The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Damn. I may never look at Asus the same way!!! And theirs was my first board Its a friggin diehard too.

 

FANBOY! ROFLMSOAO!! Asus went so far as to install the EPU module and made outrageous power consumption claims, when it wasn't even connected. They used it in their advertising, and even put a sticker on the box proclaiming the advantages of it's "Phantom" hardware! You'll also note that Asus never tried to do anything about Gigabyte's claim either! Haven't heard a word about the EPU module ever since, and it doesn't appear on any of their motherboards today that I can see! I guess it was a total fake!

Russ

 

@Russ

Thanks for clearing that up for me now with this phase thing is it really a big differents what phase board you as...I was reading on a site it deal with power usage there's 4,8 and 16 phase types i read

you read this page about these boys fussing about phases and cost...
and i thought we was bad..lol

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=2198767
some say phases don't really matter in the overclocking field or does it?

 

Rob,
It all depends on how the motherboard manufacturer's implement them! If things were all equal, Anandtech would be correct, but because of the different ways they are used, it's not always correct! When used to save energy they don't work when you overclock. You still get the power regulation, but not the control! With my UD4H, I'm overclocked, but it still keeps the voltages about 99.9% spot on! Any variance in the voltage is dealt with so fast, you can barely see it happen, even if you are watching closly. Like when my AC unit clicks on, the voltages barely start to drop and it's corrected so fast, if you blink, you miss it! LOL!! I'm sure they do a good job when not overclocked! I'm far more concerned with good power regulation than I am with the motherboard controlling my energy use!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ: As I said, the dust problem with fluid/sleeve bearings is mainly due to your local area, in most areas sleeve bearings are the better option as long as they are not directly in front of a heat source. The main problem with ball bearing fans is when they're high-speed versions. Fans designed for a high maximum speed always exhibit bearing noise at lower speeds, that is the flaw with using high speed fans and only ever intend to use them at a lower speed. Whether you use a voltage change or PWM is largely irrelevant, high speed fans aren't designed with quiet operation in mind. This is clear to see from all the high speed ball bearing fans I've owned. The worst offenders are actually the smallest fans.
Will: That was quite a while back, I seem to remember Asus suing Gigabyte over that one and winning, but I forget what actually happened.

 

Sam,
It's not that ball bearing fans were designed for either high or low speed operation. What they weren't designed for was variable speed operation! Why, because ball bearings develop a set between the balls and races as they run. Because of things like static balance, changing the rpms alters the contact points on both the balls and races, causing excessive wear, thus premature failure. My fans always ran at a constant speed, which is why all the fans I bought more than 3 years ago are still running smooth and quiet. Ball bearing fans will get quieter with use as the set develops. They never will be as quiet as sleeve bearing fans, but they will, if run at a constant speed outlast sleeve bearing fans by a wide margin. I made the decision to go with all 1200 rpm fans this time because I didn't want to use any controller. I reasoned that if I used all low speed fans and got the airflow right, they would cool better. They do, and they are very quiet doing it. The balance between intake and exhaust is such that none of the fans have to work particularly hard thanks to the static air vents in the front and rear of the case, so you don't have the situation where the stronger exhaust airflow makes the intake fans overspin, yet still leaves a bit of negative case pressure. The case venting is part of the reason I chose this particular case. Hard drive cooling was another prime consideration as the sideways HDD bays expose more cross section of the drives to the airflow than the front/rear HDD bays do. They also run 10-12C cooler in this case than they did in my Cavalier case. The added bonus is, the computer is much quieter than the old one. Not that it was loud, just that this one is noticeably quieter.

