First Build (AMD)

[linnemeyerhere]

I think the speaker died or is malfunctioning. Don't sweat it !

 

[madcratebuilder]

Congrats on the build Magnas, it reminded me of my first time. I think it came out pretty damn nice.

I see youy found that the AMD cpu reads a low temp, below ambient untill it gets up to areound 30C+, the AMD reading becomes more accurate the higher it gets. Check out HWInfo64 as a monitoring program, it reads AMD very nicely.

I bet your local shop has a pc speaker for near nothing, they breed at night in the bins. You should hear one beep when POST is finished. Cable management comes with experience, google "cable management" IMG and you can get a lot of ideas. Fine job.

 

[MagusMagnus]

Thanks guys. I heard it beep this time so that's got to be a loose wire on the speaker itself, I'll play with it later. Not worried about it at the moment but it would be just my luck to forget and then have an issue and not know what it is for forgetting about this quirk of the speaker lol.

Yeah, I'm still a little worried about the temperatures... if they are within reasonable accuracy or not. I don't mind if they're a few degrees off but I'd prefer them to be accurate within the margin of being able to know if the cores are actually staying below 62C (I am skeptical about it being no higher than 35C on Skyrim and Ultra; then again I do not feel hot air being exhausted, only cool air in desktop and at maximum temperate to warm in Skyrim on Ultra so it isn't impossible that it actually is staying at 35C in the game. It absolutely doesn't feel anywhere even close to my notebook that can actually burn my fingers and that one says it sits about 60-70C... yes, terrible but that's a notebook for you).

So other than Prime95 (which I also personally do not think wise to run on an 8350 on any air-only cooling... the NH-D14 is good but I think that would still be risky), I'm not sure how to push it to find out its actual thermal margins and that's a bit of an issue. I've yet to see the load go beyond 12% in the desktop (no idea with gaming. I only have one display right now and don't want to pay for monitoring it in games). Realistically, I should never crest even to 80% for the indefinite future and for what I do so I don't think burning it at 100% is actually necessary... or is it?

I've also decided for forgo Memtest. There's a lifetime warranty on these so if there ever is a problem, there actually won't be a problem. Any other RAM and I would but it would just be a waste of time.


All in all, I'm very happy. I'll be happier when I can give it an SSD though because that really is a bottleneck. I had thought that was more for those who hated longer than a 15 second boot to Windows but I stand firmly corrected. It is noticeably holding everything else back; mind you this one is still better than the WD500BPKT in the notebook by a whole lot, but its still not quite up to par for this hardware (surprisingly, its most noticeable in browsers. I know, go figure right?). Then again I don't wait longer than 12 seconds for Skyrim loading screens (the other had me sometimes waiting over 3 minutes) but... yeah. I should be able to get an SSD late this year; wish I'd have just went for the SSD first. Hindsight as they say is 20/20 lol.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

The SSD will rock your world and is the single most transformational addition one can make in a rig !

 

[MagusMagnus]

Alright so… honeymoon's over.

Startup is inexplicably worse on this system than my notebook... this thing should startup twice as fast and yet it’s starting twice as slow. I understand the POST check will always delay the startup a little bit, but that’s not what’s causing this… after that I see a gray screen (with the “wait” cursor) before the actual logon screen comes up and I’ve never seen that before so something is clearly very wrong here. The desktop shortcuts often start out as generic blanks before they slowly return to what they should always look like (this also happens on my 2004 Dell…… it happens on all of our other systems but not quite to this extent), and then the second start sound occurs as late as 30 seconds after the desktop has launched. Obviously something is really wrong here, but I just can’t pinpoint it.

I have disabled as many startup programs as I felt safe (some, like Nvidia, I will not prevent for obvious reasons), so they are not the issue (yes I am aware MSE is commonly at fault for delayed startup in and of itself, however I have disabled it so it also is not the culprit). The other thing is that certain programs succumb to intermittent “not responding” episodes (mini-freezes that only affect the programs, never the whole system itself)… this occurs both with CCleaner and MBAM foremost of all (I’m not counting Firefox/Waterfox as they both do this on every system and is a fault in and of themselves and not an actual system/OS fault; its normal in other words).

Event Viewer does not reveal anything that could explain any of these (first place I looked). Additionally I have already performed a full scan with MBAM (squeaky clean). I have run a full ChkDsk as well as S.M.A.R.T (the drive is flawless according to both). I also ran a full sfc /scannow (which also is fine). At this point I am suspecting the OS install itself or other software/Services/driver(s) rather than hardware.

The only other thing I could think of is that I am using the generic Windows AHCI drivers and not Asus… could that possibly be it? Otherwise, I’m really stumped. What else is there to check and that could actually cause these issues? Outside of this, it’s been running like a dream… not a single stutter or hiccup in gaming so I’m inclined to believe this is not a hardware fault, but must be somewhere in the software (maybe even a BIOS setting?).

