Help with Motherboard and Processor

[DL.]

I went ahead a bought a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L and E6550 C2D processor with Corsair memory 2 Gb. Total $330. I'll get back $25 in rebates.

Anyway, I'm planning on using my old ATX case which has a 400 W power supply. Does this seem good enough?

400W should be more than enough, unless it's a cheap no-name PSU (but it may work if that's the case too).

If it worked well with your previous, not to old computer, chances are it will work with the new stuff too.

[spacesurfer]

PuntoMX, I just got my GA-P35-DS3L setup with E6550 Core 2 Duo processor.

I installed a Seagate 400 GB SATA-II drive. I want to use it as AHCI. I enabled it and enabled native mode. However, neither the MOBO (during POST and in BIOS setup) or Windows setup will recognize the drive.

I have to disable AHCI mode in order to see the drive during post (and in BIOS setup) and Windows will recognize it.

What am I doing wrong? I looked for the drivers on the CD but the ones I found do not work in Windows XP setup.

Help appreciated.

[puntoMX]

Hi spacesurfer,

Sadly, AHCI doesn’t work on that chipset, only on the RAID version, nmX.Memnoch posted something about it here. So, the thing you will be missing, but isn’t a big deal really for normal users, is NCQ.

I wish that we had that info earlier, then we would have told you to get the RAID version of that Southbridge...

[spacesurfer]

Aaaaargh! Then why does it have that as an option on the BIOS?

AHCI made a BIG difference in speed on my old ASUS board. I guess I made a mistake.

Here's another problem:

In device manager, in other devices, there's this "SM Bus Controller" that I can't find a driver for. I pointed to all the folders on the CD. I even installed all the recommended drivers from the mobo CD using it's autorun. However, it won't go away. What the heck is that and where are the drivers for it?

Edited September 28, 2007 by spacesurfer

[puntoMX]

AHCI made a BIG difference in speed on my old ASUS board. I guess I made a mistake.

You had AHCI on your older mobo? What chipset was used?

To answer you question, look here.

By the way, no chance of swapping that mobo for a RAID version in the shop?

[spacesurfer]

My old ASUS board was P5GDC-V. I think it used the 915 chipset. I can't remember. for like 2 years, I had been using my SATA drive as a standard IDE drive mode. Then I learned that I was not taking advantage of AHCI. So, I reinstalled XP and used F6 to provide the AHCI drivers. WHOA! A big difference in speed. I immediately recognized it since the installation of XP was superfast (< 10 minutes). Also, much faster when creating BartPE CD ISO's. Copying is faster.

It seems I'm missing out.

I bought the Gigabyte from Newegg. Will they take back what I have already opened? I'm not sure if I want to send it back after installing the processor, heatsink and everything. I don't want to go through that process again. I'll just live with it.

One thing still bothers me. The BIOS setting has an option for AHCI mode. Why is it there if it is not supported anymore???

[spacesurfer]

This motherboard (GA-P35-DS3L) gives a blunt beep that is sometimes long and sometimes short at every cold boot and every restart. After this beep is the short typical system beep.

What is that blunt beep? It's almost as if the speaker is not working properly. But then, the short system beep tells me the speaker is working.

It's annoying me like crazy.

[spacesurfer]

To answer you question, look here.

That screwed up my system. My USB keyboard and mouse wouldn't work after this. Maybe I installed the wrong one. Anyway, I had a WIM image. I simply rolled back and was up again. Still problem with SM Bus though.

[puntoMX]

Hi spacesurfer,

I bought the same type of motherboard as you have, and thought I would clear some things up here.

First, that AHCI:

In the user manual you can see it only works for Vista. I tried it and it’s true, XP will give you the BSOD and Vista just runs fine with or without the AHCI. I tried if there is ANY speed difference between an enabled or disabled setting and guess what: There is no difference in speed, not even with the benchmarks although the readings show up a little different, but very little! S I wonder what is wrong with your system; You say it’s slower then your older system with i915 chipset... Did you set "SATA Port 0-1 Native Mode" on enabled?

Second, the SM Bus:

Just download the INF file from INTEL and install it. The SM will be installed.

The beep, don’t know what to say about that, mine sound the same every time. Could be your speaker or so...

By the way, I OCed my E2180 CPU to 3GHz (9*333) without setting the voltage higher on the CPU, 3.33Hz (10*333) needs more voltage and a "non-stock cooler".

Any questions? Knock your self out .

[spacesurfer]

PuntoMX, if I said my new system is slower than the old, I didn't mean that. My newer system is faster than the old one. Although the hard drive read and copy speeds are probably are similar in both computers.

About the SM Bus driver, I did download and install it. But that is what causes the problem -- my USB stops working. I tried it twice with a clean install and mouse and keyboard stop working. I can't remember if unplugging and replugging the usb of mouse and keyboard worked or not, it's been quite some time.

But it became annoying enough that I ignore it in device manager.

Why would the SM bus driver not install is my freaking question? The drive should be on the MOBO CD but it's not. I shouldn't have to download only this driver from the web while the rest of the chipset drivers are included.

[puntoMX]

I posted a "how to" here. That should fix your needs .

By the way, I got my E2180 now at 3.33GHz (8*417Mhz)!