ASUS P6T Deluxe & SAS

[DL126]

I hope this info saves someone a bunch of time and headaches ....

On page 2-30 in the manual, there is a small, obscure footnote under picture that says ...
"When ICHR10 SATA ports are set to RAID or ACHI mode, SAS HDD's can be detected in Windows environment only."

Translation ...
If you're wanting to run a RAID setup on the ICH10R controller AND run boot discs on the Marvell SAS controller ... FORGET IT!
You must run the ICHR10 ports in IDE mode in order to boot from anything on the SAS ports.
a.k.a. Set the ICHR10 ports to RAID or ACHI and you'll only be able to see what's on the SAS ports AFTER booting into Windows.
Maybe I'm a dummy, or just didn't read the manual close enough ... but I was to the point of wanting to rip the stuff out and throw it out the back door!

[Bwall]

Thanks for the info. I've been eyeing the SAS controller on the new boards and wondered how well it was implemented. I've also got a K9A2 Platinum from AMD that supports SAS and would like to set up a pair of drives on it, but have been unable to find 29-pin SAS connectors to angled "SATA" that I would need with the large video cards that are going into the system.

[DL126]

You're welcome Bwall.

A bit more info about the board.
Figured I'd just put it here instead of start another thread.

The fan speed control in the BIOS leaves a lot to be desired.
This build was very loud with the fans hooked to the board rather than an add-in fan controller.
And this was with the fan speeds in the BIOS set to Silent mode.

Asus provides a utility on the support DVD called EPU-6 Engine.
This is the utility that looks as though it "does it all".
It has the ability to control a lot of aspects of the board that appear as "gibberish" in the BIOS to the average Joe like myself.
It will overclock and underclock the CPU & the RAM. (As well as control fan speeds to match the clocking profile that is currently loaded.)

It will do all this in an Auto Mode where it clocks according to system demand.
While set to Auto ... I ran the Vista assessment test.
According to CPU-Z, the cpu started out @ 1.6 GHz and during the CPU test, oc'd itself to 2.9 GHz. (Self adjusting all fan speeds as needed.)

Nice .. eh?
Now the system is loud only when it needs to be ... not continuously as before.

I'll continue to post info as I discover it.

EDIT = Update ... it was nice for the 30 minutes that it worked.

[martini161]

try using speedfan to control the fan speed from windows

[Apoptosis]

I e-mailed ASUS this thread and they responded with this...

To the question about page page 2-30 in the manual

Yup. Let me ask if this is a chipset limitation or something that can be fixed.

A second e-mail from ASUS about this after they tested it out here in Fremont:

Interestingly, we're able to set it to AHCI and can still see the SAS drives in BIOS. Will contact R&D to see if the manual needs updating, and if bios updates can help.

[DL126]

Every single time I set the Intel controller to RAID or ACHI ...
While booting, any drive attached to the SAS controller was completely ignored by the BIOS upon boot up.
It would even say ... No drive detected.

I could get XP installed on the Intel as RAID ...
Then I could get the Vista 64 (Upgrade DVD) install to see the SAS drive after giving it the drivers for setup ...
But then at the bottom of the Vista drive install window, it would say that the system might not support booting from this drive.
I would go ahead and get everything installed to the SAS drive ... and then when Vista tried to boot for the first time ... no joy.
It would give me the usual option of which OS to boot, but when I chose Vista it would stop and say something like "winload.exe not found".

I did this over and over and .... well you get the picture.
Then I found that foot note under the pic ...
After I switched the Intel over to IDE ... everything worked without a hitch.

Thanks for the follow up Apop.

[DL126]

I have discovered that any of the ASUS software provided on the support DVD will take a hell of a lot more effort to remove than it did to install.
And it's 32 bit.
After the usual method of Control Panel removal, there are MANY registry strings and/or keys left hanging around. CCleaner doesn't find them.
As well as a Windows service or two that you'll have to manually remove, and then manually delete the files from the HDD.

For some reason, every once in a while, the board won't post.
I haven't been able to establish a pattern yet, but when this happens, I can turn the switch off on the power supply, turn it back on and then boot the PC.

The automatic UC and OC that I mentioned earlier while testing the EPU-6 software.
According to CPU-Z, the board and/or the CPU does that anyway ... without the software installed.
Either that, or there's something left of the software doing it that I didn't find and delete.
The downside to that is that when the CPU is running at rated speed +, the fans won't slow down.
ThermalTake 120's are LOUD. Even at half speed.
I don't mind the noise if I'm doing something that is pushing the CPU, like Crysis, but typing in forum with 1 IE window open??
Even more interesting ... sometimes while showing full CPU speed, the fans run @ slow speed??
Something is "quirky" somewhere.

I ain't bitching yet ...
Just throwing out info that maybe some of you can help with as more of these units hit the streets.

Edit = I just now noticed that the 0903 BIOS has been pulled from the site. This is what I'm running. Wonder what they found ...

[DL126]

Installed new BIOS 0905 and so far things are much better.

[DL126]

Update =

The No Post scenario can be reproduced by simply going into the BIOS.
Go in there and change anything, and the board won't reboot until I turn the PS off and back on.
A member on another forum said that he fixed that by disabling Express Gate.

