ASUS P5B-E @ [H] Enthusiast

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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ASUS P5B-E - As a mainstream style follow up to their award winning Intel 975X based board, ASUS released the P5B-E on to the market. The little brother to the P5W DH Deluxe, the P5B-E seems to be able to hang just fine with the big boys.

Due to the issues the hard drive issues, we are going to withhold our “bottom line” till we have time to retest the ASUS P5B-E motherboard. Hopefully we just have a “bad” motherboard, as there has been little evidence from other users to suggest this is widespread. If the hard drive issues we have seen here are just a result of a board that needs to be RMAd, the ASUS P5B-E will prove to be a hell of a buy.

We would love to hear your experiences on this motherboard, please sound off in this thread after reading about our experience.
 
Using the Conroe Overclocking Database I can give you the names of six users that have that motherboard.

Indignity E6300@3,253Mhz 1.37V using Big Typhoon
dnottis E6300@3,603Mhz ???V using water
67shelby E6300@3,589Mhz 1.475V using Tuniq Tower 120
doormat E6400@3,200Mhz 1.35V using Scythe Ninja
keldegar E6400@3,336Mhz 1.3875V using Arctic Cooling Freezer 7
argonmt E6600@3,702Mhz 1.43V using water

Hope that helps. For more details look em up on the database or send them a PM.
 
I have this board as well..

E6400 @ 3200 1.35v
Water cooled but it would have done this on stock air cooling Im sure
 
I have found mine to be absolutely stellar, with no issues. I am attempting my first OC soon, but from this board it seems as though it's a perfectly stable board.
 
I have this board, but the 1.01G revision. I have no problem running at 400mhz FBS, but the moment I go over the 400mhz FSB, I have to do major voltage changes and even then at 410 FSB core 1 is not stable, core 0 is, very weird. I have a E6400 running at 3.2 Ghz stable, with Corsair C6400C4 ram in 2x1 gig sticks. My vdrop is terrible though. From voltage set in bios to what I see in Asus monitor at idle I drop .06 and at load the drop is .1. Most reviews I have seen suggest the drop is .02 to .06. I use the stock cooler and run about 47C idle and 65C load. I have had wierd things with my IDE Optical drive (Lite-ON DVD-ROM, where the OS seems to be trying to read what is on it but the drive spins for a couple of seconds then stops for a few seconds then starts again, then stops, then starts. Loading any application takes for ever at this point, but is does stop once you get the application loaded. I have only seen this since I instead Nero, so it might be Nero or the IDE controller getting wonky. Given the possible issue with IDE hard drives mentions in the article I was wondering if it might be a issue with the BIOS and this chip.

Other than that I like the board. I do not know if it would help the Vdrop but the Deluxe uses 8pin CPU power instead of this boards 4 pin and I might consider a change. I ideally would like the DS3P but it is vapor ware as in you can not get it in the US. DS3 is missing RAID (ok Micron controler does raid but then will not do IDE, look more problem with this controller). The DS6Q has the funky cooler plate that gets in the way of allot of after market coolers so it is out. Of course the Big Typhoon VX gets a Intel mount but it too is vaperware as I can not find it either in the US.

Anyway great article as usual.
 
I have no problems with this motherboard. Lacking in Vdimm but with OCZ DDR 1000 I have no issues up to 515 Mhz, above this the CPU starts to cap out. I've been able to duplicate max OC on the DS3 so I know it's not the board. Just a 50 MM fan on the NB and water cooled I've been running my 6300 at 3.6 Ghz for a few months now.

I am listed on the OC database as #3 for 6300.

Feel free to PM me questions.

Thanks,
Dean
 
I have this board running my e6400 at 3.1ghz. FSB at 387 though, at 400 I got an error in orthos after 2 hours. I have not had any stability issues at 387 and 3.1ghz though. Keeping Azureus running seems to be a good indication of stability if you ask me.
 
Can any of you P5B-E owners confirm that you have the ICH8R southbridge? I bought a P5B-E, only to find out that it had the ICH8, instead. When I called ASUS about it, they said it wasn't a mistake, but that's what it was supposed to have. I did have a rev 1.1 board, so maybe they changed it for the second, but it's misadvertised EVERYWHERE.

Also, the audio on my board was intolerable--the static was as loud as the audio, at any volume. Others have had similar problems (see Newegg reviews). I guess we were unlucky.
 
