The Official P45 Asus P5Q Motherboard Thread

You might have to clear the cmos. The thing where it powers up then powers down then powers up again means it's having trouble booting, usually from a bad overclock.
 
Well after some tweaking over the past few days I am running 7 hours prime stable at 4004.9 ghz with my e8400 on a p5q pro. The ridiculous part of this is that I am doing it with the stock HSF from my old e4300 that is a year and a half old. I idle at 31 and stress at 65 with it maxing to 75 very breifly all with that old stock HSF. I have an arctic freezer 7 pro on the way and can't wait to see my new max temp because 75 is too high. I love this board and processor and I cannot wait to see what I can get out of it with proper cooling. I am probably going to stop stressing it or drop the speed down to 3.75ghz until I get that new HSF.

E8400@ 445x9, 4.0ghz, 1.376v
vnb 1.26 in bios

Most of my other bios settings are auto with a few other suggested changes from this thread and others.
 
Well after some tweaking over the past few days I am running 7 hours prime stable at 4004.9 ghz with my e8400 on a p5q pro. The ridiculous part of this is that I am doing it with the stock HSF from my old e4300 that is a year and a half old. I idle at 31 and stress at 65 with it maxing to 75 very breifly all with that old stock HSF. I have an arctic freezer 7 pro on the way and can't wait to see my new max temp because 75 is too high. I love this board and processor and I cannot wait to see what I can get out of it with proper cooling. I am probably going to stop stressing it or drop the speed down to 3.75ghz until I get that new HSF.

E8400@ 445x9, 4.0ghz, 1.376v
vnb 1.26 in bios

Most of my other bios settings are auto with a few other suggested changes from this thread and others.

Awesome job. So far so good, eh? It really is a nice board. As for temps, stupid AI Suite with this current BIOS reports temps at 19c on idle. No way in heck. CoreTemp is way closer on for me. It parallels very closely what Everest reports, too. I've never used realtemp. I have bad luck with CoreTemp on AMD builds. Reports one core 10c lower than the other. Never used RealTemp.
 
What were you doing to stress the system when it hit 75C? If it was IntelBurnTest/linpack I wouldn't worry so much as you'll never duplicate that kind of load. If it was a prime calculation or folding then 75C does seem a little high, but not dangerous.
 
Does anyone have a good overclocking recipe for a p5q with a q6600 g0 that is watercooled? I'm also running an pny 8800 ultra that is watercooled along with 4x 2 (8gig) G.Skill PI DDR2-800 ram if that helps. I've also updated to Ket's m1611 bios as well.
 
Does anyone have a good overclocking recipe for a p5q with a q6600 g0 that is watercooled? I'm also running an pny 8800 ultra that is watercooled along with 4x 2 (8gig) G.Skill PI DDR2-800 ram if that helps. I've also updated to Ket's m1611 bios as well.

I've been able to go all the way up to 499MHz FSB on my Q6700. This board can handle really high FSB's and I have memory that is capable of slightly over 1000MHz. I have found no "holes" in anything on this board. It scales and clocks really well. The sweet spot on my system has been 450x8. I'm higher than that now, but at those settings with my TRUE temps were great, performance was great, and stability was absolutely perfect. Running Vista 64 bit, of course, the only Vista that exists in my opinion. :D

The TRUE does outperform some "cheap" watercooling setups, but if yours is a good one I would suggest 450x8 as a good starting point for 3.6GHz. Climb up to 475x8 for 3.8. My system's still pretty stable at that speed, but temps get too high for 24/7 operation. You might have better luck with your watercooling. My Q6700 went all the way up to 3.8GHz without needing much more than 1.55v, with 1.4 or so on the northbridge. I'm running all 8GB of ram at just over 1000MHz (1021 I think ...) with stock 5-5-5-15 timings on 1.94v. Give that a try and let us know how it works.
 
I've been able to go all the way up to 499MHz FSB on my Q6700. This board can handle really high FSB's and I have memory that is capable of slightly over 1000MHz. I have found no "holes" in anything on this board. It scales and clocks really well. The sweet spot on my system has been 450x8. I'm higher than that now, but at those settings with my TRUE temps were great, performance was great, and stability was absolutely perfect. Running Vista 64 bit, of course, the only Vista that exists in my opinion. :D

The TRUE does outperform some "cheap" watercooling setups, but if yours is a good one I would suggest 450x8 as a good starting point for 3.6GHz. Climb up to 475x8 for 3.8. My system's still pretty stable at that speed, but temps get too high for 24/7 operation. You might have better luck with your watercooling. My Q6700 went all the way up to 3.8GHz without needing much more than 1.55v, with 1.4 or so on the northbridge. I'm running all 8GB of ram at just over 1000MHz (1021 I think ...) with stock 5-5-5-15 timings on 1.94v. Give that a try and let us know how it works.

