**The ASrock 939dual-SATA2 (ULi M1695) thread**

[smithy1983]

i got this board yesterday no problems up to now everything working great on a windows xp pro 64 just need to pick up my new memory for it cause im only useing sum crappy cheap stuff

 

[Angilion]

I've been running this board for a while now - I ordered it the first day it was available anywhere in the UK and it arrived two days later. Loads of stuff in the "Retail ULi M1695 board spotted!" thread.

The first thing to do is to flash the 1.20 BIOS. The 1.10 it ships with has no o/c options. The 1.15 is beta and has a few problems. 1.20 is the current official release. There's a 1.21 beta under test. There's a website with forums and huge activity on this board and which gets beta versions from ASrock, but of course I won't link to it.

I had a few problems o/c initially, but I think it was due to starting at 4 in the morning and forgetting something I'm currently running at 250x9=2250MHz CPU, memory on a 5/6th divider to get 204.6MHz, 3-3-3-8 1T. Yes, 1T. It's cheap Crucial CAS3 and it isn't even perfectly matched (I bought the sticks a year apart), but it runs fine in dual channel. 1T made a huge difference. With the 1T and the CPU o/c, I am now getting 5613/5548 MB/s in Sandra, which I think is rather impressive efficiency. I'm doing complex video transcoding as a a stability test and benchmark (as well as SuperPI and Sandra tests) and I am getting an average of 19.9% lower transcoding time with the o/c. A64s scale extremely well. I finally got SuperPI under 40s, which is of no use at all but nice to see 38.906s. One of the 3 temps is up 1C under full load, from 35 to 36. I will get around to finding out what the 3 temps are, but Winbond2 shows 32C idle 39C load, so I assume that's the CPU. I did some cable tidying before o/c, so maybe it would have gone up a degree or two otherwise.

If I wasn't getting HDD detection problems (I'll make a separate thread for that), I'd be happy with this board. OTOH, people are routinely going over 270 on the base HTT speed, so I'm actually quite low on the o/c front.

I don't like the inaccurate labelling of speeds in the BIOS, but that seems to be common to most (all?) boards. My memory BIOS speed setting, for example, is DDR333, i.e. 166.6MHz. That is not true - that memory speed setting is not fixed, it's 5/6th of whatever the base HTT speed is set to. Likewise for the CPU-NB and NB-SB links - the settings are actually 1x-5x but are wrongly labelled as 200-1000MHz.

 

[Coolasmoo]

363mhz Anyone


http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/30/4904.html#000011

 

[Coolasmoo]

There's a 1.21 beta under test. There's a website with forums and huge activity on this board and which gets beta versions from ASrock, but of course I won't link to it.

1.21 is freely available from OCW, its another Beta Overclocker thats under test

 

[Angilion]

1.21 is freely available from OCW, its another Beta Overclocker thats under test

Oh yes, so it is. I guess this also means we can link freely to OCW forums from here.

I'll stick with the official 1.20 release unless I see something useful in an available beta. IIRC, the 1.21 only adds lower voltages for cool and quet, which I disabled anyway.

If I can get my HDD detection problem sorted, I might do some serious playing with settings. For now, though, I have a nice set up that o/c the CPU 25% while keeping everything else at stock or almost stock (memory is 2.5% o/c), which I wouldn't get with higher HTT base settings unless I could get close to 300MHz.

 

[Angilion]

I've put a post in the HDD forum about my problem, but it's probably more related to this motherboard, so I'll put a link to it in here. My HDD isn't being detected on a reboot. If you want more information and/or have an idea why, please pop over to the other thread and answer in there, to keep things tidy: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17470110

 

[spell]

I've put a post in the HDD forum about my problem, but it's probably more related to this motherboard, so I'll put a link to it in here. My HDD isn't being detected on a reboot. If you want more information and/or have an idea why, please pop over to the other thread and answer in there, to keep things tidy: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17470110

I've got the same SATA-2 drive but my Windows install is on a SATA drive attached to the standard SATA interfaces. I've not noticed any problems with rebooting not detecting the SATA-2 disk, not that I reboot very often now. It must be something to do with the Windows drivers or lack of...

 

[Baron G]

how would it work with zalman reserator water cooler

You can remove the plastic heatsink brackets it ships with by popping out the push-pins. This reveals two mounting holes which are the right dimensions to attach the Zalman ZM-GWB2 block that comes with the Restorator 1-Plus. I fitted mine last night without a problem.

I assume the holes will also be OK with the older block.