The XTRA noisy fan turned out to be the one in the top of my case pulling air out the top.
Apparently, the screen that's on the fan holder was causing the fan to cavitate and produce the annoying sound. (I'm speculating here as I'm no fan expert!)
I never noticed this before because with the prior setup I had that fan on a controller instead of connected to the board. (I kept it on low all the time.)
I turned the fan over in the holder, causing it to pull air into the case.
Now it's quieter, and apparently cools the board faster due to the fact that the fans run for a lesser amount of time at higher speeds.

[meolsen]

This is a helpful post. I would like to set up my system to have SATA on the intel controller, and RAID on the Marvell controller. I run x64 and do not have a floppy. Can I get the drivers for the Marvel Raid controller right off the CD during the setup phase? I tried using ASUS' "make disk" utility on another machine to put the drivers on USB, but it says it cannot do that.

Any ideas? Maybe x64sp1 supports Marvel right outta the box?

Thanks for any help.

Michael

[DL126]

This is a helpful post. I would like to set up my system to have SATA on the intel controller, and RAID on the Marvell controller. I run x64 and do not have a floppy. Can I get the drivers for the Marvel Raid controller right off the CD during the setup phase? I tried using ASUS' "make disk" utility on another machine to put the drivers on USB, but it says it cannot do that.

Any ideas? Maybe x64sp1 supports Marvel right outta the box?

Thanks for any help.

Michael

Hi Michael & welcome to the site ...
During OS install, Vista will pull drivers from a CD or jump drive ... XP won't.
You'll either have to use a floppy, or slipstream the drivers into a custom XP install disc.
I've done this before using Nlite. http://www.nliteos.com/guide/

[meolsen]

Great. Not to be a simpleton here, but I'm installing Vistax64. I can just point to the Asus disk, go to drivers/raid/marvell and it will find the x64 drivers ok?

That's a lot easier than xp. I was playing all around with this makedisk stuff for no reason. Doh.

Thanks

[mar1]

i need some advice m8s. i ve just bought online P6t and 3 samsungs F1 1 TB drives and waiting for the delivery, what is the best drive setup ? my initial idea was to do a raid 0 with 2 drives and have the third one for storing valuable data in case the raid 0 fails (True images backups and work files, etc..).
My questions:
Shall i put OS on the raid 0 setup or on the third drive ?
Where shall i plug the raid 0 drives, in the intel SATA or in the Marvel SAS, or shall i simply put all the 3 in the intel sata ports ?
When installing the new Bios 905, do the issues in this thread are still the same ?

for info , i m planning to put Windows Vista 64bit.

[DL126]

If you're gonna do RAID 0, personally i'd hook all 3 drives to the Intel controller.
2 for the OS + applications, and the 3rd for storage like you've already mentioned.

As for the question of the latest BIOS fixing the aforementioned issues...
I dunno. Haven't tried to do anything else with it since it's now fully functional.
Kinda sux to have to start all over again.

[mar1]

thx for the reply, i have downloaded the motherboard manual and scammed through the pages, and my feeling is to put the 3 in the intel SATA like you adviced.

i have came across a nice review of P6t that i would like to share

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/1 ... t-deluxe/8

... from what it looks, the Marvel SAS is less performant then the intel chipset ... the least we can say, it is the case for SATA drives. putting a real SAS drive might be another story

[DL126]

Just for kicks, this morning I went back into the BIOS and again changed the Intel controller to RAID.
I didn't set up an array ... didn't wanna screw up the OS on that controller.
After saving & rebooting, during post, as before the SAS controller was totally skipped.
No option to boot from that drive. Which is where my Vista is.

So the answer to your other question would be no.
The newer BIOS does not change this.

[mar1]

thx for the shot, i appreciate your attempt,

have another question, have you tried activating write caching, does both of the controlers support it, and is it worth ?

[DL126]

thx for the shot, i appreciate your attempt,

have another question, have you tried activating write caching, does both of the controlers support it, and is it worth ?

Write caching was activated on both controllers by default in Vista64.

[FredA]

Glad I found this Forum -- sounds like I've been pushing a rope....

I've been trying for a couple of days now to get a P6T delux to run two 15k Cheetah's in a SAS RAID0 and three 1TB SATA's in a RAID5 on the ICH10R.
I wanted to boot from SAS RAID as C and have the RAID5 as a D.
Sounds like there is no hope....is that true?
That the dual RAID advertised is really one-choice-of-two RAIDs.

Am I screwed?
Is there any hope of getting this to work?
FredA

[DL126]

Is there any hope of getting this to work?

Hello FredA & welcome ...
I'd say that right now your only option would be to install a PCIe controller for one of your RAID arrays.
Maybe ASUS will come out with a BIOS update at some point to correct this. (and then again maybe it's not possible due to board configuration??)

Seems as though I remember reading somewhere along the way also that SAS will support up 17 drives per channel ...
Could have dreamed that I guess ... but it might be something to look into for you.

sounds like I've been pushing a rope....

Kind of like pushing a chain isn't it?