I'm running the Swiftech Apogee self-powered waterblock along with a pa120.3 and it has been very good for me. I'm going to migrate this system over to Mountain Mod U2-UFO CYO case pretty soon and put in dual PA120.3 in it, but I system with the pressure drop that will cause I'll have to go to a bigger pump and self contained waterblock; possibly EK, D-Tek or the swiftech GTZ. Now sure yet.

However, this is the first time i've had a cpu that was clock unlocked and from the looks of it, going to 450 x 8 is pretty standard fare with this unit. What about the other bios options on this board in regards to memory timing and voltages?
 
I'm running the Swiftech Apogee self-powered waterblock along with a pa120.3 and it has been very good for me. I'm going to migrate this system over to Mountain Mod U2-UFO CYO case pretty soon and put in dual PA120.3 in it, but I system with the pressure drop that will cause I'll have to go to a bigger pump and self contained waterblock; possibly EK, D-Tek or the swiftech GTZ. Now sure yet.

However, this is the first time i've had a cpu that was clock unlocked and from the looks of it, going to 450 x 8 is pretty standard fare with this unit. What about the other bios options on this board in regards to memory timing and voltages?

My G.Skill ram said that it ran at 1000MHz at 2.0v. So that's what I set it to when I was throwing some errors while prime testing. Errors still showed up, however, and not when I was stressing primarily the CPU, but the memory. So I knocked the voltage down to 1.96, then 1.94 and even at 1021MHz the stuff now runs really well, no errors in Prime or memtest. Seems like too much voltage just throws the memory off, as was the case with my 780i board. I never seem to accomplish much when giving my RAM more than 2.0v. I might try pushing this ram more another time, but it's running so well now that I'm not extremely motivated to push it much further ... :p

Advanced timings I leave on automatic.
 
I just finished installing the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro and I am running my e8400 at 4ghz 445x9, vcore 1.36 in CPU-Z with 1.3875 selected in the latest P5Q-Pro bios. To quickly see how much better this would dissipate heat over the stock Intel HSF I had Core Damage running for 10 minutes and the highest temp was 72c two minutes in. I am very anxious so I am only 8 minutes into Prime now but right now my max temp is 55c with one core staying about 53c and the other 51c! That is amazing and is about a ~20c drop in temp over the old e4300 stock HSF.

I hope my testing with the old stock HSF at 75c did not do any significant damage to my processor because this thing seems like a champ. The previous time I tried running core damage with the stock HSF my temps shot up into the 80's and I immediately shut it down and decided to wait until I got better cooling to try it again. I am very happy with the P5Q-Pro, e8400, and the Freezer 7 Pro.

It is strange to see 1.36vcore in CPU-Z when 1.3875 is selected in the bios, does anyone know what is going on there? Also will I be able to lower voltage and stay stable now that my temps are a lot lower? Thanks a lot for any help and contributing to a great thread I am going to keep tweaking since it has been so much fun the past few days and I will update on anything new I find.
 
I hope my testing with the old stock HSF at 75c did not do any significant damage to my processor because this thing seems like a champ.
Nope, your CPU will not ever reach temperatures high enough to damage it. It will shut itself off before getting to that point, so you don't have to worry. 75C is also well within the safe range for Core 2 CPUs.
It is strange to see 1.36vcore in CPU-Z when 1.3875 is selected in the bios, does anyone know what is going on there?
Vdroop. Perfectly normal.
Also will I be able to lower voltage and stay stable now that my temps are a lot lower?
Probably not.
 
Well I went into my bios and the vcore was actually set to 1.36. I did a load of saved bios settings and it went to 1.36.
 
Well I went into my bios and the vcore was actually set to 1.36. I did a load of saved bios settings and it went to 1.36.

The freezer 7 is awesome for its size, noise, and what it costs. If I needed one I'd buy another in a heartbeat.

And so far it sounds like you're doing really well. Those are some good performance numbers your posting for this small of CPU cooler. The P5Q series are such good boards, for the most part. Mine has been nothing short of incredible for the $120 I paid for it. I wish I'd never wasted money on all the nVidia boards I've had (even though I've only had three, two of which went awry and were replaced). This board cost less than half of what I paid for the 780i board and outperforms by a notable margin without breaking a sweat. And so far I haven't needed/wanted SLI. The newest single cards easily handle newer titles on a 24" panel, minus very few such as Crysis.
 
