*Official* Asus P5N7A-VM uATX HTPC Motherboard Thread - Page 15

Defcon, I'm the first to use the HR-05/IFX, and am using it with the Thermalright XP-120. Fits perfectly in my Silverstone GD02. No fan on the XP-120, as the fan in the 05 blows on it.

The 05 can be installed without removing the mobo and CPU heatsink. Yes the J-hooks that come with work fine, and the heatsink is solid. Yes it is hard to remove the Asus heatsink, as they use a glue-type thermal compound. Use 95% alcohol to get it all off.

I think this is the one you mentioned. Looks like exactly what the doctor ordered.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835116018

I suggest anyone with a problem with this board contact ASUS support.

http://support.asus.com/

Register your board on that page, then you can submit a technical inquiry. If ASUS doesn't know about these problems they won't get fixed.

Is anyone with any type of stability problem seeing any improvement as you continue to use the board? I've had the board for three weeks now and for the most part it is stable now. The only problem I have, which is a minor annoyance, is having to reconfigure nvidia control panel for dual monitors when my Panasonic TV is turned off/on. I am using VGA for my main monitor and HDMI for the TV, and it seems that if the computer is restarted or wakes when the TV is off I have to reconfigure for dual monitors.

yeah, that's it... and not too hard to install either.

Also works on the Asus P5Q-EM.

Thanks, I'll get the HR-05. I don't have a fan on the Ninja Mini either so it'll also help with cpu cooling. What kind of temps were you seeing before and after using it?

some overclocking observations: happily running e5200@3400 (272*12.5) at 1.275v, super pi 1m capable up to 3900 on air with stock cooler. Thinking on how to improve stability, as going higher then 3400 gives errors in prime95. Tried higher voltage up to 1.35v, does not help. Could it be that the errors in prime are due to memory? I am having mushkin ES 800Mhz rated 4-4-4-12, but somehow if I leave memory configuration on auto NV system tool reports it as 5-5-5-18. Is it a problem with memory or with NST? Also I am unable to view nor change voltages in NST, is it me or eveyone has the same?

i just installed a 92mm noname fan running at 5V which blows a gentle airstream over the asus cooler and through my hdt-s1283. gpu temp is 43°C in windows while idling (59°C with furmark testing), where as it got 95°C without that fan idling in windows.

i have had some boot-bugs a few days before and they are gone since i loaded the bios defaults and change the settings to the former situation. don´t know if that helpd anyone, but it could be tried as well.


@NST
i also can´t change voltages there, have to do that in bios. what vid does your cpu have? <-register dump in cpu-z. i have one with 1,1875V (runs 300x12,5 with 1,44V on my old asrock conroe board) and my best e5200 (vid 1,1375V) could run 320x12,5 with 1,45v again on the conroe board.

on the asus, i couldn´t reach those speeds even with 1,55V. maybe some hard-modders will find the right places to do a pencil- or VR-mod

max VID 1.138 V. You think it would be safe to try 1.45-1.5v on air with stock cooler? Although have not seen anything higher then 70C on CPU and 61C on GPU with all overclocking/overvoltage and staff..

i´m using the xigmatek hdt-s1283 which is big enough, but ran into its limit with 1,45V and the better e5200. if you just want to try how much the cpu is capable of, i think 1,4-1,45v should be ok. take good care of the temp and do a nice bench

raising vcore to 1.45 helped to reach 300*12.5 stable, but cpu temperature under prime effectively reached 100c, so until i'll change cpu fan (which is complicated as i'm using antec nsk1380) it basically useless and just shows cpu limits

Some tests with E5200 (VF900 cooler)

CPU . .Vcore . idle/load .idle/GPU/CPU/both . CPU temp (Orthos)
(MHz)___(V)_______(V)_____(Orthos,Furmark,W)__(2.4/1.4 krpm,°C)
3200__1.25000__1.22/1.18_____45/75/79/99________73/79
3000__1.16875__1.14/1.10_____44/70/71/89________64/72
2500__default__1.12/1.10_____43/66/64/81________58/62
2500__1.01875__0.99/0.97_____42/63/59/75________47/52
1200__0.90625__0.88/0.86_____38/52/45/57________31/32

I see a lot of low-level hardware-related discussion here but I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on this mobo using the IGP for .mkv playback?

I installed FFDshow video and audio codecs and happily used the included Media Player Classic without too many issues. Output was rendered in overlay mode and moving pictures look good. However, VMR9 renderless mode significantly darkens all scenery in .mkv movies to the point where you can't see anything but black in slightly dark scenery.

Desktop is calibrated 90% per the nVidia control panel calibration screen but looks just fine. Overlay mode in Media Player Classic works fine as well. Contrast settings are 0 - 255 in nVidia drivers as well as FFDshow. I have a Panny 46" PZ80 in burn-in mode (Picture = 0, brightness = 30). Cranking these settings doesn't restore the crushed blacks.

Anybody else have this problem? I need to resolve this so I can use MediaPortal front-end with a remote control, which looks something sweet and remains free as open-source code! Any help would be really appreciated.

