The BIOS
As do nearly all other Asus motherboards, the Asus P7H55D-M uses the American Megatrends BIOS, a tabbed BIOS for easy navigation. Push the I/O switch, start tapping the Del key about once per second, and you will end up on the BIOS’ Main menu. Here we find date/time, detected drives, and a couple of submenus. The System Information submenu shows BIOS version (I always flash the latest BIOS), CPU model, and memory size.
Next we have the AI Tweaker menu, where all overclocking will take place. This menu is laid out very well, with only memory timings in a submenu, where they should be. Of great note is the display at the top of the menu, “CPU Target Frequency” and “Memory Target Frequency”. All motherboards advertising overclocking capabilities should show the approximate frequency you are clocking to so you don’t have to use a calculator to figure it yourself. The trend of late is for this information not to be displayed. I am proud to see it here and hope it has returned for good. Thank you Asus!
The Advanced menu contains submenus with settings for the CPU and most motherboard components. The Onboard Devices submenu enables/disables some of the board’s data ports.
The CPU Configuration submenu shows detailed info about the CPU and enables/disables various CPU functions and features. I always disable Intel SpeedStep and any sleep features before overclocking and running benchmarks. It is a little strange that the setting for Intel TurboBoost doesn’t show up for this processor, it is supposed to support TurboBoost. Anyway, I also recommend disabling TurboBoost when overclocking and benchmarking.
The Power menu contains settings and submenus relevant to power, and includes the Hardware Monitor in a submenu. The Hardware Monitor displays temps and voltages, and controls fan speeds for fans connected to the motherboard.
The Boot menu contains submenus for boot drive priority and relevant boot settings. The Boot Configuration submenu contains various boot settings including enabling/disabling of the POST splash screen, which I always disable.
Over the past two months I’ve been pursuing a problem w/ASUS…
BEWARE: if you get a case that has an eSATA front port and you connect it to an internal motherboard [Intel H55 and maybe others] SATA port, it cannot be configured to have an eSATA hard drive ‘safely removed’. You will have to turn off caching (slow) or risk data corruption when removing it.
ASUS customer service is terrible and it will further adversely affect their bottom line because they are ruining their reputation. …So much for their “goal of 100% customer satisfaction”.
They ½-answer submitted technical inquiries to show they care, even though it is obvious they do not want to get to the root of or appropriately solve a problem system builders may be encountering and finding annoying. They do not seem to know Windows very well nor comprehend the underlying problem, nor do they spend any measurable time even reading the history of the problem, trying to determine where the problem really lies. They defer simple system builders to Microsoft $upport when it is clearly not a Microsoft problem. Concurrently they defer to Intel support (the maker of the chip/driver likely causing this problem and a company not selling chips to/supporting end-users) – when ASUS should be contacting Intel themselves, as an integration partner, to resolve issues such as this.
Over the past two months I’ve been pursuing a problem w/ASUS…
BEWARE: if you get a case that has an eSATA front port and you connect it to an internal motherboard [Intel H55 and maybe others] SATA port, it cannot be configured to have an eSATA hard drive ‘safely removed’. You will have to turn off caching (slow) or risk data corruption when removing it.
ASUS customer service is terrible and it will further adversely affect their bottom line because they are ruining their reputation. …So much for their “goal of 100% customer satisfaction”.
They ½-answer submitted technical inquiries to show they care, even though it is obvious they do not want to get to the root of or appropriately solve a problem system builders may be encountering and finding annoying. They do not seem to know Windows very well nor comprehend the underlying problem, nor do they spend any measurable time even reading the history of the problem, trying to determine where the problem really lies. They defer simple system builders to Microsoft $upport when it is clearly not a Microsoft problem. Concurrently they defer to Intel support (the maker of the chip/driver likely causing this problem and a company not selling chips to/supporting end-users) – when ASUS should be contacting Intel themselves, as an integration partner, to resolve issues such as this.