680i question

[Jax Omen]

I know lots of other people have had major problems with theirs. I love mine, and have for a year.

My questions is, if I were to get a Q6600 and 4x2GB of RAM...

A) would the board even support all that
B) would I be able to get the Q6600 up to 3GHz stable with proper cooling?

I've heard of many boards not overclocking as much with all four RAM bays filled, hence the question.

 

[BoboKatt]

Depends on your 680i. If it's the original version, like mine (I got an eVGA one the day they came out), then there are issues with quads. It will run it just fine, just it wont OC much. I know eVGA was allowing folks to swap out their original version to the newer one (I think older was AR and newer one is A1??- if retail that is). Anyhow I never did -- I kept my original 680i as you said, it worked and still works beautifully.

I am running it with an e6850 and 4 X 1024 Ballistix DDR2. Works like a charm and is great. I also have a q6600 that is in my Asus P5KE-WiFi and on that board the quad is flawless at 3.32 Ghz with not a huge jump in vcore. Anything higher and the vcore and temps just through the roof.

I personally have not tried swapping out the quad and putting it in the 680i but I might just do that this coming weekend. From what I read, since I have the original version of the board, I doubt I will see anything higher than 2.7Gz if that. However if you keep it stock it should have no issues running quads.

 

[Jax Omen]

I dunno, I know it's an LT version, I bought it late march of last year. I can check exactly what it is when I get home.

Just looked it up in my order history. It's a T1 version. Is that the older or newer version?

 

[manimal]

Ya these 680i boards are a little funny. Ive been able to do 3ghzish on all 5 of mine-all blew up and had to be rma'd. Funny thing about the last one I got. I am in no way shape or form stable link%sinced from 2.7 -3.5. Above and below those fsbs I am rock stable. I run that board at 3.6 400 fsb just fine 24/7 so its fsb holes is the size of grand canyon. While testing mine I found all of my boards loved to be dropped to the 8 multi on my 2 G6600s and kicked up to a higher fsb. I got this board stable at 3.2 at 1.28 at load by dropping the multi to 8 and running it at 400 fsb so the ram ran at 800. It needs a ton more voltage to run at 3.2 on the 9 multi. Suffice it to say all the 680i A1 boards are finicky to say the least.

Read up on other peoples sucess on the LT board since they have a different layout than the other 680i boards. EVGA forums has some long threads about quads in those boards.

You should be fine getting a Q G0 to 3.2 ish on that much ram if you run them at very relaxed settings and immidiately upon first build up the Ram voltage to 2 or above dependant on your ram spec. First install with one stick of ram as well since you may not post initially with all your ram isntalled. Another thing to remember is to patch up the OS with all the hotfixes before you add the remaining ram after first install as well since vista will BSOD till you hotifix with 4gigs or ram or more. If you were going for really high fsbs on that board with that much ram you may get into some trouble. Once you build up keep tabs on the NB temps since mine went trough the roof when I added 4 gigs of ram and a Quad. Ended up putting aftermarket cooling on the NB SB and lapping the PWM sinks on mine. GL and report to us what you get.

 

[Jax Omen]

No, I really just want to buy a Q6600 and clock it up to what my E6600 is running (and give the E6600 to my girlfriend 😛).

I'll check out the evga forums.

Hmm... maybe I'll just go with 2x2GB...

 

[Jax Omen]

Actually, I found someone on the forums here who has a G0 Q6600 @ 3GHZ and 8GB RAM on a 680i LT in their sig! Now I'm happy, I can work towards that goal. Here's hoping prices drop (or something better comes out at the same price) by the time I have the money!