Windows 7: Asus P7P55D-E Pro, couple questions

good morning,

i had a few questions i would like to resolve about my motherboard...

1. i have a sataIII 6gb/s hard drive and a sata optical drive, i have the optical drive plugged into the intel controller, sata port #4, and it shows up in my bios under the main screen and i can boot from it, etc... the hard drive however is plugged into the marvell controller, the 6gb/s port, and does not show up in my normal bios.. however when it posts a screen flashes with something along the lines of 'marvell bios'.. etc... and lists my drive as sataIII speed. i presume everything is ok with the way this is setup?

2. how do i go about setting up the 6gb/s sataIII in the bios? i change 'detect sata as' to AHCI, and put the marvell controller in 'AHCI mode'? i must do this before installing my OS correct?

3. this might not be mobo related exaclty, but it is hardware related... i noticed that in bios (no OS even installed yet) under the hardware monitoring tab my temps are as follows: CPU Temperature (PECI) 55C-56C / Motherboard Temperature 37C-38C - are these temps too high for just idling in bios? is my heatsink not seated properly? I have already tried to reseat it once. the stock thermal paste was evenly applied to both the processor and heatsink, but it was the stock intel stuff... i have an old (maybe a year.. year and a half) tube of artic silver 5 laying around.. should i remove it and apply that? how do i go about removing the old and applying the new if necessary?

appreciate the help

Yes, set the main SATA controller to AHCI mode, although this will have no effect on the Windows 7 install you plan. I just like it that way.

Then go in and change the Marvell Controller to AHCI, before you install Windows 7.
I've never installed an OS in this way. Please post back and let us know how that works.

Speedfan says my temps are 42C for processor, 56C for each core, and 46C for the system.
You should always apply a very thin coat of paste to the heatsink when you install it. But the stuff on the tab on the bottom of the stock heatsink is fine. It's not going to make a 10C difference.

thanks for the reply, i found out i had a bad stick of ram.. so im going to install once i get all that sorted out.. i will post back the results.. i have quite a large thread going in the install forums right now actually

about the temps, im not sure if you meant im ok... or if i should be concerned..

The processor will ramp up it's temp under load, and dealing with the bad RAM may have been that load. So check the temps after you get the system running stable.

I gave you my temps for comparison. I'm running a 920, I'm guessing you are running a 940. 10 degrees higher than my rig could be explained by other things, but it is not so high that you need to be worried about the processor. Intel does not state a temperature limit for the i7s, but independent testing has shown that they can run pretty hot without issues.

So you should be concerned, as in: "I should keep my eye on this", but not concerned like you are going to burn something up. You might want to double check the heat sink installation - make sure all 4 cams are actually locked down, and make sure the fans are all running, no dust, etc.

DirtyElf

According to your posted specs and mobo you are running the i7 870 1156 socket CPU which is identical to what I'm using.

I'm idling at 26*C right now with a 3.08GHz OC. I don't hit 55*C running benchmarks under heavy load.

Your temps are way to high with stock settings. The bad ram is probably the cause.
Recheck when the new memory is in as suggested by TVeblen.

Mike

Proof.