Can any of you P5B-E owners confirm that you have the ICH8R southbridge? I bought a P5B-E, only to find out that it had the ICH8, instead. When I called ASUS about it, they said it wasn't a mistake, but that's what it was supposed to have. I did have a rev 1.1 board, so maybe they changed it for the second, but it's misadvertised EVERYWHERE.

Also, the audio on my board was intolerable--the static was as loud as the audio, at any volume. Others have had similar problems (see Newegg reviews). I guess we were unlucky.

I think you got the P5B which does not have the ICH8R. There are two versions of P5B-E 1.01G and 1.02G both labeled by the memory slots check to make sure what the label says. Otherwise you have a right to complain if you got the P5B-E without a ICH8R. Mine has the ICH8R and I have rev 1.01G

Would seem the soundmax driver has some issue with the Graphics Equalizer as I too have the static and poping sounds. When I turned off the Graphic Equalizer it went away, well until I rebooted and then it was back, but only in games that are FPS and use WAV sound files. Would also seem ASUS is not in a hurry to fix this as it has been around since the boards (all P5B line, E, Deluxe and P5B) came out. I did see a post last month from someone who claims to have fixed the issue by writting there own driver, or more correctly hacking the drives to eliminate the Graphic Equalizer, which he claims fixed the issue, but then you have to go without the Equalizer, not a big problem for me but others might not like that solution.
 
I got my P5B-E just before christmas along with 2x1Gb OCZ 675Mhz memory and a E6600

The motherboard would not post correctly with the RAM and I borrowed some rubbish generic 256Mb stick of RAM from work and it POST just fine.

I read somewhere that this OCZ stuff needs 2.2v so I upped the voltage with the 256mb installed (which thankfully didnt die) then swapped out the RAM for th OCZ stuff, still didn't post.

I BIOS flashed, and I agree that the Asus website is slow and really needs some more bandwidth (I'm on a 8mbit/832k buisness line so it's not my end) I didn't have problem downloading the BIOS although I did have to mess around a lot to flash the BIOS, turns out a boot floppy isnt big enough to hold the flash utility and the ROM and all the boot files, I couldn't get the system to boot from a USB stick either, In the end I put the BIOS ROM onto a floppy and ran the flash utility in the BIOS menu which worked like a charm.

However after all that the RAM still did not boot and it went back to the shops.

I bought 2x1Gb of Crucial 667Mhz RAM and that worked like a dream (I'd like to note this is the first system I've built out of possibly 10 now, that I decided not to get crucial RAM and it's the only time the RAM has been incompatible, crucials RAM selection is just about the best you can get for compatability and reliability)

Promptly overclocked to 3.0Ghz with RAM @ 667Mhz without so much as a Vcore increase and has been stable overnight with 2 copies of Prime95 running (good enough for me)

Had absolutly no issues with my 7950GX2 for anyone who's wondering

And for the record I have the J-micron chipset running in IDE mode with a NEC DVD writer on the master and a 3rd hard drive on the Slave (Maxtor 200Gb 7,200 RPM)

However this is where I start to run into strange HDD/IDE/SATA issues like in the review.

First of all I set up a RAID 0 array on 2 of the ICH8R SATA ports, using 2x 36Gb WD Raptors (10,000 RPM) The install of Vista was smooth, I didn't need to load any 3rd party drivers since Vista has a compatible set for that chipset although just to test I tried "proper" the chipset drivers and they worked fine as well (I stuck with the Vista set)

Vista (Ultimate RTM) ran fine for a good few months but recently I had problems, it happens when I put a DVD into the DVD drive, it only happens with some DVD's. Basically what happens is the DVD spins up then Vista pauses (if sound is playing it loops for a few seconds) then both the DVD drive and the HDD on the same IDE cable, both dissapear from "my computer".

You can then simply go back into device manager, do a "scan for hardware changes" both drives re-appear.

Note: I tried disabling auto run and turning off auto preview and thumbnail view just to make sure any of that were causing problems. Additionally there appears to be no firmware updates for the DVD drive.

The very first time this happened I scanned for hardware changes, re-added the drives but I think I updated the drivers for both the chipsets in Vista, and because Im booting off my RAID 0 array it failed to boot back into windows (just a black screen where desktop should appear) I tried a Vista "repair" but that didn't work, I then checked the status of the device in the RAID setup device (at boot time) and it said the first drive in the array was not a compatible RAID device.

What I suspect happened was Vista started treating the drives as 2 seperate drives rather than a pair in RAID and probably did some read/write operations to one of the drives which killed the partition.

