The Official P45 Asus P5Q Motherboard Thread

should I uninstall the EPU-6 engine?

I don't know if it really does anything, and it's just another program that has to boot up.
 
p5q pro
realtek audio drivers

i get a constant, like once every 30 seconds, notification in the tray that "you have unplugged a audio device", then right after it "you have plugged in an audio device"

All I have plugged in is my 2 speakers, they both work fine. I cant stand this damn thing popping up every few seconds. any clue on how to fix this?

also, since im here, anyone know how to fix the damn bug that youtube videos will only play for ~2 seconds then freeze?
 
Hey fellas, I've got quite a few questions that I've researched the last week however most of the responses are dated. Was wondering if you guys can clear a few things up for me. My goal is rock solid stability first, and a nice bump to 3.5ish for the CPU. Not an avid OC'er anymore as well.

Heres the parts that relate to my questions:
Asus P5Q pro
4 (2x2gig) G.Skill DDR2 1066
Q9550
WD 150 Raptor
Lite On and Asus SATA DVD drives


1. I'd like to be able to use all 4 gigs IF I actually need it for current and upcoming games. I don't do anything intensive enough outside of gaming to really utilize it so gaming is my only make or break deal. If you suggest using a 64bit Windows, would that be Win XP 64 or Vista 64? I do play alot of older games that I NEED to have the ability to run "well", if you suggest the Vista route.

2. Has anyone had any compatibility issues with this board and the RAM choice? 2T is the correct setting right? Also is there any issues with running this RAM at its rated speed that you know of using this board?

3. Is there still a problem with the P5Q boards when installing Windows via an SATA drive? I've read TONS of people having trouble with the AHCI setting for SATA drives, or is that ONLY with ICH9 CS? Basically is it going to be a bear to get windows installed through a SATA drive. I have a floppy drive as well and I plan on using it.

4. Is there anything I should be leary or aware of when setting this board up with my current choice of parts?

Finally, for a non crossfire system, is this the board some of you vets or savvy builders would suggest OR would you recommend another chipset or brand? Im very flexible when it comes to stability and ease of set-up and Windows install. I do like to tweak a bit still but overall Im looking for comfort guys.

I hope you all can help settle me so I can get this ordered
headbang.gif
 
Hey fellas, I've got quite a few questions that I've researched the last week however most of the responses are dated. Was wondering if you guys can clear a few things up for me. My goal is rock solid stability first, and a nice bump to 3.5ish for the CPU. Not an avid OC'er anymore as well.

Heres the parts that relate to my questions:
Asus P5Q pro
4 (2x2gig) G.Skill DDR2 1066
Q9550
WD 150 Raptor
Lite On and Asus SATA DVD drives


1. I'd like to be able to use all 4 gigs IF I actually need it for current and upcoming games. I don't do anything intensive enough outside of gaming to really utilize it so gaming is my only make or break deal. If you suggest using a 64bit Windows, would that be Win XP 64 or Vista 64? I do play alot of older games that I NEED to have the ability to run "well", if you suggest the Vista route.

2. Has anyone had any compatibility issues with this board and the RAM choice? 2T is the correct setting right? Also is there any issues with running this RAM at its rated speed that you know of using this board?

3. Is there still a problem with the P5Q boards when installing Windows via an SATA drive? I've read TONS of people having trouble with the AHCI setting for SATA drives, or is that ONLY with ICH9 CS? Basically is it going to be a bear to get windows installed through a SATA drive. I have a floppy drive as well and I plan on using it.

4. Is there anything I should be leary or aware of when setting this board up with my current choice of parts?

Finally, for a non crossfire system, is this the board some of you vets or savvy builders would suggest OR would you recommend another chipset or brand? Im very flexible when it comes to stability and ease of set-up and Windows install. I do like to tweak a bit still but overall Im looking for comfort guys.

I hope you all can help settle me so I can get this ordered
headbang.gif

Excellent choice on components so far. That processor will likely hit 3.6GHz in its sleep on this board. I recommend updating the BIOS, and perhaps even one of the modded BIOSes that are linked earlier in this thread. I haven't used one yet, as I have had zero problems whatsoever with any of my components or settings in my current setup.