 

[Angilion]

They should be, as they are the standard holes for a S939 board.

I think the lack of a standard mounting backplate with this board is a issue, though I see why ASrock decided to save a couple of quid on manufacturing costs. After all, this is a budget board and thus people with it will be using the stock cooler or some other cheap cooler that isn't heavy enough to require or use a mounting backplate. Except that it isn't true. This isn't just another budget board, due to the chipset.

If anyone needs a backplate, the ones sold by Thermalright should work. They're intended for mounting Thermalright heatsinks on Gigabyte S939 boards, to replace the non-standard backplate Gigabyte use, but they appear to be a standard K8 mounting backplate from the photos, which would make sense as that is what an XP-90 or XP-120 requires with a S939 board.

 

[Fam Money]

You are correct Angilion, the ThermalRight backplate is needed for this board for the XP-90. I ordered the backplate when I ordered the XP-90 after seeing comments saying that the bracket was mounted using push pins like the GigaByte mobo.

I can tell you for a fact that the XP-90 fits perfectly on this board using the TR backplate.

Don't know if any of you guys are on the Tom's Hardware mail list but they have a review of this board coming out tomorrow. They tested it against an NF4. It held it's own but it does not have as great a showing as it did in the Anandtech review.
http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20050916/index.html

 

[KELTICKNIGHT]

You can remove the plastic heatsink brackets it ships with by popping out the push-pins. This reveals two mounting holes which are the right dimensions to attach the Zalman ZM-GWB2 block that comes with the Restorator 1-Plus. I fitted mine last night without a problem.

I assume the holes will also be OK with the older block.

baron
are you refering to cpu or n-bridge

 

[Coolasmoo]

OCW are going to make available the Beta bios that they have been testing.

Hopefully today

 

[Coolasmoo]

Use at your own risk guys :

I would like everyone who uses the beta to report back your findings in OCW forum. If you are posting the benchmarks elsewhere, please refer them back and give acknowledgement to OCW forum as the source of the BIOS. (Fellow users in other forums can help to remind them if they forgot).

All our beta bios are provided as it is with MD5 checksum. If you see a similar one that works the same way, chances are it is being modified using a hex editor. We can't be sure if those will result in bad flashes.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/asrock/bios/OCWB1.zip

 

[spell]

2640 (330*8) on air (Artic Cooler 64), Venice 3000....this chip is a beast. I dunno what Tom's were on but this is a good board!!! If I can get 2.7 with a bit of tweaking, I'll be well chuffed!!!

 

[Netphreak]

Does anyone know what setting SATA driving to 'STRONG' does?
Also are only certain drives able to run in 32-bit transfer mode?

 

[Angilion]

2640 (330*8) on air (Artic Cooler 64), Venice 3000....this chip is a beast. I dunno what Tom's were on but this is a good board!!! If I can get 2.7 with a bit of tweaking, I'll be well chuffed!!!

Man, a 50% overclock on air! I was pleased with 25%.

EDIT: I note that (a) THG was using the P1.10 BIOS and (b) they expressed a hope for a new BIOS revision. P1.20 is out, which might address the minor performance difference between this board and an nForce4-based board that costs 2.5 times as much. There is also a new beta out at OCW, try it at your own risk, and 1.21, which just adds lower voltage for C'n'Q.

 

[smithy1983]

im just wondering does anybody else mobo seem to hang for 7 or 8 sec just before the windows splash screen? (loading screen just after the hard drive check)

 

[spell]

im just wondering does anybody else mobo seem to hang for 7 or 8 sec just before the windows splash screen? (loading screen just after the hard drive check)

I only experienced this today after disabling the floppy drive but not removing it from the boot list. For a moment, I thought it was hanging, so I downgraded the beta-bios to 1.21....still happening...started to curse...and then worked out what was going on..

 

[Digital Punk]

I just got this board this week.

The jury's still out for me.
I've had one or two niggles and unexpected reboots, but I hoping to iron everything out this weekend.

I'd like to keep this board for a couple of years, so its got to be stable.

 

[smithy1983]

I only experienced this today after disabling the floppy drive but not removing it from the boot list. For a moment, I thought it was hanging, so I downgraded the beta-bios to 1.21....still happening...started to curse...and then worked out what was going on..

i dont even have a floopy drive connected would like to know how to stop this......

EDIT: IVE JUST DISABLED THE FLOOPY DRIVE IN THE BOOT UP MENUE AND ITS SEEMS TO HAVE DONE THE TRICK GETS INTO WINDOWS START UP SCREEN STRIGHT AWAY