The rebuild of this was not without incident I had some problems pertaining to RAID, for the record the RAID boot option is not available when only 1 drive is attached (it needs 2 minimum to appear) so I had a few scares thinking the mobo was dead when rebuilding my Vista install. Im not sure what happened but on certain boots of the RAID the RAID boot setup would freeze when dealing with the drive, I reseated the SATA leads and I think in the end there was problems with the SATA lead connections, I rejigged some HDD placements inside my case so the leads weren't pressed agaisnt anything and that cleared it up.

Back with a fresh install of Vista now and I still get the DVD problem from time to time, it seems it was happening more when I had Daemon tools installed although it still occurs with it uninstalled, It's been more stable recently, DVD writing using nero has been fine and the few DVDs that do cause it to do this have varied in both types of data involved (I thought at one point it was only DVD containing ISO files but that turned out to be false) and it happens with both store bought DVDs and home written ones. I've had a couple of DVDs that did it then I cleaned them (wiped down with a soft cloth) and then they've loaded fine, so maybe it's when the DVD drive struggles to read discs or reads off information that is incorrect, who knows but it's been fine under XP for years and under Vista (before I upgraded my mobo)
 
I think you got the P5B which does not have the ICH8R. There are two versions of P5B-E 1.01G and 1.02G both labeled by the memory slots check to make sure what the label says. Otherwise you have a right to complain if you got the P5B-E without a ICH8R. Mine has the ICH8R and I have rev 1.01G

Would seem the soundmax driver has some issue with the Graphics Equalizer as I too have the static and poping sounds. When I turned off the Graphic Equalizer it went away, well until I rebooted and then it was back, but only in games that are FPS and use WAV sound files. Would also seem ASUS is not in a hurry to fix this as it has been around since the boards (all P5B line, E, Deluxe and P5B) came out. I did see a post last month from someone who claims to have fixed the issue by writting there own driver, or more correctly hacking the drives to eliminate the Graphic Equalizer, which he claims fixed the issue, but then you have to go without the Equalizer, not a big problem for me but others might not like that solution.

Actually, I really did have the P5B-E, and it was revision 1.01G as well. Have you checked to make sure you have the ICH8R? When I contacted ASUS, they offered no explanation about the misadvertised chip, but simply told me that my having the ICH8 in a P5B-E was "not a mistake." They did offer to RMA the board, which I did, though I still haven't seen a correction of their advertising. I'm hoping that's because newer versions of the board have the ICH8R after all, and not because they're too lazy or too dishonest to correct the misinformation.
 
Can any of you P5B-E owners confirm that you have the ICH8R southbridge? I bought a P5B-E, only to find out that it had the ICH8, instead. When I called ASUS about it, they said it wasn't a mistake, but that's what it was supposed to have. I did have a rev 1.1 board, so maybe they changed it for the second, but it's misadvertised EVERYWHERE.

Also, the audio on my board was intolerable--the static was as loud as the audio, at any volume. Others have had similar problems (see Newegg reviews). I guess we were unlucky.

Simple way to tell, the ICH8R has 6 Internal SATA ports, the connections are in 2 rows of 3 (4 red and 2 black)

The ICH8 only has 4 internal SATAs (don't know the colour or config)

Just totaly ignore the Jmicron external SATA and internal SATA connector, these are well to the side (under the PCI slots to the rear)

*EDIT*

Also, this is a FAQ section of the Asus website which specifically deals with the differences between the P5B revisions, very helpful!

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5B-E

It's under "Difference between P5B family motherboards"
 
Actually, I really did have the P5B-E, and it was revision 1.01G as well. Have you checked to make sure you have the ICH8R? When I contacted ASUS, they offered no explanation about the misadvertised chip, but simply told me that my having the ICH8 in a P5B-E was "not a mistake." They did offer to RMA the board, which I did, though I still haven't seen a correction of their advertising. I'm hoping that's because newer versions of the board have the ICH8R after all, and not because they're too lazy or too dishonest to correct the misinformation.

I do have ICH8R and am running a RAID 1 array on it as well. I think they miss labeled a board with P5B-E in the factory and you got a P5B instead. I assume the RMA gave you a board with 6 sata ports (4 red with 2 black bunched in two rows of three, red, red, black and red, red, black) There is also a black at the bottom of the board but is for the Jmircon chip. Asus would not doubt not admit to a miss label in the factory given the two boards, P5B and P5B-E are almost the same and use the same PCB layout, minus the two black sata ports for ICH8R. So they did you right with the RMA, hopefully they payed for shipping.

I do not know for sure but I would be surprised if the two board P5B and P5B-e were not made in the same factory and one after the other and someone put the wrong labels in when the PCB was made, you may not be the only one who will be confused. Do you have a picture of the board you got?
 