The only ACHI issue I have is that express gate will not work in ACHI mode, only in IDE mode. I am too lazy right now to install an IDE drive just for Express gate, but when I ran it in IDE mode, it was pretty slick. Not really important though. I usually need vista as most of what I do is video/photo editing and gaming - can't do either in the Linux Splashtop Browser from express gate.

The 1000MHz version of that G.Skill memory runs perfectly fine in my board, and I have four 2GB modules for a total of 8GB. I recommend you get a 2x2GB kit. You might never use 8GB, but if you decide you want to you'll kick yourself when you have to buy 4 new sticks, unless you find a use for the others.

When you mention the 150GB raptor, is that one of the new models or one of the old models? I believe I read something about the old models only working after a BIOS update, but that the new ones have zero issues with the P5Q boards.

For a CPU cooler if you want an amazing budget cooler, get the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. Currently $27 shipped:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134

Amazing cooler and it's on sale with free shipping right now. It will be plenty sufficient to breeze on up to 3.6GHz with a 45nm quad. If you're going to push it to 4.0 and maybe even beyond, I suggest this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835109125

The famed TRUE. Newegg never has it in stock, like most thermalright products they carry, or should I say advertise but rarely carry... Here's where I got it:

http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/thermalright-ultra-120-extreme-cpu-cooler-p-16580.html

They had a lower price than the Egg anyways, and same or better shipping if I recall. They recommended an amazing Cooljag PWM 120mm fan with it, and the fan IS amazing, but when I got it, I had to cut the posts off to get it to work with the poor-designed fan clips that come with the TRUE. According to Anand, there still is no standard air cooler out there that will outperform a TRUE with a good 120mm fan. Try to find one w/o the posts, though.... And you need a good sized case for the TRUE, where the Freezer 7 Pro will fit in most mid-tower cases, and even some minis.

This is a fantastic non-crossfire board. I am running a single 4850 and with my 3.6GHz overclock on my trusty old Q6700 this rig is 100% rock solid stable. I'll never go back to those nVidia chipsets I dabbled with in the past again. This board is vastly superior. All solid state caps, excellent port & header placement, and it's one hundred and twenty bucks!!!!! My nVidia GTX 260 Maxcore from BFG is on the way .... so crossfire is kinda out for me right now, but this board will run two 4850's in crossfire with almost no noticeable bottleneck for being in 8x 8x mode. And two 4850's will outperform a GTX 280, in some games by considerable margin.

The 8x 8x mode isn't a real bottleneck with 4850's and below in crossfire so the option will be there for you. It would even provide some good benefits with two 4870's but perhaps with a slightly more noticeable bottleneck. I have only seen tests on the 4850's in CF, and the P45 is on par with X38 with most tests, and very close to the X48 most of the time as well. It completely obliterates P35 variants which run at 16x 4x mode. 4x is a deal killa.

Hopefully that helps. Drop another post if you have questions or want more suggestions. I love my P5Q pro, and it's solid as a rock, and boasts the most robust and comprehensive feature set and overclocking performance of any board I've ever seen close to the 100 dollar range.
 
^^ Good advice but I recommend looking at the S1283 or one of it's variants for a CPU cooler. That Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro doesn't really cut it for quads. The TRUE is a good choice but the S1283 performs withing a degree or two of it and can be had for much less. With the TRUE you also have to buy a decent fan as the one the TRUE ships with sucks, the fan that comes with the S1283 is a good fan.

I'd stay a way from the raptor, buy two of these and put them in raid 0 (which works great, with my two 500GB 7200.11s in raid 0 I get an average transfer rate of 160.5 MB/sec. no installation problems or anything) or just buy a single one of those hard drives. I'm just not a fan of raptors they don't add much (if any) performance and give you less storage for a lot more money but if you must have a raptor stick with the 300GB version which is the new version.
 