I play quite a few mkv files on my machine. All but one are 720P.
I use Zoom Player for playback and CoreAVC for video decoding, FFDShow looked the same as CoreAVC, but since I have CoreAVC, I might as well use it.
Everything looks fine on my 42PZ80U in Cinema Mode.

Hi Guys,
I've done quite a bit of testing of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD playback now using PowerDVD 7 Ultra and PowerDVD 8. My main problem is audio sync at 24p. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the system is connected via HDMI to an Onkyo 875 which is then connected to a Pioneer PDP-5000EX 50" plasma. Some of my discs are ripped onto an unRaid server and I have tested the same film both from disc and from the server. The audio sync varies each time and can even be different each time I play the same disc - it is always ahead of the video. At 60p, there are no problems. Also, I have found that if I switch the Onkyo to another input for a few seconds and then back to the HTPC, the audio is synced up fine. Also, mkv palyback is fine. Any ideas what could be causing this ? It's my only serious problem at the moment.

Any ideas would be appreciated,
TiVo.

I have various display profiles, like projector 24p, projector 50p and TFT monitor. Is there a way to toggle those nvidia profiles without having to start the nvidia system stuff first?

I used to have an ATI card, I could easily set some toggles like alt+1 alt+2 etc.

Each profile sets a .nvp file in the nvidia folder, but they do not seem to work directly.

regards
Dominik

I've been reading this thread and I'm having the same reboot issues that everyone else is having. I was wondering if any of you have also experienced any of the following:

1. Ocasionally, when my PC wakes up from sleep my screen colors are messed up for about a minute (everything is redish/yellowish). After about a minute the problem fixes itself or I get a BSOD.
2. I installed everything in a new case and a couple of times my computer wouldn't power on when I press the power button. I'm not sure if it's the power supply or the motherboard.

My setup is:
Asus P5N7A
Corsair PC6400 2x2GB
Intel E7200
Avermedia A780
Vista 32-bit Ultimate
Connected to HDTV via DVI

Hi i can confirm this problem, atleast with 24hz interlaced. I have a brand new TV and the EDID does not support 24hz progressive. I thought it was because of my TV lagging the picture since i was sending interlaced.

Are you sure you feed progressive 24hz?

The audio and video is a couple of seconds out of synch! terrible..

But i have really good playback with 1080p 60Hz, almost no judder at all, only visible in paning if you really look for it.

I have the new Samsung 50" plasma A676 (in Sweden) 650 or something is the same in the US i think..

Well, I fxied the problem of the HDMI output not working from PowerDVD by un-installing the HDMI driver and the MS HD Audio driver and then re-installing. I tried just re-installing the HDMI driver but that had a weird effect - PowerDVD would keep resetting the sound back to stereo - go figure that one !

Yes, I am sure I am outputting 24p to the Onkyo / Pioneer. I think there is something very interesting going on here which has to do with the latency of the data coming in. As I said in a previous post, I can get the audio to sync perfectly by changing the input of the Onkyo for a few seconds - this is causing a plug and play event in Vista for the monitor being removed and put back. That seems to fix it. If I then blitz the unRaid server with I/O, the playback will stutter (as expected) and then, the audio is out of sync again until I repeat the process. Also, even pausing and playing again will make it go out of sync. To be honest, these are the sort of problems I used to see with DVD playback in the 'old' days of HTPC. I moved to this board from an ASUS P5B with an ATI 4650. That never had these audio sync problems - you could pause, fast forward, back etc and it always went back in sync. The trouble was, it still had the 24p micro-stutter. Sadly, I am the kind of person that ends up looking for the stutter and not enjoying the film - sad but true. This HTPC stuff really is 'Two Steps Forward, One Step Back' but we are getting there. Soooo Close

TiVo.

I seem to have a reboot problem with my system as well. I installed Vista 32-bit. It did hang on shutdown but it did initially reboot OK. After installing half a dozen apps and running Windows Update I tried to restart but now it freezes after loading crcdisk.sys. I tried disconnecting/reconnecting the PSU from the MB as others have done, but it still doesn't reboot. Using Ubuntu Linux DVD, it won't boot with that either (which previously worked prior to installing Vista) and displays the following error:

[0.384271] PCI: BIOS BUG #0[00000031] found

Search for this on the web doesn't turn up that much that I have found yet. I haven't messed with the BIOS settings that much. I disabled the IDE interface but other than that I don't think I changed anything else.

As far as GPU temps, mine was around 62 C according to GPU-Z

Edit: After posting, I realized the one other thing I changed was my mouse was initially plugged into a front USB port but then I switched to it plugged into a port on the back and used a USB repeater cable. After switching back to the front USB port for the mouse, it rebooted OK. Very weird.

Did a little experimentation:

- Ran ATITOOL constantly and got my GPU temps to around 87C (no fans)...ouch!
- Ran OCCT for a couple of hours and passed flawlessly
- Tried to do soft reboot and failed
- Tried to power on and failed
- Let the GPU cool down and restarted fine

Because OCCT stress test and ATI tool passed w/o a hitch even with GPU temps around 90C (and also the Gigabyte mb exhibiting no failures under these conditions), I think a conclusion can be reached that most likely this is an Asus BIOS "shutdown feature" most likely from a legacy chipset spec. I don't think anyone is going to "fry" their chips with this and should wait for the BIOS update to address it accordingly (most likely an oversight). JMHO...

