Which motherboard

[shoarthing]

Hi S

Obviosly Scan added the comment in the early days and forgot to remove it.  I am slowly warming to the Asus P5WDH Deluxe.

To be honest I doubt that I will be overclocking the boards and if I do it won't be by much.  I found that the Iwill MPX2 was slightly more stable if it was overclocked slightly which may be the case for the new board.

I must say that I am tempted with the 1.8v JEDEC-compliant Elixir PC6400 memory, purely because of the price.

. .  well, I basically never ran either of my MPX2s non-overclocked, including a whole year at 160MHz FSB & 2.4GHz gross, at which it was 24/7 stable under full continuous load.

I'm still dithering over the P5WDH, mainly because it looks a very tight squeeze for the watercooling widgets - I'll be watercooling the NB, GPU [an Asus Reversecool thing - so very adjacent, mebbe touching - the NB], VRMs, CPU, HDDs, & PSU - I hope the SB can be adequately cooled passively with a nice big Zalman h/s I have tucked away. The GPU/NB/VRMs/CPU are very close to each other, so organising tubing runs without excessively tight turns or right-angled fittings is non-trivial.

The Elixir stuff looks worth a trial, even if only for a pair to see how it goes. Your original link infers they wouldn't promise stability at 1.8v if used in a pair, which seems a bit odd or the vendor lacking faith in Elixir's QC.

[edit] Elixir (a Nanya brand) memory, hadn't much of a reputation going back to PC133 days; but mebbe things are better now.

[shoarthing]

Re: Elixir PC6400 - at last found a webtest with this stuff in action . . . (translated from German) . . . it uses 'Nanya' chips [respectable major brand, of which Elixir is a division] & seems to work OK.

 . . . then found a summary of results from a group test (translation) from a very reputable German Magazine [CHIP] where the Elixir stuff did perfectly OK tested as 2x 1GB - rating 90% in their performance/cost balance.

I suspect that the Elixir brand first resold wholly Nanya-made NT1GT64U8HB0BY-25C PC6400 sticks - see this Irish Ebay Auction - but now sell sticks using the same chips on alternative/cheaper PCBs. In any event, unlike OCZ/Corsair/et el, these Elixir jobbies are fully manufactured in-house rather than being speed-binned Micron (usually) DIMMs with a gaudy brandname heatspreader stuck on.

Elixir's DIMM codes are explained here - these CAS5 6400 dimms are pretty high spec'd - I also checked out the *.pdf linked to a few posts ago.

Looks a very decent gamble indeed to me at this sort of price. I cannot find any report of it being used as 4x 1GB [what I need].

 . . . would much appreciate it if anyone reading this with firsthand experience of these Elixir M2Y1G64TU8HB0B/25C sticks would share this experience & any opinions they might have.

[shoarthing]

Elixir PC6400 . .   Microdirect's price is now down to just under £33 (inc VAT) a stick, & stock - as of the time of this post - has dropped rather rapidly to 50~ish pieces . . . succumbed & bought 4 of 'em.

P5WDH, VRM waterblock for same (already have suitable NB, GPU, & CPU waterclocks), & E6420 (4MB cache 8x 266  'Allendale' version of E6400) follow early next week when the E6420 at its circa-£100 etail price is supposed to be released.

NB: the devoted tweaker can (link to interesting thread) run OSX 'Tiger' on a P5WDH . . . . h/w is not very different to an iMac, so long as you go for a Nvidia vid-card w/ no more than 256MB, ideally a reference design 7600GT. Have set up/worked on several 22" & 24" iMacs recently, so v interested to see if this superb OS will work 100% on a faster [Raptor boot HDD/4GB RAM/(hopefully) overclocked to 8x 400 ie 3.2GHz] platform.

 . .  I hope that there won't be any hassle over the extra RAM, & 32-bit OSX will simply see/use 3GB of it [you can only buy/specify iMacs with a max of 3GB RAM].

Edit: 20/04/07 - 4x Elixir PC6400 arrived: blue PCBs, chips marked 'Elixir' [not 'Nanya'] - will test when mobo arrives.

[Rob]

...sadly this has, yet again, turned me into a vampire.

What the ?  Turned you back into a vampire?  errrrrr......  It's like an alcoholic, once a vampire, always a vampire.  You don't get to come and go as you please....heheheh.

Sorry I haven't been here lately.  To add a few comments.......
G, I had Suse 10.something installed and decided I didn't want to go down that road.  It installed properly as far as I could tell without any ATA/SATA issues, but I only had it on there a couple days.  I built the rig for Vista, and that is the road I took.  I have Vista Business running on it now.

The asus boards you are talking about are ringing a bell.  I think we have that exact board installed on our graphics boxes....I will double check.  they are performing great if it is them!!