I'd stay a way from the raptor, buy two .
Im using my old HDD which is the first bunch of the raptor 150's. I'm not gonna shell out the the money for a new drive ATM as this suffices for my needs, however, as more games come out that i dig I might jump onto the 300gig bandwagon too. I prefer a single drive as its less expensive but more so less power and l get no benefit from a raid 0 for gaming according to the old benchies that were covered her a while back.



Excellent choice on components so far. That processor will likely hit 3.6GHz in its sleep on this board. I recommend updating the BIOS, and perhaps even one of the modded BIOSes that are linked earlier in this thread. I haven't used one yet, as I have had zero problems whatsoever with any of my components or settings in my current setup.

The only ACHI issue I have is that express gate will not work in ACHI mode, only in IDE mode. I am too lazy right now to install an IDE drive just for Express gate, but when I ran it in IDE mode, it was pretty slick. Not really important though. I usually need vista as most of what I do is video/photo editing and gaming - can't do either in the Linux Splashtop Browser from express gate.

The 1000MHz version of that G.Skill memory runs perfectly fine in my board, and I have four 2GB modules for a total of 8GB. I recommend you get a 2x2GB kit. You might never use 8GB, but if you decide you want to you'll kick yourself when you have to buy 4 new sticks, unless you find a use for the others.

When you mention the 150GB raptor, is that one of the new models or one of the old models? I believe I read something about the old models only working after a BIOS update, but that the new ones have zero issues with the P5Q boards.

For a CPU cooler if you want an amazing budget cooler, get the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. Currently $27 shipped:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134

Amazing cooler and it's on sale with free shipping right now. It will be plenty sufficient to breeze on up to 3.6GHz with a 45nm quad. If you're going to push it to 4.0 and maybe even beyond, I suggest this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835109125

The famed TRUE. Newegg never has it in stock, like most thermalright products they carry, or should I say advertise but rarely carry... Here's where I got it:

http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/thermalright-ultra-120-extreme-cpu-cooler-p-16580.html

They had a lower price than the Egg anyways, and same or better shipping if I recall. They recommended an amazing Cooljag PWM 120mm fan with it, and the fan IS amazing, but when I got it, I had to cut the posts off to get it to work with the poor-designed fan clips that come with the TRUE. According to Anand, there still is no standard air cooler out there that will outperform a TRUE with a good 120mm fan. Try to find one w/o the posts, though.... And you need a good sized case for the TRUE, where the Freezer 7 Pro will fit in most mid-tower cases, and even some minis.

This is a fantastic non-crossfire board. I am running a single 4850 and with my 3.6GHz overclock on my trusty old Q6700 this rig is 100% rock solid stable. I'll never go back to those nVidia chipsets I dabbled with in the past again. This board is vastly superior. All solid state caps, excellent port & header placement, and it's one hundred and twenty bucks!!!!! My nVidia GTX 260 Maxcore from BFG is on the way .... so crossfire is kinda out for me right now, but this board will run two 4850's in crossfire with almost no noticeable bottleneck for being in 8x 8x mode. And two 4850's will outperform a GTX 280, in some games by considerable margin.

The 8x 8x mode isn't a real bottleneck with 4850's and below in crossfire so the option will be there for you. It would even provide some good benefits with two 4870's but perhaps with a slightly more noticeable bottleneck. I have only seen tests on the 4850's in CF, and the P45 is on par with X38 with most tests, and very close to the X48 most of the time as well. It completely obliterates P35 variants which run at 16x 4x mode. 4x is a deal killa.

Hopefully that helps. Drop another post if you have questions or want more suggestions. I love my P5Q pro, and it's solid as a rock, and boasts the most robust and comprehensive feature set and overclocking performance of any board I've ever seen close to the 100 dollar range.

Hey man thanks a ton for the response. I feel ALOT better about it now. I was very concerned with these points but it appears a nice bios update before anything will get me headed in the right direction. yes I have the older 150 Raptor. For the size its all I need. I don't store a ton of stuff really. I have a ton of music but those get burned to a CD every month.