My G.Skill ram said that it ran at 1000MHz at 2.0v. So that's what I set it to when I was throwing some errors while prime testing. Errors still showed up, however, and not when I was stressing primarily the CPU, but the memory. So I knocked the voltage down to 1.96, then 1.94 and even at 1021MHz the stuff now runs really well, no errors in Prime or memtest. Seems like too much voltage just throws the memory off, as was the case with my 780i board. I never seem to accomplish much when giving my RAM more than 2.0v. I might try pushing this ram more another time, but it's running so well now that I'm not extremely motivated to push it much further ... :p

Advanced timings I leave on automatic.

What is a good voltage for 450 x 8 for a q6600 g0 to start with?
 
Well I have everything running very nicely and stable with only one problem. My room is hot as hell now haha the temperature here lately has been very warm for the winter and this rig is really pumping out some heat in my small room. I think I may turn the speedstep back on now that I have it stable at 4ghz, hopefully that will save a little energy and cool things down a bit.
 
Well unfortunately, I had to RMA my P5Q Deluxe because the onboard sound device not working. I hope the replacement will be rock solid and work just fine.

Everything else about the board seemed to run fine.
 
Ok this is my first build so if I might ask dumb questions. Here was my original stuff

P5Q Pro
Q6600
Sapphire 4870
PC Power 610w
2 x 2GB G. Skill DDR2 1066
Arctic Freezer 7 Pro
In a Cooler Master CM690 c

When I set it up and hit power the fans would spin for about 1 sec then everything shut down. After trying to figure it out in another forum I decided it was the mobo and returned it. While waiting for my replacement I was thinking of getting the Deluxe. Would 610w be enough for it?
 
Have any had any problems with their P5Q creating EXTREMELY annoying static noises from the front headphone jack? I have the p5q-e. Whenever I use headphones there is a constant static noise coming through. What is strange though is that the noise changes as I do different things with my computer, such as moving my mouse around or opening a new window and moving windows around. Some windows may produce a high-pitched squealing noise and others just a constant crackle. I did a search of the forum for similar situations, but nothing turned up.

Obviously there are other signals interfering with this particular audio-out jack. It's beyond me what it might be. Has anyone encountered this? Is my mobo faulty? I have updated the bios to the latest and the problem persists. Any insight would be great!

The audio jack in the back of the mobo is fine and sounds great btw. I do plan on calling tech support to their take on the problem.

Thanks!
 
Ok this is my first build so if I might ask dumb questions. Here was my original stuff

P5Q Pro
Q6600
Sapphire 4870
PC Power 610w
2 x 2GB G. Skill DDR2 1066
Arctic Freezer 7 Pro
In a Cooler Master CM690 c

When I set it up and hit power the fans would spin for about 1 sec then everything shut down. After trying to figure it out in another forum I decided it was the mobo and returned it. While waiting for my replacement I was thinking of getting the Deluxe. Would 610w be enough for it?

That particular 610 watt supply is a good 1 so Yes to your question.

Larry
 
Run coretemp, it should tell you.

Okay. I've been running coretemp for a while now and I hadn't realized that the VID display was there. I feel like such a n00b sometimes :D. Anyway, I have a VID of 1.2875. Is that good or bad?
 
Okay. I've been running coretemp for a while now and I hadn't realized that the VID display was there. I feel like such a n00b sometimes :D. Anyway, I have a VID of 1.2875. Is that good or bad?

It's pretty good. A lot of newer Q6600s have had VIDs of 1.325V, so yours is quite good in comparison.
 
Okay. I've been running coretemp for a while now and I hadn't realized that the VID display was there. I feel like such a n00b sometimes :D. Anyway, I have a VID of 1.2875. Is that good or bad?

That's a good one. Anything below 1.3v is good.
 
I've recently added a WD 750 GB HDD and still I see data transfer is very slow while transferring data from one partition to another or one drive to another (40-50 MBPS per sec). What could be the reason for this slow data transfer rate? Is it because of huge disk size? Is there any way I can make it faster??
 
Have any had any problems with their P5Q creating EXTREMELY annoying static noises from the front headphone jack? I have the p5q-e. Whenever I use headphones there is a constant static noise coming through. What is strange though is that the noise changes as I do different things with my computer, such as moving my mouse around or opening a new window and moving windows around. Some windows may produce a high-pitched squealing noise and others just a constant crackle. I did a search of the forum for similar situations, but nothing turned up.

Obviously there are other signals interfering with this particular audio-out jack. It's beyond me what it might be. Has anyone encountered this? Is my mobo faulty? I have updated the bios to the latest and the problem persists. Any insight would be great!

