striker didn't eat RAM, I think you got it confused with another board, although some users complain when they set 2.35 or more volts there dimms give in... plz check ya settings first before giving high voltages ( everybody knew ram voltage on the 680i was overvolting from the start) and keep all the stuff cool... heat and electricity don't go along well in the long run....

My Striker hasn't let me down once and I visited loads of LANS and my rig is 24/7 overclocked and when I'm not on it it folds proteins for Stanford at 100% CPU load , pretty happy with it...and with bios 1202 it's even better performing when overclocked.... hope this release also fixes some 4 gig and more issues...

No matter which board you will buy there's always a little luck involved.... but in case I didn't need SLI (for benching) I would go Intel P35 anyday
Click to expand...

While my striker has not burned up any memory I know others that have.

My point still stands though. The evga board is a better overclocker, more stable, and higher quality.

The striker looks better.

There isn't anything wrong with paying more for an inferior product if you prefer how it looks, or just want the e-penis growth of purchasing something that costs more. However if you're going to do that why not just go with the abit or the dfi? Unless you want the bling factor.

If you have the skills to manually set everything you can push the evga farther then you can the striker.

The only slam against it that I consider really unfair is all the fools who see "CPU INIT" and think the board is DOA, which is never the case and always boils down to user error.

We could also get into the difference between evga customer support vs asus...
 
Not all "CPU INIT" errors are correctable without RMA'ing the board or replacing the BIOS chip. I followed every bit of advice on the web for correcting this error with my Striker Extreme. In the end I was forced to get a BIOS chip from ASUS and replace mine.

You see, ASUS in all their wisdom hasn't included a BIOS recovery method on the Striker Extreme. This is appalling because I've seen lesser boards and boards far older have emergency proceedures for blind flashing and general BIOS recovery. Any board not having this type of feature is absolutely absurd.

sd11 said:
While my striker has not burned up any memory I know others that have.

My point still stands though. The evga board is a better overclocker, more stable, and higher quality.

The striker looks better.

There isn't anything wrong with paying more for an inferior product if you prefer how it looks, or just want the e-penis growth of purchasing something that costs more. However if you're going to do that why not just go with the abit or the dfi? Unless you want the bling factor.

If you have the skills to manually set everything you can push the evga farther then you can the striker.

The only slam against it that I consider really unfair is all the fools who see "CPU INIT" and think the board is DOA, which is never the case and always boils down to user error.

We could also get into the difference between evga customer support vs asus...
Click to expand...
 
Dan_D said:
Not all "CPU INIT" errors are correctable without RMA'ing the board or replacing the BIOS chip. I followed every bit of advice on the web for correcting this error with my Striker Extreme. In the end I was forced to get a BIOS chip from ASUS and replace mine.

You see, ASUS in all their wisdom hasn't included a BIOS recovery method on the Striker Extreme. This is appalling because I've seen lesser boards and boards far older have emergency proceedures for blind flashing and general BIOS recovery. Any board not having this type of feature is absolutely absurd.
Click to expand...

I agree wholeheartedly here. I was remounting my DFI in it's new case and I really came to appreciate the cmos reloaded feature.

I popped by frys last night and picked up a stick of VS 533mhz PC2 memory to get into the bios of the striker. My board is on the delivery truck from UPS as we speak. I am keeping my figers crossed that with the new board and new (temporary) ram, I will have this beast running stable for some time.

Also, with the watercooling on the e6600, I hope to get at least 3.4 That would be nice!
 
J4M3S0N79 said:
I agree wholeheartedly here. I was remounting my DFI in it's new case and I really came to appreciate the cmos reloaded feature.

I popped by frys last night and picked up a stick of VS 533mhz PC2 memory to get into the bios of the striker. My board is on the delivery truck from UPS as we speak. I am keeping my figers crossed that with the new board and new (temporary) ram, I will have this beast running stable for some time.

Also, with the watercooling on the e6600, I hope to get at least 3.4 That would be nice!
Click to expand...

I could do that on mine with air cooling. Should be a snap. Even my Striker which is a terrible overclocking specimen can do that.
 
Not all "CPU INIT" errors are correctable without RMA'ing the board or replacing the BIOS chip. I followed every bit of advice on the web for correcting this error with my Striker Extreme. In the end I was forced to get a BIOS chip from ASUS and replace mine.
Click to expand...

I'm aware that can be the case. However I'd wager the vast majority of customer reviews on newegg where people say "DOA it said CPU INIT and did nothing" are from people that didn't know what they were doing.
 
sd11 said:
I'm aware that can be the case. However I'd wager the vast majority of customer reviews on newegg where people say "DOA it said CPU INIT and did nothing" are from people that didn't know what they were doing.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
I was considering the Striker Extreme for some time. But then I read the Asus support forums for the Striker and I decided against it. Vigilantes and protesters... lol
 
OregonGuy said:
I was considering the Striker Extreme for some time. But then I read the Asus support forums for the Striker and I decided against it. Vigilantes and protesters... lol
Click to expand...

I ran in to something similar: reading the Creative support forums is enough to make anyone avoid purchasing an X-fi. I just wish I'd done so /before/ paying for the damn thing.
 
ASUS support has been damn near perfect when I've needed them.

I have an X-Fi that has been 100% aok from day one, but all I use is the drivers and the audio console and never touch all the other junk they put on the D/L files.
 
magoo said:
ASUS support has been damn near perfect when I've needed them.

I have an X-Fi that has been 100% aok from day one, but all I use is the drivers and the audio console and never touch all the other junk they put on the D/L files.
Click to expand...

It all comes down to luck anymore. I don't use anything but the drivers and audio console either.
 
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