As for the cooler I'm gonna compare my current Coolit Freezone to this Sunbeam Core Contact that I have, being that i already have these from 2 previous builds. If their not up to the task I'll go water before air for a next purchase. I wanted to that here but man moneys tight this year till I get some snow to plow lol. I may slap a little IDE drive for that Express in case something goes bonkers in it someday (my luck) I mean hell, I got the feature why not use it lol.

What about this OS, should I grab a 64bit Windows XP or will Vista 64 work for older games WELL and this mobo? I read a few things about Vista 64 and this mobo having probs but like I said those post were dated. Its paramount that I get older games to run well. I run a clan is SOF2 and have been for years. I also enjoy some older Cabelas games and the old Doom series. let me know what you think :)

I really appreciate the help and the time you took typing all that up SirKronan
msmiley1.gif
 
Vista 64 all the way. I'm running Vista ult X64 and it's run beautifully for me. XP 64 was always garbage for me. I've run some older games and it was no trouble, you could always install a virtual copy of XP if your games don't work on vista.

That cooler that you are going to be using is fine.

Since you already have the raptor then it's ok :D

I also prefer a single big hard drive, I'd fill up 150GB or even 300GB raptor in no time ;)
 
Vista 64 all the way. I'm running Vista ult X64 and it's run beautifully for me. XP 64 was always garbage for me. I've run some older games and it was no trouble, you could always install a virtual copy of XP if your games don't work on vista.

That cooler that you are going to be using is fine.

Since you already have the raptor then it's ok :D

I also prefer a single big hard drive, I'd fill up 150GB or even 300GB raptor in no time ;)

Absolutely. I'm running 64 bit. My Asus PQ5 Pro and Vista 64 bit really seem to get along well. In fact, sometimes it kinda worries me how stable this system is (knock on wood of course) but with the amount of messing, changing, tweaking, overclocking and pushing I do to my components, this board amazes me how forgiving it is. It would be easy to screw up something in BIOS as there are a million settings, it seems like - but I kinda know my way around BIOSes these days, and for the most part what not to turn on or off that will start frying stuff.

This board has really been a joy so far, and so has ASUS the one time I called them with a question.
 
^^ Good advice but I recommend looking at the S1283 or one of it's variants for a CPU cooler. That Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro doesn't really cut it for quads. The TRUE is a good choice but the S1283 performs withing a degree or two of it and can be had for much less. With the TRUE you also have to buy a decent fan as the one the TRUE ships with sucks, the fan that comes with the S1283 is a good fan.

I'd stay a way from the raptor, buy two of these and put them in raid 0 (which works great, with my two 500GB 7200.11s in raid 0 I get an average transfer rate of 160.5 MB/sec. no installation problems or anything) or just buy a single one of those hard drives. I'm just not a fan of raptors they don't add much (if any) performance and give you less storage for a lot more money but if you must have a raptor stick with the 300GB version which is the new version.

Perhaps the one you used wasn't as good as the one I had. :p

At 3.33GHz on my Q6700 in my old IN9 32x-MAX (which gets scarily hot in the PWM area, very close to the processor) my temps were really good. CPU never went above 55c even on full load, which is well within the safe zone for my processor. Remember he's getting a 45nm quad, and a fairly cool one at that. I can go all the way to 3.6GHz easily on the Freezer 7 Pro, but the cooler he has now should be fine with a good mounting job.
 
hi ive been out of the scene for while and just built my pc using a p5q pro and this Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gbps. I installed vista on this.

I got it working fine. The problem is I tried to put my old ide drives which contain stand alone data such as my music files in but they are not getting picked up in bios.

Can you have both a sata drive and some ide drives plugged in at the same time? sorry im totally new to sata .
 
hi ive been out of the scene for while and just built my pc using a p5q pro and this Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gbps. I installed vista on this.

I got it working fine. The problem is I tried to put my old ide drives which contain stand alone data such as my music files in but they are not getting picked up in bios.

Can you have both a sata drive and some ide drives plugged in at the same time? sorry im totally new to sata .

I thought you could, but I haven't tried that yet.

For anyone that knows, does running your SATA drives in AHCI mode disable any IDE ability whatsoever?

And, if so, is that the same with most motherboards or just this one?
 
