Asus Z68 Series Information Thread (drivers, BIOSes, overclocking, reviews) **UPDATED 4/22** - Page 11

Thank you Sir. I shall surely report back to you guys later this weekend, hopefully on my newly setup system. Once i get familiarised with the board and all its workings, it'll be time to start overclocking (and watercooling).


But first I need another storage drive. I'm getting a 1TB WD Sata 3 off amazon. Would I see a difference moving from Sata II - Sata III? Is it worth the extra $5? lol
Edited by arfaad - 9/30/11 at 9:48am

Installing Windows 7 now. I got the C9 Corsair vengeance 8GB kit and a 2500k, batch no: 3117A788

If you go with an Intel SSD it might be wise to check the firmware of the drive and update it before you install Windows 7 64-bit. It's probable that many of the devices sitting on the shelves of vendors have firmware that is prone to the 8 meg bug, which can cause the drive contents to be lost and the capacity of the drive to be reduced to 8 meg should your system experience a power loss while running.

Intel released new firmware to eliminate the issue on September 1st. You can certainly flash the updated firmware after doing your install, which is what I did last night after having run for 3 weeks and it went in perfectly without causing any issues for Windows 7 64-bit, but it would be a shame to set everything up and then have a firmware update event that bricks it all!

Firmware that is earlier than those in the list below should be flashed:

The Intel® SATA Solid-State Drive firmware update tool provides the latest firmware for the following Intel® Solid-State Drives in all capacities:
- Intel® X25-M/X18-M SATA Solid-State Drive on 50nm (black case) - updates to FW version 8820
- Intel® X25-E SATA Solid-State Drive on 50nm (black case) - updates to FW version 8850
- Intel® X25-M/X18-M SATA Solid-State Drive on 34nm (silver case) - updates to FW version 02M3
- Intel® X25-V Value SATA Solid-State Drive on 34nm (silver case) - updates to FW version 02M3
- Intel® Solid-State Drive 320 Series (silver case) - updates to FW version 0362

My 320 series drive purchased in early September came with FW 0302 which was susceptible to the 8 meg bug.

Firmware and a PDF describing how to flash the SSD is available at the first link below, the other link is a discussion at the Intel forum of the 8 meg or 13x bug.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...&DwnldID=18363

http://communities.intel.com/thread/22227?tstart=0

I really like the performance of the SSD devices as they are in a league of their own compared to mechanical HD read/write speeds. I'm not sure if you would see much difference between SATA II and SATA III but I'd always opt for the fastest interface, especially if the price difference was not huge.

Good luck!

Ender

Just got my P8Z68-V Pro on Saturday. Couldn't have been happier. But then I found this thread Absolutely superb work, SimpleTech!

Thank you for this, I would have never known.

Ok I need help, I am running the following config....
HD - http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0364545 - m4 CT0128M4SSD2 128GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Marvell Controller
Mobo - http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0364206 - ASUS P8Z68-V PRO LGA 1155 Z68 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU – http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0354589 - Core i5 2500K LGA 1155 Boxed Processor
RAM -

- G.Skill Ripjaws - Memory - 8 GB : 2 x 4 GB - DIMM 240-pin - DDR3 - 1600 MHz / PC3-12800 - CL9 - 1.5 V - unbuffered - non-ECC
CPU Fan - - Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler, RR-B10-212P-G1
Vid Cards(x2) - - MSI N560GTX-Ti Hawk Video Card

I have been running fine but just recently I wanted to overclock. Took me a while buy I finally got the asus suite software running and I did the overclocking through that. I am buying Battlefield 3 and I want to run this machine at it's best . Anyway I know I don't have the latest firmware on the m4...should I? Also I am not hooked up to the Marvelli controller, should I? I also run Windows 7 64bit.

Anyway so I tried overclocking and I hit the fast button in the suite software, did it's reboot and I came into windows and fired up bf3 beta...i was playing for a few minutes then I bluescreened. I clicked and went extreme as a silly factor and it bluescreened on boot up. So what I want to know, would it be beneficial to post the dump files? I know the last bluescreen was a page fault I believe but I can't remember the first one. Please help cause I bought this machine to overclock and right now I can't get that to work. In non-overclocked mode the machine runs flawless, no bluescreens at all! HELP.

SimpleTech you went above and beyond on the reply. When I get home from work I will give those settings a try, thanks for all that info...the community here is amazing. I come back with my results later!

Thinking about switching from AMD->Intel.

Buying a GTX 470 for SLI tomorrow, and I was wondering if the z68 is for me or not.
I have two 40 GB SSDs and one HDD (plan on adding another SSD + HDD someday - possibly RAID 0 for the HDD). I heard these boards can't do 16x SLI for both PCI-E 2.0 slots, is this bad that they will be at 8x? I will be mainly gaming on my PC, and some video work.

Which board do you recommend?

In my motherboard's BIOS settings, there are three USB settings that can be changed.

1.) USB Legacy Support
2.) USB 3.0 Legacy Support
3.) EHCI Hand-off

I'm at Windows 7 x64, do I need to disable them all and help with boot times?

Would keeping the USB/USB 3.0 Legacy Support enabled still use the driver installed in Windows 7 or will it override and use the built-in USB drivers in the motherboard?

How about EHCI Hand-off?