www.olgol.ru : Железо, ASUS PC-DL Intro and Mini FAQ

This site includes tips tricks and modifications that will enhance the performance of your PC-DL Deluxe. So of the stuff is easy and pretty harmless while other might fry your board, CPUs and memory. But don't you worry about that now.

The Board

There are a few ins and out with this board. First of all, there are currently 3 different revisions in circulation. 1.03, 1.04 and 1.05. 1.05 is the current production version, production started around December 2003. The main difference is that with PC-DL you can use the ICH5 S-ATA controller while overclocking. If you have a rev 1.03 or 1.04 and want to use S-ATA disks while overclocking you have to use the Promise controller (the top S-ATA connectors named S-ATA RAID 0 and 1). While with a 1.05 you can use all four connectors and even use a RAID array on the Promise without problems.

The BIOS

There is a number of BIOS version available. Boards are usually shipped with 1003. There is also an official 1004 BIOS, 1004.12 Beta and a 1005 Beta. 1004 is strongly recommended. I do not recommend using any Beta BIOS unless you have a double BIOS chip setup, an EPROM burner or other means to replicate or switch between chips in a safe way. The reason is that both the Beta BIOS's have proved difficult to flash and rewrite over causing multiple dead Bios chips through the PC-DL community. This even flashing from a Beta to an Official BIOS. There is an excellent guide on this page to describe how to flash a BIOS as safe as possible and even how to "Hot Flash" a spare chip. Also all BIOS updates and softwares are available under the PC-DL Downloads and Utilities page.

The Memory

This is the most important part of your setup, I even dare say that it's more important then your CPUs when it comes to overclocking this Board. The A#1 memory chip (the actual memory chips not the module brand) is BH-6. When you are about to buy the memory sticks for your computer read the datasheets and ask questions to either the producer or on the forums.2cpu.com Official PC-DL Deluxe thread (under Motherboards) to get as much knowledge about the modules as possible in order to find something that covers your needs and price range. The by far most successful brand together with this board are the Corsair, TWINX 3200 memory sticks for example. SAMSUNG works stable and nice are cheap but doesn't OC much at all, other success stories are heard from Kingston, OCz and Mushkin. Usually 3200 sticks are to prefer on this board.

Depending on what applications your are running it demands different amounts of memory traffic. Thus there is no such thing as the optimum settings for the memory to obtain maximum performance. You have two modes you can run in, 1:1 (266 in BIOS) and 4:5 (333 in BIOS) FSB:Memory ratio. For a stock computer it's usually the memory that sets the limit for your maximum FSB. You can probably gain higher FSB by setting your memory to 1:1 but then you will probably loose some memory bandwidth compared to lower FSB and 4:5 setting. Run benchmarks relative to your main use of your computer (gaming, number crunching or 3D rendering related benches for example) to se what gives the highest results of your computer.

The CAS settings and timings of your memory can Also be set in BIOS, all sticks have a default mode that's automatically implemented if you use the setting "By SPD" in BIOS. This can however be adjusted manually. These numbers set how many clock cycles waited before doing actions like reading and writing to your memory, needless to say, the lower number the better performance. This is called Latency, there are Low Latency memory sticks that have by default lower settings and allow (in best cases) lowest possible Latency settings (optimum 2-3-3-5 compared to typical 2.5-4-4-8).

The PC-DL has a default and non adjustable voltage of 2.5v for the DIMM banks. Higher speeds and lower Latency on memories usually demands higher voltage. There are a few ways to fix this with various modifications to the motherboard, I strongly suggest the Pomona vDimm Mod (under Overclocking & Moding / Advanced Overclocking on this site) since it's easy to do, no fuss, no permanent adjustments and you don't even have to remove your motherboard from the case.

The Xeon CPUs

When overclocking this board it ha proven time and again that the default frequency of your CPUs are not really that important. Some of the best overclocking results have been done with 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz Xeons, even though it's a bit easier to obtain higher speeds with 3.0 and 3.2 GHz CPUs due to the higher multiplier available and thus you can have a high CPU speed with relatively low FSB and by this not stressing the memory nor the Northbridge as hard. Best available stepping (CPU version) of Xeons today is MO, though the D1 is pretty successful as well.

The default voltage (VID, vCore) of most midrange Xeons are 1.5, but in real life this is drooped down to approx 1.47 and fluctuates even more during load. This is usually enough to obtain ~170FSB/3.3GHz without modifications (assuming your memory and other parts can keep up). If you are not planning of high end OC I suggest leaving the vCore at default in order to keep the temperatures down. Not until you have reached your upper limit of stable CPUs and want to go higher I suggest going to a higher VID. First step would probably be going to 1.55 (giving actual ~1.51v). There are basically two ways to do this, the simplest is to place a "U" shaped wire in the CPU socket to lure the board to identify the CPU as a higher VID. How to do this is described under Advance Overclocking / Wirewraps & Pinmods.

Cooling

This board produces a lot of heat especially when overclocking. When having a standing case configuration you have the GPU and both CPUs sitting over each other and the VRM and Northbridge (silver rectangular heatsink and black heatsink) close by all feeding each other heat that could create a thermal runaway if not controlled properly. A good case ventilation is a must even if you cool the main parts with water. CPUs can be decently air cooled either with the stock Intel Wind Tunnel or with Swiftech 604-V. There are Also a number of XEON socket water cooling blocks (Swiftech for example) that works magic. A few near crazy people are using phase change cooling devices to bring the CPUs subzero, though this is a bit on the extreme side.

The VRM even at default settings almost demand some kind of active cooling, please read the guides under Overclocking / Cooling for this. The IWT for the CPUs (specially the 3.2 IWT) are very very good, but by default a little noisy, this can be helped with lubricating the fans a bit and have good control over the fan speed with manual controls or through QFan in BIOS. The 604-V are easy to use and setup with low rpm fans for decent cooling for a very low noise when not OCing to heavily (or at a high noise when OCing heavily).

Success Roadmap

The magic ingredients to get the (near) perfect setup.

Rev 1.05 Board to get full functions when OCing
The right memory is THE answer
The vDimm mod to get the memory even higher and more stable at lower latency
The vCore mod to get even more speed and stability from your dear Xeons
The vIO mod to get higher stability from your Northbridge
Trial and error to get to know your board with different setups, cooling alternatives, rations and timings.
Good luck with your PC-DL Deluxe experience. If you have any questions please drop by at forums.2cpu.com / Motherboards / Official PC-DL Deluxe thread.

Many thanks to Fluf (AKA Olof Geelnard) for this mini-FAQ

Взято с сайта http://www.datamine.tk/

oLGol (31.08.2004)