I bought one of these boards myself before Christmas along with an E6300 and some pc6400. at the moment I'm running it at 450*7= 3150mhz @1.35v, 42hrs+ stable in orthos. I ended up receiving the 1.01g board so I can only set the ram to 2.1v, just on the edge of my ram's rated voltage, so it could probably go a little higher if I had the 1.02g

edit: just checked and it's got the ICH8R
 
Interestingly enough I came home to find that after an hour or so Vista started acting akwardly and then explorer crashed, torrents stopped working correctly and I think one of the hard drives was on the blink (this time on my RAID 0 array)

I reboot and have problems getting back into windows and have to use the last known best config in the end, I've lost a load of settings due to that (forum passwords, history on Utorrent as this is stored in the registry)

The RAID controller see's the 2nd hard drive as "error occured (0)" but marks the array as bootable, windows seems to be booting OK now, I've done a quick scandisc on C: and it's not returned any errors :/

not sure whats going on but I think maybe the connection is loose on of my drives or something, the SATA cables are seated firmly though.

*edit*

Great so I looked around for my drive error message (that im still getting) and found this

http://www.futurehardware.in/563360.htm

That person is having the same problem as me, although its not a problem because it boots fine and works fine (at least at the moment)

I think theres possibly a problem with this motherboard and the way it handles drives, maybe a problem witht he southbridge :(

*edit 2*

This person is also having a very similar problem, there must have been an error at soem stage and caused the drives to report an error but its booting fine even though the BIOS stage reports errors (same as me)

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1030541414#post1030541414

Also the 0706 BIOS ROM lists this as part of it's updated features:-

"Enhance ATA ODD compatibility" I wonder if somethign was done in a BIOS update thats causing these problems?
 
Well after seeing that RAID problem as described above I decided to try the delete and rebuild RAID route, turned out that was a bad idea since Vista wouldn't boot after I did it, although I recognised it was insatlled (in the boot menu)

So i've just reinstalled again, lucky I backed up my Theme Hospital save games :)

When rebuilding I had more or less the same problem as I had before, I removed the RAID, made both disks "non-raid" drives and then rebuilt the array, when all the selections have been made it builds the array but freezes there, after rebooting the first disk is set correctly to be used but the 2nd disk is a non RAID disk still so obviously that fails.

This seems to be a hardware problem at low level, the SATA controller.

I'm not sure if it's heat and it just had time to cool down but I reset the BIOS and after rebooting it detected the drives fine again, I guess maybe something is getting written to one of the BIOS ROMS (maybe the RAID one even?) at some stage and stopping the drives from being detected/used properly.

Either way this is very erratic bahaviour.

I checked the Asus website and there is actually a beta BIOS 0801 I think, you can only see it if you select BIOS ROMS from the top tabs rather than the explorer view on the left.

Anyhow this is the 2nd time my RAID has become broken and I've had to reinstall Vista, getting irritating now, I will await [H]'s final review and maybe a new BIOS, then I'm afraid I'll have to RMA the board as defective.
 
A quick Noob question. When you report the vcore are you reporting the bios setting or what CPUz reports and is this under load or idle?

thanks.

The vcore reading is from CPU-Z and the Asus Utility with 100% utilization running Prime95 24hours.

In actual bios, the vcore is set to 1.4250V.

Now being a noobie, is it accurate to report 1.4250 or 1.35?

Which one should I trust?
 
Actually I saw the 0904 BIOS over at station-drivers.com a few minutes ago purely by chances, when looking for the new Vista Forceware X drives (apparantly 110.00 is on there)

Do we have a fix list for this to see if it specifically mentions SATA problems?

*edit*

ah this is on the Asus site now, you have to expand BIOS from the left rather than use the tabs at the top

P5B-E Release BIOS 0904
**Please update AsusUpdate to V7.09.02 or later prior making this update.**
**Do not use AsusUpdate to downgrade BIOS. For such need, please use EZFlash or AFUDOS instead**
1. Finetune Q-Fan control algorithm
2. Enable EIST under VISTA
3. Update CPU Ucode to support new CPU
4. Fix BBS device string not correct under AHCI mode
5. Support SLP2.0 string
6. Fix HCT unreported I/O and memory issuse
7. Support disable USB function item
8. Allow disable XD for conroe L
9. Add full reset after change DRAM mode to enhance memory compatibility
10. Support CONROE E0 CPU(FSB 1333)
11. Fix AC Power loss function not correct
12. Support x4 DIMM
 
I've just flashed from 0701 to 0904 (as above) and it's not stopped my problem with my DVD writer on my IDE channel

Certain DVD's I put in just make the system stutter and the DVD drive and the hard drive on the same IDE cable both dissapear from my computer, I have to rescan in Device Manager and they just re-appear as if nothing happened.

