Asus M3A AM2+ System "Swamp Thing" (56k Warning)

[kenc51]

Are you sure they are in dual channel?

[Methious]

No actually the printed manual drops the ball there Ken. Unless my eyes are crossed it's contradictory.

Lists from left to right, Dimm A1 Yellow, Dimm B1 Yellow, Dimm A2 Black, Dimm B2 Black in the first diagram

Then says:Channel A is: Dimm A1 and Dimm A2 So if dimm a1 and a2 are channel A wouldn't you populate the first yellow
Channel B is: Dimm B1 and Dimm B2 and the first black for dual channel kinda confusing so I was going to test both

Population chart:

Single channel. Populate A1 or B1
Dual Channel 1 Populate A1 and B1 (both Yellow)
Dual Channel 2 Populate all 4

Most boards I've seen it's the first and third slot, I'll try 1st and 3rd slot in a minute see if I get any difference. By the manual though dual channel 1 is populate both yellow.

[kenc51]

Easier way is to open CPUz and under the "memory" tab it should say either single or dual.

[Methious]

I tested it both ways. both yellows are Dual Channel, and checked CPU-Z and it says dual. Kinda weird they lay it out that way.

[martini161]

sorry i didnt comment on this earlier before you bought that zallaman chipset, but i didnt see it as i never look in the amd section! lol. anyway, i just picked up one of those swiftech blocks myself, and i dont think they would have interfered with anything on your board. im gonna post some pics of mine in the chuck norris rig thread soon if you want to check it out

[Methious]

No biggie, I got the Zalman NB and the Apogee GT cpu water block from a local shop for fixing a couple of machines. They didn't have the Swiftech NB Block. Must say on FSB clocks it's helped stability. I just made 267 FSB/HT at 12x multiplier stable in OCCT for an hour. Logged on to post the screenie of the Ocz Reaper over clock so you came at a good time.

OCZ Reaper @ 5-5-5-15 running at 1068


General Settings
FSB/HT 267
Mult 12x
Cpu Volt 1.4
DDR Volts 2.1
HT/NB link 4x (800 on this board)
Memory 5-5-5-15 with TRC set to 22
Clock Skew A and B Delay 150ps

[DMB2000uk]

Some nice clocks there methious ^_^

Dan

[Methious]

Thanks DMB took a while to figure out how to dial this board in, they need to give up some NB voltage control in Bios. Were after Asus to give us some, be a lot easier if we could juice the NB some. I didn't think the lack of a cool pipe would be an issue, at stock it's not, getting crazy with the front side bus it is. I ordered a set of VGA heat sinks to try and use for mosfet cooling. Highest reference FSB/HT I can reach with a really low multiplier is 375, not that at that it's stable I didn't test for stable, just wanted to see how high it'd go.

Hopefully I can get the VGA heat sinks to hold without using thermal adhesive, their backed with 3m heat tape but the surface area to bond to is smaller and I don't want and copper sinks bouncing around in there with voltage flowing

Regular mosfet heat sinks would probably be hard to find to fit this board. Four CM is all the clearance I have in a couple of spots. If this doesn't do it I'm looking at regular mosfet heat sinks, and some dremel action to get them on. If any one knows why VGA sinks aren't a good idea, or that they won't work this would be a good time to jump in.

[Methious]

I got the heat sinks on the Mosfets and testing to see if their going to stay before I post pics. Just in case they cause a heat build up and I have to improve air flow or remove them.

[Methious]

This is a screen that was requested of the M3A running above FSB/HT 250, it's the companion screen to the ram running at 1068 @ 5-5-5-15 2.0 or 2.1 volts I forget.

[Resnik]

Just wanted to give you a Congrats on the Overall Success of your System there Meth..

And a Pre-emptive congratz on 10K Views.. Woots Woots??!!

[Methious]

Well thanks, started this when I couldn't find any reviews on the board and it just kinda happened. Had no idea the board would be any thing more than a bridge to the 790 chip set. I really feel if we can get some north bridge voltage out of Asus it'd be a really nice value board.

Unfortunately to convince myself every thing is straight with the software I'm going to have to reload it. No fault of the board, had an issue with Speed fan a while back and did an XP repair to get past it. In a rush to do some testing I tested before I backed up. So now I get to pay the price for being in a hurry. When your trying over clocks and finding limits some times you corrupt a driver, or system file eventually. After I reload I'll back up before testing, lesson learned.

[Methious]

I got it mostly reloaded yesterday and today, a few online downloads from Microsoft, back it up to a partition, then back it up to an external drive and I'll be ready to go again. Would have finished today but I try for one day almost completely away from computers with the better half.

[stev]

Your condemned parts room looks so much like my brother's parts room, but cleaner. I've not yet met, an A+ tech whose area is neat and tidy.

[Methious]

Just seems like it happens that way, I clean it about twice a month then customers happen. Then after I clean it I can't find any thing for 2 days. Through tax time it gets cluttered then after it thins out some.

[Methious]

I have the mosfet VGA sinks installed, XP Pro SP3RC installed with all current updates and newest drivers for the M3A Mother Board. Got some pictures of the Mosfets covered, ran some preliminary benches with and with out SP3RC with some surprising results to post.

Then I finally picked and ordered the mother of all cases, for this build, and future builds for a few years to come. I'll leave that little surprise for a little later. I have enough to do consolidating pictures and benches for now.

[Methious]

Here's the mosfets covered with Enzotech Vga Ram sinks. Please note that only the four lower mosfets have to be covered, that left 4 in the box, figured I might as well cover the top one since I went to water and until the new case comes air flow in that area is limited.

Since covering the mosfets stability during over clocking has increased, and it just feels better knowing that their kept cooler.

Heat Sinked Mosfets:

[Methious]

Here's a couple of benches I ran before and after I installed XP Pro SP3RC. The before benches were run on SP2. This was done immediately after the reload with all updates done, newest drivers and available Bios. The only difference was SP3RC was installed and there was no over clock on any components.

AquaMark Before SP3RC (my first run was 122.XX)


AquaMark After SP3RC


3DMark2006 Before


3Dmark2006 After (3DMarks always reads it as a Sempron)

[DMB2000uk]

I like fact that SP3 brings back some performance ^_^

Dan

[Methious]

I was surprised to see it. Especially since I used the same drivers as the original load. I also ran LightsMark and it went from 350 to 367 FPS. PcMark 2005 was wanting to have DirectX April 2005 install possibly mixing my DirectX files with old and new so I didn't run that one. Last load I did then installed the newest version over the top and got a performance hit that was unrecoverable except through reload.