I may be biting on the 105AR deal for P5Q-Pro at newegg. Just wanna ask. Is anyone using this motherboard together with a Thermaltake DuOrb cpu cooler? I am concern if there will be any issues in installing the cooler.
 
hi ive been out of the scene for while and just built my pc using a p5q pro and this Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gbps. I installed vista on this.

I got it working fine. The problem is I tried to put my old ide drives which contain stand alone data such as my music files in but they are not getting picked up in bios.

Can you have both a sata drive and some ide drives plugged in at the same time? sorry im totally new to sata .

You can indeed use IDE drives at the same time as SATA drives, even with AHCI enabled. I suggest you take a look in the BIOS and make sure that the onboard IDE controller is enabled. If I remember correctly, I had to mess around a bit in the BIOS to get my IDE drive picked up as well, but it shouldn't be too hard for you to find the setting you need.
 
You can indeed use IDE drives at the same time as SATA drives, even with AHCI enabled. I suggest you take a look in the BIOS and make sure that the onboard IDE controller is enabled. If I remember correctly, I had to mess around a bit in the BIOS to get my IDE drive picked up as well, but it shouldn't be too hard for you to find the setting you need.

Is it a Marvell controller on the P5Q Pro? Or was that a controller for something else.

Thanks for the answer by the way.
 
Perhaps the one you used wasn't as good as the one I had. :p

At 3.33GHz on my Q6700 in my old IN9 32x-MAX (which gets scarily hot in the PWM area, very close to the processor) my temps were really good. CPU never went above 55c even on full load, which is well within the safe zone for my processor. Remember he's getting a 45nm quad, and a fairly cool one at that. I can go all the way to 3.6GHz easily on the Freezer 7 Pro, but the cooler he has now should be fine with a good mounting job.
Yeah the HS is one of the top performers I've found in my week long research of air coolers haha. Here's a little comparison to others are above ambient temps http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2271&page=5

On another note, I did find that there was support for older games, mine specifically, and that they had 0 lag or any other problems so im going for it. I want the least bloated Vista so would that be Business in 64 bit? I could care less about media center and little memory hogging gizmos, just want 64 bit and pure gaming goodness haha.

Let me know what you all think.

"Sir" - you are gonna be my new appointed P5Q pro tech support should I need it :p haha, Im not dealing with Asus.
 
Yeah the HS is one of the top performers I've found in my week long research of air coolers haha. Here's a little comparison to others are above ambient temps http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2271&page=5

On another note, I did find that there was support for older games, mine specifically, and that they had 0 lag or any other problems so im going for it. I want the least bloated Vista so would that be Business in 64 bit? I could care less about media center and little memory hogging gizmos, just want 64 bit and pure gaming goodness haha.

Let me know what you all think.

"Sir" - you are gonna be my new appointed P5Q pro tech support should I need it :p haha, Im not dealing with Asus.

Lol. You know, I'm happy to help you out however I can, but the one time I called ASUS with a question, they weren't too bad actually. I got the impression they are a pretty solid company. They make solid motherboards for sure.

As to your cooler, it should do a great job. Whether you get business or home premium really doesn't make a huge difference. I'm all about ultimate. I can change my OS's language pack whenever I want, I have access to "extras" some of which are actually half neat. And I have all the business features and media features I will ever need.

After using media center for a while I have come to regard it as one of the best programs microsoft has ever made. It's seamless organizational capability and smooth interface generally are very stable and effective, yet easy enough for my non-geek family members to use (which is pretty much all the rest of them!)

I have an HTPC upstairs and it functions as the media server for the entire house. Sometimes I will watch a recorded show downstairs where my work and gaming rig is located. It's nice to be able to just play it straight over the network in media center. I have a gigabite/wireless n network, so once playback starts it's smooth and lag free. For that purpose I need media center. It just works good for me.