I was reading something not long ago about there being a problem with the DVD drives in Vista not being able to read multi session disks correctly, Im betting it's that but I cannot for the life of me find what it was I was reading, I think it may have been the 0801 Beta BIOS :/

*UPDATE*

Just updated the JMB36X drivers for the chipset to (1.17.08.01 WHQL) the ones from station-drivers and that's not helped, certain DVDs still have issues causing the hardware to uninstall.
 
I love my P5B-E.

Works very well and OCs well for me ([email protected] w/400FSB (I dropped the multi down)).

I only had one HDD corrupt that happened on my SATA drive when I was at an unstable overclock, i think this was just an unstable overclock though and nothing else.

I will be interested to upgrade to the new bios as well :)
 
**UPDATE - kinda fixed!**

YAY!

After trauling through a few old support threads for similar P5B boards I've found a few people with similar problems as me (although slightly different due to XP and not Vista)

What I did was went into BIOS and set the Jmicron controller to AHCI mode rather than IDE mode. On the right it actually says that this setting sets the SATA contoller part but the PATA part remains IDE always (not sure why IDE is a selection in this case, but oh well!)

As the Jmicron controller set to AHCI mode I rebooted into windows, Vista failed to install the drivers correctly so I manually removed the controller and re-scanned for hardware and force installed the drivers by selecting the destination and then picking I wanted to chose where to install it from, the pre-existing widows default IDE controller drivers were there, picked them and it worked fine, went on to detect and install the drivers for my DVD drive and my hard drive OK.

Tried a disc I knew worked before and that loaded fine as usual, I then tried one I knew didn't work and it span up, took a short while to read and then explorer popped up with no problems. That disc actually holds an ISO file of about 4.19gb and Im copying that ISO file to my IDE hard drive now to make sure the test works.

While this problem is solved and can be put down to a shoddy controller on Jmicrons part (theres load of other reported issues) i think theres still possibly a problem with the SATA drives like mentioned in review, if I had to guess I would say that maybe the controller is overheating at some stage due to only having passive cooling and thats causing either corruption in the BIOS settings or something, because 1 or more SATA channels fail to read drives correctly which not only corrupts the RAID array you have set up at the time but also when you use the RAID BIOS at boot time to access the RAID menu to create and remove arrays, creating a new array doesn't work, it crashes (freezes) due to not being able to detect one of the drive correctly.

Resetting the BIOS actually seems to fix this so whatever corruption is going on is at CMOS level and can be fixed by resetting it by powering down your motherboard, removeing all power cable, removing the CMOS battery and switching the relevant CMOS jumper over.

Its very odd indeed and I eagerly await the review update, but at least the Jmicron problem is gone for the time being.

I will report back a bit later to let you guys know if the DVD writer will actually write OK like this, as thats one of the other common reported problems, that writing or clearing RW discs fails.


*EDIT*

Spoke too soon!

It got to about 4gb of the total 4.2gb copying the ISO file to my HDD and then slowed to a crawl, vista then gave up and I ejected the DVD and put it back in, and now it's misbehaving again, explorer wont read the DVD it just takes ages to refresh "my computer"

Explorer restarted now and reading the DVD OK, I'm attempting to copy back the ISO file again...

*EDIT 2*

OK that ISO file copied over OK this time after cleaning the DVD a little, no pauses, slow downs or crashes, although it did take a bout 5-6 minutes which is a bit longer than I'd expect. Still if having a hard to read DVD causes problems this serious obviously the controller is still buggy, this is far from ideal but at least I've got my COH ISO back :D

I've just tried copying the ISO from the IDE DVD to the IDE HDD and that worked ok as well, again a little slow but thats to be expected from IDE to IDE on the same cable.
 
I just wish that the SATA optical drives worked with games (i have heard they do not work with all games) so i could just ditch IDE alltogether;)
 
Looks like we're at the "you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't" stage with IDE :(
 
Just updated to the newest 901 bios and all seems well.

