Asus P5Q-E

[osmiumoc]

The P5Q-E is a nice 775 board so I thought why not make a thread about it. 

Why do I like it?
It´s cheap, there are many of it and it has some convenient features like onboard power and reset bottons and a dual bios with both chips socketed for easy replacement. 
P45 chipset offers high FSB capability even with ambient cooling. I used it so far for ambient cooling and C2Ds, but my few 65nm C2Qs were doing great on it too.

GTL-adjustment works fine on this board and you can make a noticable difference in stability by taking the time to experiment with them.

It also has its quirks, especially with memory-support. Some can be worked around by using a modded bios or trying your luck with a bios from a different Asus P45 board.

Gonna list some bios versions for anyone to try out:

www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?200109-Modded-ASUS-P5Q-Pro-Deluxe-Premium-BIOS
Xtremesystems-Thread by Ket with links to his final modded bios for the board.

drive.google.com/file/d/1JXE_MrzyW3pG52cJKjKFAByKBnv78LTN/view?usp=sharing
Link with Kets modded bios but added Xeon-support from my google-drive to download, tell me if its down or not working.
WARNING: This is intended for using Xeons only, if you use this bios with a regular C2D or C2Q you will likely get the message 'unkown CPU - bios update recommended'. E.g. with an E8400 you will loose the ability to adjust multi and potentially encounter other issues!

dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket775/P5Q-E/P5Q-E-ASUS-2101.zip
This is the latest bios from Asus for the board. It has fixed most of the issues with earlier bios revisions and is a solid starting point in my opinion. 

The modded versions add some fixes for settings that do not work with the original bios like RAM phase pull-in tweaks and potentially some of the clock skews and they can add some memory support, but can also block some RAM from working with the board at all.

EDIT: Probably not the board but my RAM kits that are trash. Micron D9GMH or D9GKX are the way to go.
Which leads me to the point of RAM. This board is painfully picky about RAM-compatibility and stability. Especially beyond 533/1066. I had the best luck with the non-modded Asus 2101 bios which had most of my 1066 2x1GB kits running at exactly 1066. But rarely any higher. My best perfoming kit on the 2101 bios was some OCZ 1200 5-5-5-15 rated 2x1 kit that managed to run 550/1100 stable enough for spi 32m @2.2V.
The board really likes the 400 strap over the 333 at the edge of stability. 400 strap and 1:1 or 3:4 has given me the best results on both of my two P5Q-Es. 


Other important things to note:

-My board always ran DRAM voltage a little over the value I set in bios. 2.00V in bios resulted in 2.07V real voltage.

-No temperature sensors for the chipset! If you want to measure it, you need to probe it yourself.

-If it comes with the stock TIM, it is advised to replace it. The NB will profit from much lower temps. BEWARE the stock compound is sticky and brittle, it takes some force to get off so be careful.

-It has no CMOS-reset botton. You can reset with a jumper but need to take the battery or it often does not fully clear.

-It tends to corrupt the bios while trying out unstable RAM settings. Happened to me 4x in a day, everytime it auto-detected this and prompted me to reflash from the back-up chip which worked flawlessly. It did NOT yet corrupt a drive.

-No speaker, so no beep-diagnostics until you plug one in.

-It limits Vcore to 1.6V. Only way around that limit is the CPU_OV jumper. BEWARE, if you set this jumper to enable the bios tends to auto-set a high voltage AND the voltage always overshoots the bios value! (1.35V bios end up at ~1.42V real)
After setting the jumper make sure to head into bios first and dial your voltage down.

-I have not tested NB_OV yet and I think this will only be useful for x-cooling the chipset. On ambient the NB is fine without the OV jumper. I tend to get 530-540 FSB out of 1.2V NB, beyond that dont be shy to raise the NB voltage. For 588 I had 1.44V NB, at 1.5V I think most can hit 600 FSB. This demands a fan over the NB heatsink, fresh paste and good contact but is still ok on ambient air. 

-Due to caps being rather close to the socket (top row is the issue) it is not possible to go direct die cooling with most common waterblocks for the CPU. You can improvise with copper shims or try to remove some material from the sides of your block if possible. Alternatively I think its possible to mod the board by removing the caps and adding them on the bottom but I did not see gains from going direct die on 775 that would justify this measure. 

[dr4g00n]

The P5Q-E should do 1200+ 5-5-5 without any fine tuning at all, I think it's just down to your mem kit's not being able to do it.

You want 2x512MB or 2x1GB kit's of Micron D9GKX/GMH for overclocking, don't even bother with anything else. Crucial Ballistix 16FD3 2x1GB are the general go to, but even so you still need to bin for a good kit.

Other kit's will generally work well too, except for OCZ, both my Asus P45 DDR2 boards hate my two OCZ kit's.