 

[madcratebuilder]

The other thing is that certain programs succumb to intermittent “not responding” episodes (mini-freezes that only affect the programs, never the whole system itself)… this occurs both with CCleaner and MBAM foremost of all (I’m not counting Firefox/Waterfox as they both do this on every system and is a fault in and of themselves and not an actual system/OS fault; its normal in other words).

CCleaner and MBAM should never give you any problems, Firefox may crash 1 or 2 times a month on me, very seldom.

I don't know how much software you've installed but if you don't have dozens of hours invested I would do a clean install of the OS. First locate the newest drivers for your hardware and put them on a usb stick. Set BIOS to optimized defaults, set it to AHCI and set boot order and then install OS and drivers. Install FF and CC and see how it runs.

 

[MagusMagnus]

Thanks. I'll back everything up and give a clean install a go, but it will be a while. I can live with it in the short-term.

Also, should I definitely install Asus' Chipset and AHCI drivers instead of just sticking to the Windows Generics?

 

[madcratebuilder]

Your MB disc may have most these drivers, you can download these from ASUS, burn to disc or usb stick. Most of these are the same drivers I use on my CHVFZ MB. These are the minimum I would install.

Install OS, install these drivers then let Win do it's update BS. This should give you a rock solid install. Make a back up IMG of this and use it for possible restore in the future.

Then decide what utils you want to use, like HWInfo, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HDD Tune, things like that, then do another back up IMG.

Latest BIOS

M5A99FX PRO R2.0 BIOS 2301

Chipset drivers

AMD Chipset Driver V8.973 (8.0.877.0) for Windows XP/Vista 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
AMD Chipset Driver V9.01 (8.0.903.0) for Windows 7/8 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)

The AMD SATA drivers

AMD AHCI Driver V3.3.1540.26 for Windows XP 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
AMD AHCI Driver V1.2.1.329 for Windows Vista 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
AMD RAID Driver V3.3.1540.26 for Windows XP 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
AMD RAID Driver V3.3.1540.29 for Windows Vista 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
AMD RAID Driver V3.3.1540.35 for Windows 7 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
AMD RAID Driver V3.8.1540.3 for Windows 8 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)

AsMedia SATA driver

Asmedia SATA Controller Driver V1.3.4.0 for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)

The rest

Realtek Audio Driver V5.10.0.7022 for Windows XP 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
Realtek Audio Driver V6.0.1.7023 for Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)


Realtek LAN Driver V5.814.624.2013 for Windows XP 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
Realtek LAN Driver V6.251.523.2012 for Windows Vista 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
Realtek LAN Driver V7.67.1226.2012 for Windows 7 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)
Realtek LAN Driver V8.18.621.2013 for Windows 8/8.1 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)

Asmedia USB3.0 Controller Driver V1.16.12.0 for Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1 32bit & 64bit.(WHQL)

 

[MagusMagnus]

Thanks again. So I want to install all of those Vista/7's after Windows installs; or during? Sorry, I’ve never particularly had to mess with installing drivers like this before. I’m going to keep the 2201 BIOS because it is stable and I’d rather not risk bricking the board until or unless it is strictly necessary.

It will be a while… the spare needs the same treatment (2011, so way overdue) but the externals are a mess as I’ve been slacking off and believe me, it’ll never happen again. Unfortunately, my disks do not have SP1 and prior attempts to ‘Slipstream’ have failed dismally (no idea, I wasted five disks trying a couple years ago) so that’ll add a day. All told I’m looking at a week, and that’s if I don’t do anything else cry.

I swear the moment I am able, I’m going to get another external for purely Windows images so I never have to bother with all of this time-eating shite again. Should have done it years ago. Disks are a PITA and I also don’t feel like paying $10-20 for just a 4GB flash stick (they’re on crack!) and still have to deal with the activations, fudging updates, programs, files and UGH. HDD images sound like a breeze.

Anyway, soon as I’m done I’ll let you know what happens.

 

[madcratebuilder]

A cheap 1tb hdd is the best way for storing img's, although 128gb sticks are getting pretty cheap here in the states.

The files I listed are a cut and paste from asus support page. A single file may contain drivers for several version of windows. I'm sure you'll see that when you check out the driver page.

I've used a program called "RT 7 Lite" to make custom IMG's of Win 7 install disk. Both dvd's and usb sticks. USB sticks install Win 7 very very fast compared to a dvd. RT 7 allows a lot of customization, it's has a broken "ad" as part of the program but you just click "yes" and it keeps running. You can spend a few hours going through all it's options and making your perfect "install disk".