The audio jack in the back of the mobo is fine and sounds great btw. I do plan on calling tech support to their take on the problem.

Thanks!

You know, I get static with my P5Q Pro as well. I got static on the front inputs with my Abit IN9-32x Max on the front ports. I got static with the EVGA 680i and 780i when using front inputs. That was with THREE different computer cases' front I/Os and I got similar results using onboard or a dedicated soundcard. Never got any noise using ports out of the back. Didn't seem to matter what board, what case, what soundcard, what speakers/headphones, or W/E ... I've ALWAYS heard static while using front headphone jacks, but no static coming out the back.

In fact, I'd say the P5Q has less static than any of the other boards I've used when connected to the front jacks. Weird, huh?
 
You know, I get static with my P5Q Pro as well. I got static on the front inputs with my Abit IN9-32x Max on the front ports. I got static with the EVGA 680i and 780i when using front inputs. That was with THREE different computer cases' front I/Os and I got similar results using onboard or a dedicated soundcard. Never got any noise using ports out of the back. Didn't seem to matter what board, what case, what soundcard, what speakers/headphones, or W/E ... I've ALWAYS heard static while using front headphone jacks, but no static coming out the back.

In fact, I'd say the P5Q has less static than any of the other boards I've used when connected to the front jacks. Weird, huh?

Interesting, I'll call ASUS and see what they have to say. I would really like to have nice static free audio from the front headphone jack for my Sennheiser's. It can be a pain to plug my headphones into the back of my comp, then to get the best sound I would have to change the audio settings to headphones from speakers every time I switch.
 
I've got the P5Q Pro and had poor network performance until I updated to the 1.0.0.38 drivers from Asus' website. They're marked as beta, but I noticed a huge increase in performance just in Firefox. I need to try out some torrents to see if they've improved.

I was having problems with the NIC as well. If I tried to transfer large files across my network it would freeze. The only way I could get the network back was to restart the PC. I updated to 1.0.0.38. Hope that fixes it.
 
Interesting, I'll call ASUS and see what they have to say. I would really like to have nice static free audio from the front headphone jack for my Sennheiser's. It can be a pain to plug my headphones into the back of my comp, then to get the best sound I would have to change the audio settings to headphones from speakers every time I switch.

Have you tried it in a different case to make sure it's not case related? Also I would suggest tracing the audio header wires and making sure they aren't touching any power wires, just in case. You might even consider some type of cheap insulator wrap to help prevent interference. If your case allows, you could test this by popping out the front panel just where the I/O ports are and completely separating it from other wires/devices in your case. Then test the audio quality. If it still has static you can rule out interference, at least externally, and blame the board. Just an idea.
 
Can someone confirm that the Thermalright HR05 fits on this board? The thermalright site isnt working for me right now and im about to buy a few other things, so i need to know. Also, how many mosfet sinks would i need?
 
Dear fellow P5Q'ers,

I have a dilemma. I sold a friend my Abit IN9 32x max a while back. Lately he's been having lots of trouble with it. Abit sent a Quad GT X38 board as a worthy replacement. Problem is, he couldn't get it to boot with his 8800GT installed. He tried different PSU's, new CMOS batteries. It would reset a few times and sometimes start in failsafe mode. Sometimes it would report a checksum error. It was rare that you could get it to boot all the way into windows. I took it back from him and tried different ram, another PSU, and lots of other things. It never occured to us originally that it could've been the 8800GT, but after banging my head against the wall for three days straight trying to fix his compy I decided it was worth a shot.

I threw in a 2400Xt and boom, started right up. Installed Vista, updates, drivers, etc. no issues. Multiple restarts just to test, no problem. Stress-testing, overclocking to 3.33GHz with his freezer 7 pro .... etc. etc. Memtest, W/E. the thing worked like a charm.

So I threw back in his 8800GT and the same problems happened again. I switched rails on the PSU (nice silverstone 700w modular one by the way) ... no effect. Still two or three restarts and then failsafe mode - all settings in BIOS lost. Mucho sucko!

I decided upon the advice of members of this forum to do a BIOS update.

Like MAGIC the computer started working fine with the video card. No random restarts, perfect stability, drivers installed no problem. I was so excited!!! I'd FIXED IT!!! I shut it off and unplugged it just to be sure. Plugged it back in - started right up - no issues whatsoever. I installed updated nVidia drivers, put on some other stuff for him, and restarted it again for good measure. Was working like a dream, happy as crap.

So I sent it back to him. He gets it home, plugs it in, and it does the same effing restart crap again.

"WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING???" I rant to myself. The board was literally working like a DREAM for me after that bios update.