For actual benching your best off getting a X38/48 DDR3 (or P45 DDR3 for Xeon) board since they're noticeably faster even with just an average kit of PSC or Hypers.

[osmiumoc]

Yeah agree 100% with the DDR3 boards and that the P5Q-E can also easily get 1200+ but it has to be very specific Micron chips. I need to check for what my kits are made of, but I don´t know if 2x512MB or 2x1GB is a must.

My 2x2 kit is the one and only 2x2 I´ve tested so far and it was so much easier to work with. Until the one stick died that is. It might just come down to pure luck, and theoretically you are right, with less ICs on the module you have to win less 'lottery tickets' for your max. speed.
Just doesn´t correspond with my experience so far. I wouldn´t write 2x2 kits off, if you have one with the right microns on it why not try? It ran fine with 1.18V NB / 2.1V Mem, I read a lot about the 2x2s needing 1.5VNB to be stable and I just can´t say that this is true.

The funny thing about OCZ is, my board only hates them with Kets bios. On the Asus 2101 they are up there with my best kit so far.

[obscureparadox]

Just seen this thread now. Historically with 775, modded bios's tend to make overclocking ram much more difficult, that was the big issue with the L3014 for most users for a good while which is why most people only ran 950MHz single channel etc.

[Macsbeach98]

I agree with Dragoon and Lewis
This is interesting I remember when I couldnt get over 600 ram its usually the ram itself.
One thing what CPU are you using for this testing? I would be using a E8400/E8500 EO for the testing to keep things simple and even they are cpu's that ususlly clock nicely.

With Ballistix FD3 or FD5 are the go the others are usually shit I have got quite a few sets of Ballistix that suck they are in your ballpark 550 or thereabouts but all my FD3 will do 600+.
I have got 4 sets of FD3 2 sets will do about 630 the other 2 sets will do about 670 One day I will have to bin the 670 sets individually and put the best 2 sticks together.
Other ram I have got are
Ballistix tracer 512mb sticks will do around 620.
Corsair Dominator 800 Cas3 2.4v they will do 660/670
OCZ reaper PC9600 2.1v will do 620 dont know whats in them could be PSC but with just the primaries set 5-5-5-15 they are definitely faster than the ballistix at the same frequency.

One thing with ram its horses for courses I have got a set of G.Skill 800 light blue metalic heatspreader they arnt good for much in anything dont clock good except for the Asrock 4CoreDualSata2 they are stable and very good in that.

One thing Lewis all my FD3 sets I bought from England they must of had a glut of them over there or something.

[osmiumoc]

Thank you guys for sharing your hard earned data! At the end of the day I might just have had bad luck with my ballistix.

I´m going to hunt for some FD3s and see if I can make it further. Parts do come from unknown conditions and with 10+ years of use behind them.

My only FD3 kit I have that is known working refuses to do anything above 400 Mhz. It just doesn´t want it. Be it the P5Q-E or the sticks themself. But they do work stable at 400 or less.

Update: Since I found a lot of nice memory sticks I tried the board again and it runs them fine at higher clocks.

[gaghl]

Hi!
I've this board too. it's a good ddr2 board. I reached 660MHz with my new OCZ Reaper PC-6400 sticks. My last Reference Frequency was 590MHz with Dominator 2x2 PC-9136. I think it can reach 610+ with OCZ stick, just need a good E8xxx to do.

hwbot.org/submission/4939420_

hwbot.org/submission/4778935_

[Mr.Scott]

Mar 3, 2022 9:25:31 GMT -5 gaghl said:

Hi!
I've this board too. it's a good ddr2 board. I reached 660MHz with my new OCZ Reaper PC-6400 sticks. My last Reference Frequency was 590MHz with Dominator 2x2 PC-9136. I think it can reach 610+ with OCZ stick, just need a good E8xxx to do.

hwbot.org/submission/4939420_

hwbot.org/submission/4778935_

Welcome to W9.
I see you are a bencher. We like that here.
Enjoy your stay.

[osmiumoc]

Mar 3, 2022 9:25:31 GMT -5 gaghl said:

Hi!
I've this board too. it's a good ddr2 board. I reached 660MHz with my new OCZ Reaper PC-6400 sticks. My last Reference Frequency was 590MHz with Dominator 2x2 PC-9136. I think it can reach 610+ with OCZ stick, just need a good E8xxx to do.

hwbot.org/submission/4939420_

hwbot.org/submission/4778935_

I agree, since my initial post on this board I have learned a lot of things. My initial problems were mostly related to the bad RAM sticks I had at the time and inexperience.

But I switched from this to a Gigabyte board, so I don't have any recent results with the P5Q-E. Might have to revisit it.