As far as the Asus thing goes, Asus never sued GigaByte. They would have lost if they had! They made a lot of threats and made a lot of noise, but they knew they were wrong. They also knew that all the bluster in the world couldn't change the facts. Even testing from all the various places like Tom's, Anandtech, XtremeSystems and other places like that, showed that their claims were worthless, as they weren't true. They were false, and Asus knew it! Gigabyte had the proof, and nothing could change that! You will also notice that the so called EPU vanished very quickly, like a fart in the wind! To my knowledge, they never sold a working model. I've only seen one, and it didn't do anything. Fully half of it wasn't connected to anything! Today, there are much simpler and less costly ways to accomplish the same thing. All of that is a moot point anyway, as almost all of us here overclock to some degree, which renders all of the power saving features pretty much useless with very few exceptions! You can shut off the hard drives after a certain amount of time, and maybe lower the fan speeds at idle, but that's about it!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Of all the ball bearing fans I've owned, only the FM121s have had their speed varied. The Thermaltake thunderblade, Casecom and akasa fans I've owned have all been at full speed, and all of them have had bearing failures after between 2 weeks and 3 years. I have several sleeve bearing fans, almost all of which have been used at various speeds, and even the oldest ones all still work, even if they are marginally noisier than they used to be.
In my mind the coolermaster centurion cases are better designed than the cavaliers, and the sideways HDD bays are a little more effective, but the main thing that makes the difference is not the orientation but the spacing. The amount of air around the HDD bays is considerably more in some CM cases than others and that makes a big difference.
I thought that when tested Asus' power consumption tests always came out on top of Gigabytes from what I remember reading. That still wouldn't make me buy one of the ghastly things, but nonetheless...

 

lol what happened was GB calimed ASUS EPU wasnt the greatness that ASUS claimed but then showed blown caps of an asus mobo to prove it was bad.

then asus threatened to sue for defaming them, and the fact that the caps that were blown was from a graphics card not a mobo, and was a different manufacturer, not asus.

so both decided to call it quits.

 

I don't remember the last part about it being a graphics card, but I do remember the blown caps incident I think.

 

Sam,
I have one question! How did you ever stand the noise of a Thunderblade running full tilt! LOL!! That SOB is loud!

As far as the cases go, both the Cavalier and the Centurion cool the MB about the same. The big difference is in the HDD temps and the video card temps. With the HDDs, the front rear drive bay and the drive spacing compared to the sideways HDD bay of the Centurion makes a large difference in temps. It also makes a difference using Sata ODDs as it's much easier to keep the areas the air flows through more open. I took a long time and studied the designs and the airflow carefully before I bought this one. I must have gotten it right, because it's the first case I ever owned that Sophocles complimented me on my choice of case. I still like the looks of the Cavalier better. It's main problem was the door. It had no airflow at the top of the case at all, to speak of. This one simply cools everything well! When I get the 790X-UD4P, I expect the temps to remain about the same in this case as with the UD4H in it now.

When tested head to head, Asus almost always came out on top in power savings. Just not by the margin Asus claimed. You have to remember that before the 965P, GigaByte had nothing to compare with what Asus was offering. The 965P saved Gigabyte from extinction! It's also become a legendary motherboard. I never had a bit of trouble with mine! I probably would have kept it except it didn't properly support the 1333 fsb as they claimed. Asus has also been steadily losing market share. They are currently at 33.7% and going down. The company that surprises me is BioStar. They have some really good motherboards, yet Intel and Dell both have bigger shares of the market, and even ECS is closing in on them, only .2% behind. 2.8% is not much of a market share!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

got links to those numbers russ?

 

Russ: I could stand the thunderblade because it was nowhere near as loud as an FM121 at full speed. It was certainly loud though, and not even that powerful.

Biostar have been so small in the market because their earlier stuff was pretty awful, it takes a while to come back from that.

 

Shaff,
I posted the original story on this and followed it pretty closely afterwards. I hate to disagree, but first off the chip in question was the 4 phase EPU only which was not connected to any of the hardware in question and did not work as advertised. I've seen exactly one, and half of it was electrically dead! In my eyes that makes GigaByte very possibly right! You can't have a hardware solution if the EPU isn't connected to the hardware in question.

I know you are an intelligent person, so please explain to me how come Asus changed the packaging right after this was made public? They removed all the EPU claims from the packaging. Not only that, the claims GigaByte made in regard to the capacitors were probably true as well. The capacitors on all the pictures shown are sub standard, just like the shi77y components that did the P5N-E SLI in. The base board level components on the P5N-E were total crap! That's why they failed right and left! I know if I saw that kind of junk in any of the high tech stuff I worked on, I would be shocked beyond words.

Then there's the personal side as well. How would you like to spend a couple of hours going through 25 pages of complaints about a motherboard, 90 percent of which were the same exact problem you were having, only to have a tech from Asus tell you that there were no known problems with the motherboard! You explain that you just came from their own forum and there were 25 pages of similar complaints that you had just spent the last few hours reading through, and he tells you that there might be a few complaints, but not that many! I have to conclude that the guy might just be lying through his teeth!