Pain in the ass?  Stubborn?     Well, you guys taught me well, I am now employed doing this computer shite......


Rob

[shoarthing]

 . . . hoekaay . .  bought all the remaining bits today [P5WDH/e6420 retail box/Alphacool AN8 SLI VRM waterblock]: will report as to whether this setup works as planned.

[Plan = running at 8x 400MHz 24/7 stable at the lowest possible vcore]

 . . . snagette/uncontrollable variable appears to be that e6420s so far reported on are of varying batches from a considerable range of production weeks - from week 44 '06 up to week 02 '07 - & that these weeks/batches vary a lot in their willingness to be 'clocked. Reports appear to indicate w44 generally iffy, w45 OK, w51 rather good & so on: inference is later = better.

Bought from Ebuyer calculating (aka: guessing) that a real big etailer would buy stock direct from a major distributor at the last possible moment to get the best out of pound:dollar currency movements, thus hopefully being supplied w/ recent production.

[memo to self] . . . dream on sucker . . . .

[shoarthing]

Re: Elixir PC6400 [again] . .  at last have found a link to overclocking experience with Elixir 1GB sticks ['667' stuff]  . .  happily, this thread is also about overclocking an E6420. Looks like this very cheap 400MHz DDR2 has some headroom [450MHz] after all, tho' no VDIMM soecified . . . .

Re: my widgets: received a week 52 '06, Malay, 'B' stepping E6420 - yippee, a Christmas CPU - from Ebuyer, plus a latest-revision [1.04G] P5WDH Deluxe. Infuriatingly, they sent the wrong model Alphacool 'HeatTrap' VRM waterblock [part # 11601 apparently fits the P5W], so have to wait a day or two on the RMA before setting it all up properly.

 . .  fired up a lashed-together air-cooled setup: 4x DDR2 pass memtest OK at 266, but cannot try overclocking the setup to 400~ish until watercooled: default [passive] NB & VRM cooling runs pretty damn hot at default MHz ventilated by the default Intel CPU heatsink.

[shoarthing]

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Rob]

S,
How did you do that?  is that running in VMWare?  If not and it is running natively, we need to talk!!!   

Rob

[shoarthing]

Runs natively 

 . . . Was not entirely trivial to get things just right; but OK given any experience at the terminal & of course I can talk you through it. Took me three goes to install 'JaS SSE3' 10.4.8 then update to OSX 10.4.9 plus install all current Apple patches & the latest 'hackintosh' development kernel. The basic 10.4.8 install worked each time. I'd guess from reading the forums that mebbe 50% of inexperienced users give up in tears; but that most geeks find it pretty simple, given suitable hardware.

 . .  I have a fair bit of experience w/ Macs, which helped.

Best & simplest to try out on a separate HDD: possible nono's, even on an Intel-chipset mobo . . .

a) you will not, now or ever, be able to use or install to any form of firmware 'RAID' - true transparent hardware RAID will of course work fine.
b) read access only by default to NTFS (read/write to FAT32) - there is an OSX port of FUSE/ntfs-3g for safe read/write access (which works 100% in Linux); but I haven't tried it yet.
c) Win PCs or a dualboot Win install will have no read access to HFS formatted HDDs unless you install 'MacDrive' to all/any networked Win PCs [not free]
d) you'll need to know [ideally post here] your exact make/model of sound 'n networking ICs - have a look at the HCL here. Weird windriven hardware simply won't work.
e) probably best to use a NVIDIA vidcard - tho' there are ATI drivers. A NV43 [6600] works fine for me at 1920x1200 @ 60MHz & 32bit colour with full acceleration.
f) life may well be easier, especially if you use a non-US-'english' layout, if you buy yourself a genuine mac keyboard: I am using an old Mac Pro k/b & (one-button !) mouse, bought for the equivalent of $25 on Ebay. MS have remapping drivers for OSX as a free d/l.
g) probably best if your DVD burner is a Pioneer (the brand Apple traditionally use) - mine is a RPC1 hacked 111L & works 100% for DVD playback using the builtin DVDPlayer & for ripping/burning. There are patchers available to make most makes/models work.
h) [a serious issue for many] no sleep/suspend works or is likely to work 100%, & 'SpeedStep' must be disabled in the BIOS.

 . .  but any hassle & preparatory care is worthwhile: vastly better [of course] than any WinOS; more usable, especially for multimeejah stuff, than openSUSE 10.2.

For my purposes, a key advantage is that there's an AI-quality secure audio ripper [free] called 'Max' available: you can use this together with the builtin 'core audio' encoder to produce superb quality *.m4as at 96 or 128Kb VBR for yer iPod. I could not get 'rubyripper' [Linux equivalent] to work in openSUSE, & all Linux audio ripping/*.m4a encoding was depressingly inferior to EAC/neroAAC in Windows & a right hassle - 'Max' is at least as good as EAC and arguable better  . .  & of course the thing integrates very nicely with iTunes.