Business is actually more expensive than media center. If you don't need the special business, networking, and security features of business, I wouldn't spend the extra money. The main "bloat" of Vista is not media center. It's the integrated DRM. No way to get around that if you buy vista.
 
interesting... I couldn't OC for squat past 430Mhz no matter what voltages or timings I messed with. Put a fan over my RAM (touched them out of curiosity and they were hot as hell) and now I'm up to 455 and climbing :p

might make for an interesting night at this rate ;)
 
interesting... I couldn't OC for squat past 430Mhz no matter what voltages or timings I messed with. Put a fan over my RAM (touched them out of curiosity and they were hot as hell) and now I'm up to 455 and climbing :p

might make for an interesting night at this rate ;)

I'll try that. It seems my ram holds me back a bit, even though I bought "faster" ram. Problem is, my very very nice OCZ memory cooler DOESN'T FIT THIS BOARD! The metal edge is within a hair of touching my video card.

Won't be a problem with my new GTX260 because it looks like it has its on back plating!! Yay! That's just something I don't want to worry about.
 
I'll post here, as my thread didn't get answered. I recently got an ASUS P5Q PRO P45 S-775 ATX motherboard, and every driver installs fine except the audio drivers. Audio works fine actually, but there's a device called "Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus" that doesn't have a driver installed (there's a question mark). I've tried installing the ASUSZ drivers from CD, but that didn't change anything. When I tried to install HD Audio drivers I found on the Realtek site, it didn't work either. Updating the NET framework didn't change anything. It said once I have to install something called
Microsoft HD audio bus or something.

As I said, audio works fine, but it's annoying that Windows wants to run the hardware installation guide every time I boot it up. What should I do?

I'm running Windows XP Pro 64-bit.
 
Same thing happens in my PC. Do you have an ATI card? :p
I'll post here, as my thread didn't get answered. I recently got an ASUS P5Q PRO P45 S-775 ATX motherboard, and every driver installs fine except the audio drivers. Audio works fine actually, but there's a device called "Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus" that doesn't have a driver installed (there's a question mark). I've tried installing the ASUSZ drivers from CD, but that didn't change anything. When I tried to install HD Audio drivers I found on the Realtek site, it didn't work either. Updating the NET framework didn't change anything. It said once I have to install something called
Microsoft HD audio bus or something.

As I said, audio works fine, but it's annoying that Windows wants to run the hardware installation guide every time I boot it up. What should I do?

I'm running Windows XP Pro 64-bit.
 
many ppl in XS have high vdroop on these mobos. How true is that?

For me

BIOS: 1.250V
Windows (Idle): 1.232V
Windows (Load): 1.240V

That's with Load-Line enabled as well.


Honestly, I think it's a great board. Currently running my parent's E8400 at 4GHz with just 1.25V. Everything else is set to AUTO.
 
many ppl in XS have high vdroop on these mobos. How true is that?

For me:

Bios: 1.5v
Windows Idle: 1.48-1.49
Windows Load: 1.49-1.5 (sometimes even hits 1.51, but very rare)

About as good as I've ever seen ...

EVGA 680i:
Bios: 1.5v
Windows Idle: 1.3 (whether power saving functions are on or off)
Windows Load: 1.3-1.45 ... never really could put out a true 1.5v.

My 780i I "stepped up" to (that's a laugh) is even worse, dipping as low as 1.25!!!! What the crap??
 
That's quite possibly the ATI HDMI Audio out. You can download the driver for it either from Realtek or ATI. I have a 4850 on my HTPC and a device similar to that was in device manager until I installed the HDMI Audio drivers.
 
That's quite possibly the ATI HDMI Audio out. You can download the driver for it either from Realtek or ATI. I have a 4850 on my HTPC and a device similar to that was in device manager until I installed the HDMI Audio drivers.

Mine showed up correctly after installing the catalyst drivers. Perhaps get the latest and uninstall/reinstall?
 
yeah...I ordered an ASUS P5Q-EM to replace the board and gpu in my HTPC. Trying to reduce as much heat output as possible...and removing the 4850 and replacing it with the Asus with a G45 w/HDMI out will not only allow me to reduce the heat and power consumption, but also move the 4850 to another machine for games and I can replace the ECS board I'm currently using in the htpc (Fry's deal :p ).
 
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