P5K-VM + E8400

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fwkitziger

n00b
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
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The E8400 is not on the Asus CPU Support list, and I have one on the way. Has anyone installed a Wolfdale on this board?
 
I have not tried it in this board, but this board is suppose to support the new 45nm Wolfdales as far as I can tell. I would guess the most you would need is a bios update.
 
The latest BIOS definately supports it if I'm reading the site correctly. ASUS site showing 602 is the latest. Not sure if there is an earlier version that supports the 8400 or not. You could send an email or post a question on their forums and find out.

Edit: Should be BIOS 602 and not 601.
 
If you look at the P5K-VM CPU Support list here: http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5K-VM
The only 45nm listed is the Core 2 Extreme QX9650. It does require BIOS 602 but in the Asus (sorry excuse for a) support forum, moderator says: "Here is the listing of supported processors. The$1000.00 QX9650 is listed so other 45nm parts should work. But until a BIOS becomes available, a processor is not supported and use of an unsupported processor constitutes an 'improper use'...". So I am checking around. What's strange is that many other P5K versions are officially supported for all released Wolfdale cpu's. I am beginnign to wonder if I bought a dead end from this outfit.
 
The E8400 is now officially supported on the P5K-VM. There was a BIOS release on 2/15/08, version 0704, that adds official support for the E8200, E8400 and E8500. With that said, I have been using an E8400 at 3.6GHz on passive air for a couple weeks with no problems at all. It's a great chip and a great board.
 
I haven't seen any other changes. It did blank the CMOS, so I had to look at all the options again and didn't see any new ones. The temperature is still wrong, but it does seem to be wrong by a fixed amount.
 
I'm having stability issues on my P5K-VM after flashing the 0704 bios, anyone else? MS Memory Diagnostic program is reporting errors all of a sudden and I could not get Vista x64 installed at all.... (flashed right before I first tried installing it)
 
plutoz said:
I'm having stability issues on my P5K-VM after flashing the 0704 bios, anyone else? MS Memory Diagnostic program is reporting errors all of a sudden and I could not get Vista x64 installed at all.... (flashed right before I first tried installing it)
Click to expand...

I haven't seen any stability problems. You should run Memtest 86+ and see if any of your memory has gone bad, which is what it sounds like has happened.
 
i just flashed back to 0602 (which was a bit of a chore...) and the problem went away
 
plutoz....it would be helpful if you post your system setup to see if similar systems are having problems....or perhaps the new BIOS is defaulting to different RAM timings or voltage settings.
 
Sure, it's a pretty vanilla setup. P5K-VM, C2D E4400, 2x1GB OCZ DDR2-800 (OCZ2P8002GK), no add-in cards, Seagate 7200.10 80GB SATA drive, NEC PATA DVD/RW drive

As it turns out the system is still failing MS Memory Diagnostic, I even tried flashing down to 0401 and have the same result. Gonna try swapping out my RAM this morning with my other DDR2 system (P5B-VM) - both are OCZ but different parts

Always using all BIOS default timings (Automatic) for everything...

Edit: Swapped the RAM between my two systems and everything is fine now... weird. Using OCZ2VU8002GK in the P5K-VM BIOS 0401 it detected it at PC2-6400 just fine.
Funny enough the OCZ2P8002GK in the P5B-VM detects as PC2-4300 but I can clock it up to PC2-6400 manually in BIOS and it still tests fine.

Edit 2: whoops spoke too soon, started getting errors w/ the OCZ2P8002GK @ PC2-6400 (800mhz) on the P5B-Vm also
 
The OCZ2P8002GK is rated for 2.1v and the OCZ2VU8002GK is rated for 1.8v. My P5K-VM did not set the correct DIMMS voltage when on Auto, instead it defaulted to 1.8v. My RAM likes 2.1v also, so I had to manually set it. It could be that your board is doing the same, thus undervolting the OCZ2P8002GK while the OCZ2VU8002GK is happy at the default 1.8v
 
fwkitziger, thanks. As it turns out I was still having intermittent errors with the OCZ2P8002GK in the P5B-VM @ 800mhz, but it seems to be ok at PC2-4300 (what it detects it at with automatic)

I emailed OCZ and they just wrote me back suggesting the same thing. I'm not home right now but I seem to recall 1.95v was the max on my P5B-VM with the latest non-beta BIOS. Edit: confirmed, 1.95v is the highest on the P5B-VM with 0901 bios.

If you were able to set 2.1v on the P5K-VM I should be able to as well (might have to upgrade to newer BIOS again) and hopefully this will fix the issue. Just to confirm, which BIOS version do you have loaded on your system whereby you are running at 2.1v? I'd hate to need to go through the reverting back to an older BIOS experience again.....

I do find it strange that the P5K-VM system was pretty darn stable w/ Automatic DRAM voltage and timings (detected it as PC2-6400) for the past 6-8 months with the older (0401 I think?) BIOS under WinXP, it wasn't till I flashed to 0704 and tried installing Vista64 that I started seeing problems...
 
The P5B-VM and P5K-VM have no BIOS correlation. My P5K-VM has 2.1v available under all BIOS; yours should too. Once you confirm directly, let me know.
 
fwkitziger, I do have 2.1v option on the P5K-VM, testing the OCZ2P8002GK @ 800mhz 2.1v now

I currently have 0401 bios for the P5K-VM, which version are you using?
 
My OCZ2P8002GK modules still failed during testing @ 2.1v (800mhz), still running 0401 bios on the P5B-VM. OCZ already issued me an RMA but I'm wondering if I should bother trying to update the bios version to 0602 or 0704 again first to see if that makes any difference. Since its not listed as a feature of the newer releases I highly doubt it will do anything, thoughts?
 
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