I agree. Messing with the chipset heatsink will probably void your warranty. The temperatures in and of themselves shouldn't be an issue -- even if they do seem high.

ASUS responded to my shutdown issue by giving me some useless email about power supply amperage. Give me a break. They clearly didn't bother to read through my description of the issue. I'll have to hassle them some more.

Maybe this problem can not be fixed with bios update.
Therefore they are quiet.... because they know what will follow if they publish that all this boards are defect.

I realy do not know how can ASUS afford to make such problematic board.

I'm very happy that I did find this thread before buying this board.

Well, I just got done blindly ordering the HR-05/IFX. I was too worried about having any heat problems this weekend (Thanksgiving here in the USA). The entire 1st level family is coming to see our new house and I'd love to show off the new rig to everyone. What I don't need is to have any glitches occur during the "demo".

I also just got done downloading the latest drivers/monitoring software to see what my actual temps are like. Granted, I haven't had any problems (yet), but the NB heatsink was always hot to the touch for me in my Fusion 430 black case.

-Brian

Ok, so I have this board in a system and I seem to arrived at a point where everything I want to do is working properly.

-SD streaming from server playback is flawless
-HD (Blueray) streaming from server playback is flawless (of course the sound isn't true HD, but I doubt I could tell the difference)
-The PC sleeps and wakes up properly
-I can interface with the PC completely through my harmony remote (with a Media Center IR port & VMC)
-My Home Server properly wakes the PC up for backups and puts it back to sleep
-No known heat issues

At this point I have zero complaints. I got nervous because I ordered the board after most people were positive on it, and after my order a lot of posters were experiencing problems. I can say that at least for one hardware and software configuration this mobo can be a complete success (minus the hidef sound issue). The only serious setup issue I experienced was I had trouble getting the HDMI sound working, but after lots of fiddling (uninstalling and reinstalling drivers) I got it working.

My complete setup

HTPC:

Mobo- Asus P5N7A-VM
Proc- Intel Q9300
CPU Heatsink- Zalman CNPS 8000 (easiest HS&F install I have ever done)
Chipset heatsink- Thermaltake CL-C0034
Hard drive- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
Case- Lian Li PC-C37B
Blu-Ray Drive- LG GGC-H20LK
Memory- 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair 1066, 5-5-5-15
PSU- Corsair CMPSU-450VX 450W

Software:

Vista 64 bit
Mymovies
Total Media Theater
VMC
AnyDVD

Other Components:

Receiver- Denon 3808CI
TV- Samsung LN40A750
Server- MS Home server (Asus P5Q-EM, E7200), on a gigabit lan

For those concerned about heat, my HTPC is in an entertainment stand with an XBox resting on top of it. The air ventilation is less them optimal, but not suffocating, and I haven't had any heat related problems. The air circulation in that case is pretty dismal as well.

I have NOT ran prime or anything, but as long as I don't get any random lockups I am gonna leave it alone.

So just wanted to post here and say there is at least 1 configuration with this motherboard that is problem free and "just works".

So you've left your machine sleeping overnight, had WHS successfully run back-ups, and it went back to sleep okay? And it will wake up via IR on command? Is your BIOS sleep mode set to Auto, S1, or S3?

I'm just curious, since if your system really works, it might help shed some light on what is causing the hang issue that I and others have encountered. It could very well be a BIOS setting or some combination of settings.

You are very lucky
Enjoy your new HTPC

I'm still afraid to buy this MB, if there were more such positive reviews than I will buy it...

A new BIOS version is available for this board -- 0407. Doesn't look like it will help with the hang issue.

1. Fix BIOS does not show the actual FSB speed in "Advanced>CPU configuration>FSB speed".
2. Fix ODD runs in PIO mode when only one ODD is connected to the IDE connector.

http://support.asus.com/download/dow...el=P5N7A-VM%20

You say WHS wakes up the PC vs the PC waking up to stream its backup to WHS and then going to sleep? Is that a feature of WHS?

Yes.

I have gone to bed with the HTPC sleeping, and woken up in the morning to find a successful backup on the server, and the HTPC still sleeping. My BIOS is set to S3. Also, I have not updated the BIOS. Regarding the remote, I can wake up / turn on my whole home theatre with 1 button press on my Harmony 880. The only problem I have is that apparently the IR command for "on" that my Media Center IR port uses is the same as my Xbox... so they both turn on. However, I was able to program an "off" command so that my Xbox turns back off after a few seconds.

And to answer the other question, yes this functionality is a feature of Windows Home Server. I doubt I would ever actually use a backup, but it does score lots of nerd points.

Interesting. I wonder if there's a different BIOS setting at play. It's either that or something related to differences in hardware configuration.


That one is easy to resolve. You just have to change a setting on the XBox 360 so it won't respond to the MCE remote commands.

System->Console Settings->Remote Control

Select XBox Media Remote.