[Graham]

Hi S

The problem with multimedia in SuSe is that a lot of the supplied software has been crippled because of copyright laws.  It is quite easy to get the full versions up and running.

How is the motherboard, does everything work as it should?

[shoarthing]

. . . . the problem with multimedia in SuSe is that a lot of the supplied software has been crippled because of copyright laws.  It is quite easy to get the full versions up and running

. . . no, that's not really my point: along with literally millions of other folk, I am converting my CD library to iPod *.m4as as fast as I can; & like some, have 3rd-party (Sennheiser) earbuds for the pod, am quite fussy about quality, & have a fair few elderly knackered CDs requiring secure-mode extraction.

There is no openSUSE equivalent of EAC, & 'faac' [the GPL AAC encoder] is about two years behind the eight-ball compared to neroAAC or the iTunes/core audio AAC encoder.

 . .  on top of this, you cannot run EAC under WINE in openSUSE [because of the way optical devices are handled], & cannot get neroAAC to reliably run under WINE with K3b as the frontend - I know all this from a great deal of firsthand experience. You can make it work alright; but not reliably.

There is a secure-mode cdparanoia-based audio ripper for Linux [called 'rubyripper'] but required libraries are not available in any openSUSE 10.2 repository, & I could not get their source to compile, nor find anyone else who had done so.

Rubyripper compiles & runs fine in Gentoo Linux; but as above there ain't a decent-quality AAC encoder: in the end I had to do all this stuff in a Win32 vm, which rather misses the point.

 . .  the basic tool for this secure ripping function ['cdparanoia'] is of course available in Linux: but without a decent frontend/decent encoder combo there's just no point.

Nero, happily, are going to release a Linux binary of neroAAC at some point, which may stimulate development of real good secure-mode ripper/encoder function in (say) Amarok: if Nero focused NeroLinux development on this function [secure ripping to *.m4a] rather than towards the pointless bell's 'n whistles of unaffordable HDDVD/BluRay, they would sell a lot of copies, having at last some real advantage over the excellent & free K3b.

In OSX, you simply install 'Max' & away you go - excellent quality 100-ish Kb/s VBR *.m4a encodes from securely-ripped source, hassle-free, at about 10 mins per CD - about the same or rather better than EAC/neroAAC in Win32.

What's more, this is all neatly integrated with iTunes, accurately & swiftly gets info from MusicBrainz,  & uses just about zero system resources.

 . . as for DVD-faffing in OSX; there is a (slightly buggy - frustratingly the preview function doesn't yet work) port of PGCEdit, a rippper just about equivalent to DVDDecrypter called 'mactheripper' & a couple of commercial transcoders - tho' these are now rather in the shade due to the development of the excellent & free 'handbrake' application.

 . .  Linux of course has no ripper, tho' the Linux version of PGCEdit works very well. There are a couple of OK-ish transcoding frontends.

Now that Ricohjpn 8x DVD+R DLs are cheap & work well in Pioneer burners you need no more than the ripper & PGCEdit, unless converting to *.m4v for yer videoPod [using handbrake].

How is the motherboard, does everything work as it should?

The P5WDH has full function for most/all its onboard devices, including after some post-install faffing about with hacked kexts [kernel extensions] audio including S/PDIF (have only tested 2-channel mode) & some or full function from the onboard jmicron PATA/SATA/eSATA controller. The OSX 10.4.8 install took about 20 minutes, at the end of which I had full hardware acceleration at 1920x1200x32bit.

The remote doesn't yet work [a work-in-progress aimed at full Front Row functionality]; but FWIW the onboard wi-fi works OK in at least client mode.

 . . . basically, I have a 24" iMac running at 3.2GHz with 3.2GB RAM, using a Raptor as its boot-drive & a Seagate 7200.10 datadrive, for about 2/3 the cost of the real 2.3GHz/2GB/7200.9 thing. A local chum has a 24" iMac at that spec [cost him the best part of £1800], & the only extra functions he appears to have are the remote, bluetooth, onboard camera & microphone, & firewire 800 - the P5WDH has working onboard firewire 400 & I'm sticking in a firewire 800 PCI card to see whether it works - mind you, the P5WDH's onboard eSATA is of more practical use nowadays for external storage.

Runs solidly & very briskly, has accurate hardware monitoring for CPU & HDD temps, & is fully updated to OSX 10.4.9 & has all current software updates/patches: I'm happy as a clam . . .

(why are clams said to be happy?)

[Rob]

(why are clams said to be happy?)

When I am all locked away in my shell all by myself, I am one happy SOB!!!!   

Rob