ASUS P5QL PRO

[Nebukadneser]

Just to let you know that the ASUS P5QL PRO, w/ IP43 chipset, works like a charm for my Luna II, PI and PII cards. This is an advice for those in need of a reasonably priced upgrade for multi PCI card users.

I bought 2 years ago a seconhand Carillon Rack mount pc with a PIII processor and 512 mb ram. Obviously, this machine can only be a multitrack audio recording machine, in addition to running Scope plugs / synths. Not capable of running Abeton Live 7 and Reason 4.0 - so an upgrade was needed.

In addition to mainboard, I installed an intel dual core 2.8 ghz, 2 gb ram @ 800 mhz, an asus pci-e gfx card with heat sink, no fan, and a 400W PSU. I kept my old 2x IDE HDs. Win XP Pro SP3.

The mainboard came bundled with sofware for overclocking and monitoring the heat of the CPU and the GPU. After initial testing, the CPU runs at 40 degrees Celcius and the GPU stabilises at 57 Celsius. The Carillon 19" rack case is probably not the best for cooling, but I see no problem at these temperatures.

Also worth noting, previously the Scope mixers registered a very low noise at the card inputs and the Luna 24/28 box's inputs. Also reported by other members of the Planetz community. This noise is now gone!

I ran the demo songs of Ableton and Reason and found absolutely no problems at all - no pops or crackles, hardly measurable CPU Load - just pure SCOPE JOY!

Neb

[garyb]

[yayajohn]

I've had that board since Feb and it seems to be running fine, no probs with my 3 scope boards but can't seem to isolate the irq's. I generally live by the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" policy but was wondering if you had any luck with that. The only thing that worries me is one of the boards is sharing with the video card and I read that's not recommended.

Dan

[next to nothing]

Your policy is correct there is no reason to shuffle IRQs if you dont experience stuttering or crackles during playback.

[valis]

The important board (as far as sharing is concerned) is the 'primary' one, the others shouldn't generate enough traffic to cause any issues with sharing as long as the other devices are functioning properly. And I agree with next to nothing, if you aren't experiencing issues then there's no need to even bother fiddling.

[yayajohn]

Primary board just has a couple of usb's sharing which I can probably disable if needed. So seems to be a player as far as motherboards go.

[bosone]

which are the best RAM and CPU (=fastest, reliable) one can mount on this board?

[yayajohn]

CPU: Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme
Ram: PC2-5300 , PC2-6400 , PC2-8500

I am running a Core-2 Q8200 with 2 gigs PC-6400.......solid perf so far (since Feb.)

1 scope pro, 2 scope project.

[bosone]

regarding the ram: which brand?
thanks!