No real differences, but I was having no issues before either. Also nice to see the 1333FSB supported without having to buy a new board ;)

One thing that I think is interesting is that [H] got the 1.02g version. To my knowledge everyone I have seen has gotten the 1.01g version (as I have) from retailers like Newegg, ZZF, etc.
 
looks like the 901 and 804 BIOS ROMs have been removed from the Asus site (although it was just down for maintenance)

Getting kind of worried about this now :/
 
Uhh, yeah... probably has something to do with them not flashing right.

I had a P5B-E until I updated to the newest BIOS last night. I used ASUS Update - the
newest version - the one the BIOS file readme told you to use...

Erased the EEPROM fine, flashed the EEPROM fine, and verified the EEPROM fine.

Only odd thing was I for some reason unchecked the box to clear the Checksum values to
restore system defaults before I flashed it... not sure if that made a difference or not... it
was overclocked at the time and I was tired of going in and having to set everything up again.

Anyway, ASUS splash screen came up, the Jmicron PATA controller screen came up,
then nothing... black screen. Alt+F2 didn't get into the flash utility. Wouldn't boot off the
CD, a floppy, a USB flash drive. Resetting the CMOS jumper didn't change anything.
Taking the battery out, reseating everything, unplugging it... nothing.

Just dead. So, it went out RMA this afternoon. Stupid ASUS.
 
Interestingly enough I came home to find that after an hour or so Vista started acting akwardly and then explorer crashed, torrents stopped working correctly and I think one of the hard drives was on the blink (this time on my RAID 0 array)

I reboot and have problems getting back into windows and have to use the last known best config in the end, I've lost a load of settings due to that (forum passwords, history on Utorrent as this is stored in the registry)

The RAID controller see's the 2nd hard drive as "error occured (0)" but marks the array as bootable, windows seems to be booting OK now, I've done a quick scandisc on C: and it's not returned any errors :/

not sure whats going on but I think maybe the connection is loose on of my drives or something, the SATA cables are seated firmly though.

*edit*

Great so I looked around for my drive error message (that im still getting) and found this

http://www.futurehardware.in/563360.htm

That person is having the same problem as me, although its not a problem because it boots fine and works fine (at least at the moment)

I think theres possibly a problem with this motherboard and the way it handles drives, maybe a problem witht he southbridge :(

*edit 2*

This person is also having a very similar problem, there must have been an error at soem stage and caused the drives to report an error but its booting fine even though the BIOS stage reports errors (same as me)

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1030541414#post1030541414

Also the 0706 BIOS ROM lists this as part of it's updated features:-

"Enhance ATA ODD compatibility" I wonder if somethign was done in a BIOS update thats causing these problems?

There is no problem with your hardware, if the computer crashes or something while data is waiting to be read from or written to the HD and the read or write fails, the intel raid controller will assume the failure was the fault of the hd and mark it as bad. All you have to do is install the intel matrix storage manager in windows, open the app, and tell it to mark the drive as normal.
 
There is no problem with your hardware, if the computer crashes or something while data is waiting to be read from or written to the HD and the read or write fails, the intel raid controller will assume the failure was the fault of the hd and mark it as bad. All you have to do is install the intel matrix storage manager in windows, open the app, and tell it to mark the drive as normal.

Ah thanks for the info, I've never used that before, but I'm very wary of installing anythign even remotely RAID associate in windows, if the drivers are tampered with in any way, and the system reboots it will never get back into windows.

It appears even installing Ntune from Nvidia (for access to video card overclocking tools) broke my RAID and resulted in a re-install.

Is there any way to lock down what drivers can and cannot be changed so that I can force windows to always use one specific set, even if it's just at boot time?

Again thanks for your input.
 
Additional note, there's a new revision of the BIOS out on Asus's website, the 10.02

P5B-E Release BIOS 1002
**Please update AsusUpdate to V7.09.02 or later prior making this update.**
**This BIOS does not support roll back to earlier BIOS**
1. Finetune Q-Fan control algorithm
2. Enable EIST under VISTA
3. Update CPU Ucode to support new CPU
4. Fix BBS device string not correct under AHCI mode
5. Support SLP2.0 string
6. Fix HCT unreported I/O and memory issuse
7. Support disable USB function item
8. Allow disable XD for conroe L
9. Add full reset after change DRAM mode to enhance memory compatibility
10. Support CONROE E0 CPU(FSB 1333)
11. Fix AC Power loss function not correct
12. Support x4 DIMM
 
Ah thanks for the info, I've never used that before, but I'm very wary of installing anythign even remotely RAID associate in windows, if the drivers are tampered with in any way, and the system reboots it will never get back into windows.

It appears even installing Ntune from Nvidia (for access to video card overclocking tools) broke my RAID and resulted in a re-install.

