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Motherboards ASUS Striker II NSE - Emergency Surgery and Rehab

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by The_Crapman, 18 Feb 2012.

  1. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    thats pretty f'i sweet!
     
  2. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    The board should be delivered either today or tomorrow, and i'll need to test it out right away and make sure it works properly. However I don't have any water cooling as yet. I've seen a few vids on youtube and plenty of pics where people haven't got the NB watercooled, but is this really safe?
     
  3. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    DANGER!!! RETARD ALERT!!!

    So I got my Striker yesterday (by yesterday I mean monday since it's now past midnight, for all you pedantic bar stewards out there). It really is a thing of beauty. ASUS now deploy the red and black ROG colour scheme into every nook and cranny of their mobo's, but I would love to see a return to bare copper heatsinks (although the NB has a painted aluminium one to look copper-ish).

    I was quite tired once I'd got in from work and eaten, so thought I'd do just do some benches as my rig was, to see how much an improvement the move to the new board and DDR3 RAM made. Only once I'd done that I couldn't wait till the next day. I really wish I had....

    I disconnected everything from my P5K-E, moved my cpu and heatsink over after a clean and applying Zalman STG-1 TIMM, slid it in my case and hooked it up. I was a little worried how it would take to my RipjawsX, as some has reported it a little finicky with what RAM you used and the guy I bought it from hadn't updated the bios as far as he could remember.

    PSU on and it started to come to life, with the onboard power buttons, sound card and ROG logo lit up. Power on and half a dozen LEDs flickered into life. With the traditional 'Hammering of the Delete Button', the bios was there when my screen finally decided to display something. All components showing, RAM set at 1600 already (even though it's not 'officially' supported.

    Boot devices set up, F10 and Enter. Windows loading. Login page coming up....... And BSOD. Balls. In my excitement I didn't do sysprep.:wallbash:

    Now my windows disks is being gay and restaring after 54% extraction is reached. Double balls.

    This is gonna be a tricky one!
     
  4. samkiller42

    samkiller42 For i AM Cheesecake!!

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    Whoops, We're in March btw, not Feb:duh:

    Sam
     
  5. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    Ah. Yeh that too.
     
  6. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    What a Difference a ROG makes.

    So I've had my StrikerIINSE for a month now and although it's been quite tetchy at times, it seems the swap from my P5K has been worth it.

    Before

    My PC with my P5K-E in:
    [​IMG]

    The system specs with max OC:
    [​IMG]

    My best Heaven score:
    [​IMG]


    During
    Just out the box after a thouroughly pleasant Ebay transaction (for a change)
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
    Ain't she a beaut!

    And some nice Gskill RipjawsX to go in
    [​IMG]

    However, the S2NSE and Ripjaws did not play nice.:nono: I couldn't get an overclock over 3.0GHz out of it and after a little reshearching on the ASUS forums, it seems it was the RAM causing the problem. Being designed for P67 boards, it didn't like being dictated to by Grandad FSB. So I got some Kingston HyperX for £20, as modelled by the lovely Mark :D
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    After
    I Would show you a pic of the board in full swing. There's LEDs galore a a nice illuminated ROG logo on the NB heatsink which look superb, but the batteries in my camera decided to give up before i could download them. :duh:

    With the new motherboard and RAM I was able to get a nice stable 3.4Ghz (9x378) with the RAM linked and synced at 1512Mhz.
    [​IMG]

    This got me on extrra 160 points in Heaven
    [​IMG]

    I did get it to post into windows at 3.5, but was struggling to get it stable running Prime95. I upped the voltage a little and it seem to stablise, but the temps were going up past 70C and when it got to 75 it didn't seem like stopping, so i chickened out and went back down to 3.4. Need to get it on water next!

    Thanks To all those who've offered their help and advice in this thread, also on Corsair, Kingston, Patriot. The new Paper, Scissors, Stone and a special thanks to Bindi who's helped loads.
     
  7. j4mi3

    j4mi3 What's a Dremel?

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    looks nice man!
     
