Antec P180, Asus P5B Deluxe, E4300, Ninja, S12 430, 7600 GS

[pattyweb]

Also:

Antec P180 case (nice!)
Asus P5B Deluxe
E4300
Corsair 2x1gb
Ninja Rev B
S12 430
Gigabyte 7600 GS
LG IDE DVD-RAM
Samsung SATA SpinPoint


Wow, it's been a while since I've built my own pc. I picked these parts based on all the posts I've read here over the past few weeks. Great Site!

Finally put her together last night and she's running! Didn't go together as smoothly as I expected though.

Assembly Notes:
1) For me, the ninja base would NOT, i repeat, NOT mount to the P5B deluxe. It hit the capacitors. I had to pull out my dremel and grind the mount down a little to clear them.
2) The S12 power cord does reach the top power plug easily going over the tops of the cards. It won't reach if you try to go behind the MB.
3) Running 2GB (2x1GB) in the B bank. If you use the A bank, then you can't mount the ninja fan in front.
4) Is the ninja fan really that hard to mount? The thin metal spring is bending under the pressure. Ninja manual showed an open frame fan case and the metal spring attaching to the closer flange, but mine came with a closed one so the spring has to reach further

Windows XP Installation Notes:
1) What a nightmare. Posted first time. (No OC). CPU uCode error. Updated bios eventually fixed that. Eventually did a simple overlock to 9X300. No issues yet. Didn't change any voltages or anything else.
2) Everything installed (I think) and booting fast. But I can't find a 'generic serial' driver. Keeps finding that hardware but where's the driver?
3) One of the network cards is installed. The other doesn't have a cable. In device manager, one of them has an X. Is this because I don't have a cable plugged into lan 2?
4) Finally found registry hack to make nvidia SLI warning go away.

Noise:
1) No case fans right now. Only running the stock ninja fan and the S12. Ninja fans does not seem to be controlled by P5B even though I specified quiet in the bios. It's the loudest part but put another way, still quieter than the dell 9300 notebook right next to it. S12 very quiet. Idle temps low 20s, Prime95 gets me into the 40s, using core temp which reports the two cpu temps. PC Probe II reports different temps, only one for cpu, 40c idle, 61 with prime. This is after the 9x300 overclock.
2) Running prime for a while (15min?), the ninja still stays cool, only reaching in to touch the heat pipes at the bottom do I feel some warmth. Gigabyte 7600GS (fanless) video definitely very warm. Chipset cool to the touch.

Very impressed so far. Just wish Asus, XP driver installation had gone smoother. Can stress enough how much easier it is if you've already got one PC next to it already online to go get drivers.

Only worries are that not all the drivers are installed right. When I try to install ACPI, a window flashes up, then goes away. Is it installed? One of the network cards, I'm assuming lan 2, has an X in device manager.

Biggest question right now to other P5B deluxe owners: How do I finish getting that generic serial installed?

What does it take to get the fans to be controlled by the MB?

Once I finish installing all my software, I may switch out the ninja fan for an antec set to 800 if I can't control the ninja fan from the MB.

[NeilBlanchard]

Welcome to SPCR!

The fan control happens in the BIOS, generally.

You could try enabling the LAN that has the X in the Device Manager, or it may still need a driver. Have you run Windows Updates yet? This sometimes "catches" these drivers that are missing.

[SebRad]

Hi, I've been useing SpeedFan on my P5B-E plus that I think is very similar to the Deluxe version. It seams to work pretty well apart from a couple of things. It seams all the case fan speeds are tied to one control, this is down to the motherboard though, the CPU fan is controlled separately. For me SpeedFan's fan control seams to be quite basic but maybe I've got it setup incorrectly. It "hunts", ie runs the CPU fan at minimum level which isn't fast enough to stop the CPU going over the threshold temp I set, it then ramps over about 10 secs to 80-90% while the CPU is brought back down and then drops the fan speed back to minimum by which time the CPU is 5-10C below temp and over the next minute works is way back up again and the cycle repeats.
BIOS fan control needs to be off for SpeedFan to work, the fan controls are in the "Hardware Monitor" menu. You enable fan control and then choose one of 3 profiles for fan speed, performance, optimal and silent.
Hope this helps, Seb

[pattyweb]

I tried speedfan. Freaked out initially when I saw an aux temp of 119c. But it seems lots are reporting that with a P5B.

I decided to reinstall XP from scratch again, and this time everything installed happily. No 'generic serial' driving me nuts. Both network cards are properly installed. I just disabled the second unused local area connection.

I'm a bit confused by 3 and 4 wire fans. Everything I have is 2 or 3 wires. The intel fan that came with the CPU is the only 4 wire fan I see.

[slimwallet]

I also had the SLI warning problem, and solved it by getting the new driver from nvidia's website.

Think it was a known problem for the driver that came with my XFX 7600GS.

[pattyweb]

Some have posted that the ninja doesn't need to be modified to fit a P5B deluxe. In my case, I had to. When I placed just the mount into the socket, I could NOT push down all four plastic pins without putting pressure on the capacitors. Just dropping the mount into place, shows it resting on the capacitors. It's close, very close. But those metal tabs at the ends are NOT resting where they should be.




So I filed my down. Now it drops right in and the mount rests easily on the bottom of the plastic mounts. After filing it you can now see the metal tabs resting properly on the plastic pin mounts