Is there any way to lock down what drivers can and cannot be changed so that I can force windows to always use one specific set, even if it's just at boot time?

Again thanks for your input.

Well, I don't know, you sound borderline paranoid. :p I'm not going to pretend I have years of experience with this sort of thing, but I just haven't really heard of that being a real issue before. Even if this somehow did happen, its not something that couldn't be fixed. I suppose you could just not install the app and ignore the drive failure message...but I think it even slows down post, so that would suck.

I am curious how something like ntune would destroy your raid drivers though...although I guess ntune is kinda weird that way...
 
Frosteh have you seen the new drivers Asus has released for the Jmicron on Vista?

Apparently we now have the choice to install an IDE drive or an AHCI/SATA driver. Lots of people have issues with DVDs with AHCI enabled. Mine seemed to be working ok, but I am trying out that driver in Vista and it changes your devices so you have a normal IDE controller Now my DVD-ROM doesn't say it's a SCSI device anymore. This functionality works better for most people in XP, meaning, use Windows' IDE drivers, not the Jmicron ones, which are always AHCI and cause problems.

Also, there is a thread on Tom's Hardware with a guy basically stating RAID is not supported on the ICHR8 in Vista...Apparently in the latest BIOS revisions they actually downgraded the ICHR8 ROM, and this guy has posted some support emails where he basically proves that RAID is not supported yet in Vista!
 
Frosteh have you seen the new drivers Asus has released for the Jmicron on Vista?

Apparently we now have the choice to install an IDE drive or an AHCI/SATA driver. Lots of people have issues with DVDs with AHCI enabled. Mine seemed to be working ok, but I am trying out that driver in Vista and it changes your devices so you have a normal IDE controller Now my DVD-ROM doesn't say it's a SCSI device anymore. This functionality works better for most people in XP, meaning, use Windows' IDE drivers, not the Jmicron ones, which are always AHCI and cause problems.

Also, there is a thread on Tom's Hardware with a guy basically stating RAID is not supported on the ICHR8 in Vista...Apparently in the latest BIOS revisions they actually downgraded the ICHR8 ROM, and this guy has posted some support emails where he basically proves that RAID is not supported yet in Vista!

I actually saw a few of them today while looking through the support, the last package I tried installing was an official Jmicron release which I found on some driver website, it too gave the option to install IDE or SATA drivers, but didn't help any. This release maybe newer (I can't tell because I'm at work) but I will definately try it when I get home, thanks.

My ICH8R array (2x 10k rpm raptors in RAID 0) is actually working just fine, Vista has support for this from the ground up, when booting off the Vista DVD it see's the array as 1 drive, can format and install on it fine without the use of the "proper" drivers, although some experimentation showed they also work fine.
 
Quick update, the new Jmicron IDE drivers don't appear to help my problem with large DVD (a problem with what appears to be files that exceed ~4Gb)

Also, when can we expect an update to the article?
 
Uhh, yeah... probably has something to do with them not flashing right.

I had a P5B-E until I updated to the newest BIOS last night. I used ASUS Update - the
newest version - the one the BIOS file readme told you to use...

Erased the EEPROM fine, flashed the EEPROM fine, and verified the EEPROM fine.

Only odd thing was I for some reason unchecked the box to clear the Checksum values to
restore system defaults before I flashed it... not sure if that made a difference or not... it
was overclocked at the time and I was tired of going in and having to set everything up again.

Anyway, ASUS splash screen came up, the Jmicron PATA controller screen came up,
then nothing... black screen. Alt+F2 didn't get into the flash utility. Wouldn't boot off the
CD, a floppy, a USB flash drive. Resetting the CMOS jumper didn't change anything.
Taking the battery out, reseating everything, unplugging it... nothing.

Just dead. So, it went out RMA this afternoon. Stupid ASUS.

Amazing! I've had almost the exact experience as yours. Right after X'mas I built a new PC with the P5B-E and a Core 2 Duo E6600, as well as 2 Gigs of A-Data DDR2 800 RAM sticks.

I downloaded the 0904 BIOS the same day it came out. I had flashed the BIOS twice before within Win XP so I did the update in XP as well using the latest Windows flasher (7.9.0.2 I believe) and the flash finished normally. I followed the reboot instruction and all of a sudden I was greeted with the text mode BIOS recovery screen (I guess that's the one normally comes up after one presses ALT-F2 but I'd never used it before). It said BIOS checksum error and told me to restore the BIOS using floppy, CD-ROM or a USB device. I made a huge mistake here by putting the same 0904 BIOS image on a USB disk and tried to restore it. If I put in an earlier release everything might be fine again but I flashed with the same problematic release. It also finished fine and asked me to shut down the machine and restart.