So ... here I am with my lovely P5Q that can take my Q6700 up to 4.0GHz like it's a party, can overclock all 8GB of ram over 1000MHz (every brand and stick I've ever thrown at it) has all the ports and expansion slots I'll ever need, gives me the most perfectest stability and bestest performance in any computer I've ever made for myself, purchased, or made for anyone else ..... I LOVE THIS BOARD.

Every day it just performs. I can't say enough good things about it. The thing is a tank, an ironman, the budget enthusiast's ultimate dream board. I've paid double for this performance when buying nVidia high end boards and received performance of a $50 foxconn cheapo, but this $120 P5Q Pro has made me LOVE the DIY computer again.

I sold my 4850, though. A friend needed upgraded graphics badly, and I snagged one heck of a deal on a GTX 260 Maxcore with FC2 for free.

I still have my 780i. I was never able to take it very far above 3.0GHz for any amount of time, but with new ram, and a different PSU and video card maybe I'll have better luck. I've also switched to MX2, added more system and chassis fans, and figured out a better way to mount my TRUE for improved temps and airflow.

So here's what all this narrative is leading up to:

I'm thinking, I'll just trade my friend for his Quad GT. I'll give him my P5Q pro and keep the quad GT for a future performance or crossfire build, or just in case my 780i really just plain can't overclock quad cores at all. He'll have the most stable board in the world with more ports and slots than he'll ever use and a company that actually has decent service. I'll be able to use full out ESA monitoring and fan control for my whole chassis, system, video card, etc.... with the possibility of SLI or more ESA goodies in the future. I really like ESA software now that it has matured and is stable. It doesn't freeze my computers anymore when I use it, and the monitoring is accurate and fan control curves work very well and are customizable.

What do you guys think I should do? I'm sick of my friend's computer not working, but do I dare give up my trusty P5Q Pro? I can tell you one thing. If I trade him, he puts in my P5Q, and STILL has problems, BSODs, or random restarts, I am going to slash his tires ore break all the windows out of his car :p.... this is driving me crazy. I hate it when I sell something to someone and it doesn't work well for them.

I welcome any advice from my friends here on [H].
 
Well I wouldn't mind trading a P45 board for an X38. I wouldn't want to go through the hassle but since he's your friend...

Also since you got the Quad GT working you shouldn't have a problem with it and it should OC fairly well. My experiences with that board weren't so good but I've been told they were fixed in later BIOS updates. I say go for the trade and if he can't get the P5Q Pro to work then slash his tires.
 
Well I wouldn't mind trading a P45 board for an X38. I wouldn't want to go through the hassle but since he's your friend...

Also since you got the Quad GT working you shouldn't have a problem with it and it should OC fairly well. My experiences with that board weren't so good but I've been told they were fixed in later BIOS updates. I say go for the trade and if he can't get the P5Q Pro to work then slash his tires.

Will do. The X38 worked fine for me after that bios update. I really don't know what his problem is.... He swears he hasn't done anything out of the ordinary.

And you're right. If the 780i just plain fails and annoys the crap out of me, I've always got the X38 as a solid backup board for overclocking my processor again.

I really want a 45nm quad bad. PLEASE drop the prices of the Q9550!!! The new i7 is cheaper than the Q9550, and has even been on sale for $250!!! So GAAAAAYYYY.
 
Okay, here is my problem right now. Do I set the multiplier to 8*400 or leave it at 9*400 for the q6600 starting @ 1.375 - 1.400? And I have the g.skill ddr2-800 PI memory and it's supposed to be at 4-4-4-15, i think, and it's saying that it's 5-5-5-16.
 
Okay, here is my problem right now. Do I set the multiplier to 8*400 or leave it at 9*400 for the q6600 starting @ 1.375 - 1.400? And I have the g.skill ddr2-800 PI memory and it's supposed to be at 4-4-4-15, i think, and it's saying that it's 5-5-5-16.

Leave the multiplier as high as it will go, and focus on overclocking your CPU. RAM speed has very little effect on the performance of Core 2 systems, so don't worry too much about it. You should leave your RAM as low as possible with pretty loose timings to start with, and then start to tighten things up once you're done overclocking your CPU.
 
Leave the multiplier as high as it will go, and focus on overclocking your CPU. RAM speed has very little effect on the performance of Core 2 systems, so don't worry too much about it. You should leave your RAM as low as possible with pretty loose timings to start with, and then start to tighten things up once you're done overclocking your CPU.

Okay, right now I'm overclocked to 9*350 @1.400v and I set my ram to 1.9v because i'm running 8gb. So far so good I'll see how much further I can push it after this.
 
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