  8. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    thanks :) you should see it when it's all lit up! boards nowadays can be quite over styled. to me there's nothing better than a load of shiny bare copper heatsinks (even though the NB has a coloured alu one. lol)

    was thinking of getting a antec 620 and modding it to go through the northbridge as well. not sure how easy would be or if there's enough length in the original pipework.
     
  9. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    The Money Shot

    More pics!

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  10. jakobfrimmel

    jakobfrimmel What's a Dremel?

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    love the way that mobo lights up!!
     
  11. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    It is really nice. I'm hopin to still show them off still when I mod it.
     
  12. Elton

    Elton Officially a Whisky Nerd

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    Beautiful Mobo. Sadly I never had the fortune to nab a premium motherboard. Having been relegated to mid-range ones on the basis of budget.
     
  13. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    If my 680i is anything to go by, these older boards really do benefit from liquid cooling. I wrestled with the temperatures for years but it wasn't until I applied water that they were tamed. Here's a look see...

    [​IMG]

    Really interested to see your custom water block. I used MIPS on my chipset.
     
  14. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    well i got it second hand, so didn't fork out an extortionate amount for it. but nowadays there are some affordable premium motherboards like the ASUS Maximus IV Gene. I used to have an ASUS P5N32SLI Premium, which i got when it was on sale after the 600 series nforce chips came out. as a premium board it was supposed to be the dogs bollocks. turned out to be the dogs dinner :-(

    well i'm gonna get an antec 620 and mod it to incorperate the NB into the loop while i'm designing and making the custom blocks. but still designing them at the mo, trying to work out the fin design.

    was originally just going to have straight fins as to not restrict the water too much, but after consulting with a few people this would actually be counter productive as you'd want to disrupt the flow slightly so the water has a chance to pick up the heat. much more research is needed i think before i actually start making stuff. i've made the mistake of not doing enough R&D before and ending up with just that just doesn't work or looks crap. although just found mips make blocks for the board....
    http://www.mips-computer.com/index....SProductline_MainboardSets_NickelPomBlack.htm

    i love how you've used iron brew as a coolant :thumb:
     
  15. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    It was flat cola actually! :D

    Supposedly Mayhem Blood Red; must have reacted with something in my RAD for cola flavour!

    Serial diluted the loop back to clear for now.
     
  16. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    i love realy cold flat coke. best hangover cure. if it doesn't make you sick. lol
     
  17. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    Liquid Refreshment

    I've now got a modded Antec Kuhler 620 cooling the CPU (now a QX6850 :)) and the Northbridge. For my first go at proper watercooling, i'm rather pleased with how it turned out. :D
    [​IMG]

    And how does such a diminutive little loop perform? Idle temps are at a breezy 33-36C across the cores, with the NB normally hotter than the depths of hell at 42C:)
    [​IMG]
    For comparisson, with the Antec 620 as stock it used to idle at about 37-38C so a slight improvement there, thanks to the increased volume of coolant, unfortunately I didn't have everest before so can't give NB temps, but it got very hot to the touch.

    And under load, the CPU maxed out at a nice 57,57,59,58 across the cores after 10 minutes of running prime95. But the big win out of this is that the NB temp only went up by 3C to 45!:jawdrop:
    [​IMG]

    Now i'll have to see just how far I can puch this new CPU with my added cooling oomph. But first, a little play time me thinks.
     
  18. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    I had an Asus ROG mobo with the same Fusion waterblock. The waterblock was absolutely awful. Badly designed leading to poor cooling. The board was the Max extreme or something. It couldn't run 1600mhz ram at it's rated speed. I ended up ditching it for a £137 Gigaboard that beat the diapers off it.
     
  19. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    I wanted to get a look in the fusion block and see what the fins were like, but after getting one screw out i knckered the head on the other :-(
    Seems to be working well though. Having another run at prime now after bumping up the multiplyer a notch for 3.3 and unlinking the ram to run it at 1600. still only at 45!
     
  20. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    Had a run on prime with the CPU@3.3 (333*10). With all voltages still on auto at the minute, vcore was going between 1.344 and 1.36. Max core temp of 61C and NB 46C.
    [​IMG]
     

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