Then I encountered the same thing as you did: The BIOS welcome screen comes up, when I press TAB it even shows the correct CPU, memory, HDD info. Then at the JMicron screen, after detecting my IDE CD-ROM, I got blank screen and could go nowhere. Pressing DEL or ALT-F2 upon bootup won't do anything. I also tried cleaning the CMOS memory but it didn't help. I have sent the motherboard back to Asus support and still waiting for it to come back. If the local support can't fix it they will have to send it back to the Asus factory and that would take about three weeks to come back. :(

This is very frustrating as the BIOS image was extracted from a Zip file so it couldn't be a corrupted download. In my two flash attempts both ended normally and I still ended up with a dead motherboard. I've been building my own systems for over a decade and have never encountered this issue. My 4-year-old Gigabyte mobo has a dual BIOS design which I guess is more failsafe. The P5B-E had been working very well but I highly doubt my next system in the future will have an Asus mobo in it.

Peter Fang
Beijing, China
 
Amazing! I've had almost the exact experience as yours. Right after X'mas I built a new PC with the P5B-E and a Core 2 Duo E6600, as well as 2 Gigs of A-Data DDR2 800 RAM sticks.

I downloaded the 0904 BIOS the same day it came out. I had flashed the BIOS twice before within Win XP so I did the update in XP as well using the latest Windows flasher (7.9.0.2 I believe) and the flash finished normally. I followed the reboot instruction and all of a sudden I was greeted with the text mode BIOS recovery screen (I guess that's the one normally comes up after one presses ALT-F2 but I'd never used it before). It said BIOS checksum error and told me to restore the BIOS using floppy, CD-ROM or a USB device. I made a huge mistake here by putting the same 0904 BIOS image on a USB disk and tried to restore it. If I put in an earlier release everything might be fine again but I flashed with the same problematic release. It also finished fine and asked me to shut down the machine and restart.

Then I encountered the same thing as you did: The BIOS welcome screen comes up, when I press TAB it even shows the correct CPU, memory, HDD info. Then at the JMicron screen, after detecting my IDE CD-ROM, I got blank screen and could go nowhere. Pressing DEL or ALT-F2 upon bootup won't do anything. I also tried cleaning the CMOS memory but it didn't help. I have sent the motherboard back to Asus support and still waiting for it to come back. If the local support can't fix it they will have to send it back to the Asus factory and that would take about three weeks to come back. :(

This is very frustrating as the BIOS image was extracted from a Zip file so it couldn't be a corrupted download. In my two flash attempts both ended normally and I still ended up with a dead motherboard. I've been building my own systems for over a decade and have never encountered this issue. My 4-year-old Gigabyte mobo has a dual BIOS design which I guess is more failsafe. The P5B-E had been working very well but I highly doubt my next system in the future will have an Asus mobo in it.

Peter Fang
Beijing, China

My RMA to Newegg was accepted and a new board was shipped out. Came in today. It's version 1.02G, so that's cool... at least I went from the 1.01G to the new version in all of this.

And it's all stable at 3.2Ghz running RAM at stock DDR2-800 with a FSB of 1600Mhz.

Think I'm upgrading the BIOS to the new 1002 version that just came out? Not a chance in hell....
 
My RMA to Newegg was accepted and a new board was shipped out. Came in today. It's version 1.02G, so that's cool... at least I went from the 1.01G to the new version in all of this.

And it's all stable at 3.2Ghz running RAM at stock DDR2-800 with a FSB of 1600Mhz.

Think I'm upgrading the BIOS to the new 1002 version that just came out? Not a chance in hell....

Still waiting for the distributor to send back the board but upon further research it appears that we might have been bit by a bug in the 0904 version that's not compatible with a PCI sound card or other PCI devices (namely a Creative sound card). I found this thread where a few P5B users encountered similar issues with a BIOS version released around the same time as 0904 for the P5B-E. I actually have the same Audigy 2 ZS card mentioned by one of the posters there.

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47424

Apparently removing PCI cards present will allow the system to boot and then downgrade the BIOS to older releases. If this is indeed the case, I'd safely assume if you flash your newly arrived P5B-E with the same ill-fated 0904 you'll see the same thing. If 1002 fixes this PCI issue then it would be fine to upgrade to it.

I've been surprised by such a bug if it's indeed the case.

Update: Also check out this: http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47570


PF
 
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