At this point I have to seriously consider that what Gigabyte claimed might in fact be the truth. I particularly loved the headline, "Asus Smacks Gigabyte with a Lawsuit"! You read the article and there's not a single mention of any lawsuit, not even a threat of one! For the record, Asus never filed one! From what I can determine at this point is if they had, they would have lost big time if they had filed one. Do you seriously think that Tom's Hardware would have gotten involved on such a personal level unless they believed the claims made by Gigabyte? They certainly had to be shown some sort of proof, or they never would have left themselves open to the possibility of being named a co-respondent in the lawsuit against GigaByte if they couldn't show Tom's something concrete to back up their claims? How about the pictures? Isn't it a strange coincidence that the boards pictured just happen to be the same color as the Asus P5K-SE/EPU, the motherboard used in GigaByte's tests! None of it looks like any video card I've seen It's not like it is a very common color for motherboards or video cards either!

All of this put together suggests to me that Asus got caught with their pants down and their fingers in the cookie jar! It's not that I'm trying to throw rocks at Asus, but rather looking over the whole picture and not liking what I see. I do know this! I would be very reluctant to believe much of what Asus says, or at least not put much faith in it! If Asus had the goods on GigaByte, they would have gone right out and filed a real lawsuit. Gigabyte is Asus's biggest competitor, so how could they turn down a huge business opportunity like that unless they were lying to begin with. I can only conclude that Gigabyte does indeed have the goods on Asus, and short of making a whole lot of noise, there's nothing much that Asus can do about it!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

http://www.canardpc.com/statscpuz-cm-en.html

Here you go!

Russ

 

GB did go underhandidly with the whole gfx card=/ mobo, it was underhadned, and was proven to be so. then again, asus were probably scared my GB, though we cant say that for sure, we dont know.

Both compaines shut up about the whole incident, so im sure they worked it out. anyway, why get so worked up over something so old?

mmm asus has lost quite a bit from last year, but i wonder how laptop/netbook market they have now.

also GB has about the same ammount of market share as last year, wonder who has taken most of asus market share.

 

Foxconn? DFI? EVGA have shown a 1% increase from last year from 2.4 to 3.4%, presumably now they finally offer non-nforce boards they're worth buying from. I'll stear clear thanks after the 650i one I witnessed. XFX did a much better job. Gigabyte are up 0.8% but MSI are down 0.4% and DFI are down 0.7%.

 

Haha my Centurion is the original Centurion 5 design with the forward facing drivebays. It has 2 80mm fans(both intake, one custom with a suspended mount), and one 120mm exhaust fan. Despite that it manages to keep the 7750 BE and 9800GTX fairly cool. At my friends house in his Raidmax Scorpio it was choking. 65*C idle :S In my Centurion, 58*C right now. Haven't even cleaned the dusty fan/sink out yet or reapplied TIM. And this is with two SATA HDDs in front of the 80mm intake fan that feeds the card. Seriously, they must have figured the airflow perfectly. Maybe it also helps that I cut out the punched fan grills, smoothed the edges, and put in free-flow chrome ones

LOL I hate ASUS anyway so whoop-de-doo, lol.

 

Sounds like the same case I built my cousin's PC in, the 532? The Raidmax Scorpio is a seriously terrible case, it's like a Chieftec Dragon, but minus the quality and performance.
You can't hate Asus because people come down on you like a tonne of bricks, but I'm certainly not impressed. I also got told off at hexus for saying ASRock boards were bad. Whatever next, people defending ECS?

 

im sure bricks would be dropped if GB or biostar were hated aswell, but i only see hate for asus...

tbh i havent heard bad things about asrock, then again who buys them LOL

 

I see plenty for Asus and Gigabyte, but nowhere near as much. You tend not to see as much 'I hate gigabyte I'm buying an Asus' more 'I've never had a problem with Asus I'll buy another' - Asus' customers seem to stick on the extent of them not having been exposed to their bad boards, which are pretty hard to avoid.

Ftr, most people moan about Asus because they break, most people moan about Gigabyte because they look silly, most people moan about DFI because the BIOSes are obscene, most people moan about ECS boards for, well, it should be obvious, hardly anyone moans about Biostar because hardly anyone buys them (yet).