Abysmal OC with my E4300

[mazeroth]

I just pieced my computer together late last night and did a quick and dirty overclock by upping my FSB in BIOS from 200 to 233 mhz. That took me up to 2.1 ghz and all is well. I then pushed it a little further (I wanted to up it 50-60mhz at a time for testing) to 240 mhz and bamo, it wouldn't post. That was only trying for a 2.16 ghz OC which shocked me. Now, what should I do next?

I have 4 sticks of 1GB Super Talent DDR2 667mhz that I got on sale for $56 shipped per pair. Is running all four sticks hindering my OC? I didn't want to mess with voltages at this low of an overclock but if it's necessary let me know and I'll give it a shot.

Also, if anyone has a link to a good 965P-DS3 OC guide or a general Core2 OC guide I'd greatly appreciate a link. I did a search on here (love the Anandtech search!) and came up empty handed.

Sorry for the newbie questions as I've never really dove into OCing much. The 3500+ in my sig was a simple FSB increase and BIOS and it's worked that way for over a year without a hiccup.

Thanks!

 

[sl33py]

Mazeroth,
Hate to recommend you go somewhere else, but i think there's a great forum w/ a guide. try this:
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=610

if it's a no-no to post a link - just google "e4300 overclock legion" and it should pop up. Good luck!

rob

 

[pelikan]

You probably hit a FSB wall. I had the exact same experience on a recent build. I was stuck at 227 FSB. But it turned out stable at 344 x 9 on stock voltage with the stock Intel heatsink. This is very common with the E4300's. You could start experimenting with various FSB, while booting into Memtest86 off a floppy or CD. Just run test 5 on Memtest86. You only have to run it once for this purpose. Then you can raise the FSB again and keep going till test 5 fails. This is a fast way to get within 100MHz of max overclock without corrupting your windows install.

You could try 267 x 9 and up from there. You'll hit another wall before 300 probably. You could also try 333 and up, and also above 400 while dropping the multi to 8.

 

[Binky]

Set your memory to 1.0x then try 300mhz bus which would be 2700mhz cpu speed. This should boot easily at or near the default CPU voltage and your memory will be running below spec at 300mhz. With a 1.0x memory link you should be able to find your CPU's top end. Then tinker with the memory divider/multiplier to find out where it likes to be.

 

[mazeroth]

Thanks for the replies and thank you very much sl33py for that link!

I figured out what was wrong after reading that site. My BIOS was defaulting to a 3.0 memory multiplier for whatever reason. I set it down to 2.0 and booted up at 2.3 just fine. Then I tried 2.5...fine. Then I tried 2.8...fine. For kicks I set the memory to 334 mhz and Windows booted up at 3.006 ghz! I ran SuperPi without any problems. I haven't even touched the memory timings or voltages on this baby! Is this a good overclock so far or is this pretty standard? I have to go grill out some food now and will be working on this some more later on. I'll keep you guys posted!

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

Count yourself lucky, my friend...3Ghz is great for a 4300. Heck, the best I can do so far is 2.85 @ 1.34v. Windows will post @ 3Ghz, but isn't stable in Orthos or SuperPi, even after pumping the juice all the way up to 1.4v on a Freezer 7 Pro. Try running Orthos blend for 5-10 min to see if it's stable. If it isn't, it'll error out almost immediately.

Was curious what your temps are. I'm currently idling @ 35/34c, load ~60/61

 

[mazeroth]

Wow! I'm running at 3.1ghz now without changing anything. Here's a screenshot:

http://www.geocities.com/henrydavis8/31ghz.JPG

Going to try for more.

My CPU is 32ºC idle and 58ºC under load, with the stock HSF at 1900 RPM.

Also, how do you embed images in this forum? I tried doing the

 

[cmdrdredd]

I just built a system with an E4300 that did 3.4Ghz (on water), but I reduced it to 3.0 because the voltage was rediculous (needed 1.55v).

 

[mazeroth]

I did a quick Orthos dual core test for 5 minutes and it ran fine. I'm going to up it another 50 to 100 mhz and do a long Orthos run while I do work outside. I'll post back.

http://www.geocities.com/henrydavis8/prime1.JPG

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: mazeroth
I did a quick Orthos dual core test for 5 minutes and it ran fine. I'm going to up it another 50 to 100 mhz and do a long Orthos run while I do work outside. I'll post back.

http://www.geocities.com/henrydavis8/prime1.JPG

You may need more voltage like the system I mentioned above. Not all CPUs are the same so your results won't mirror another all the time.

 

[mazeroth]

Well, I upped it to 3.2 ghz and Orthos stopped after 1 min 28 sec. I then backed it down to 3.15 ghz and it stopped after 2 min 30 sec. I went back to 3.1 ghz and I ran it just fine for over an hour:

http://www.geocities.com/henrydavis8/31primestock.JPG

I'm going to fiddle with the voltages and memory timings and see what this baby can do.

 

[brencat]

Originally posted by: mazeroth
Well, I upped it to 3.2 ghz and Orthos stopped after 1 min 28 sec. I then backed it down to 3.15 ghz and it stopped after 2 min 30 sec. I went back to 3.1 ghz and I ran it just fine for over an hour:

http://www.geocities.com/henrydavis8/31primestock.JPG

I'm going to fiddle with the voltages and memory timings and see what this baby can do.

Excellent work so far. Probably needs a tad more vcore and vMCH to get to 350 - 375 FSB but watch your load temps with that stock HSF -- looks like you're pushing 64c already if I'm reading correctly there. You might want to pick up a better HSF before going any further.

 

[mazeroth]

I upped the vcore to 1.34 and set the FSB to 356mhz for a 3.2ghz clock. I ran Orthos for 2 hours when I went to visit my brother and came home to my computer still chugging. However, my CPU temp was up to 70ºC so that scared me a bit. I may just run it at 3.0 ghz and drop the vcore a tad and be happy with that. Otherwise I'll have to drop $30-$50 on a better HSF to get a few more % points of performance. Heck, I only have $310 invested in the cpu+mobo+ram.

 

[brencat]

I agree. 70c is just too high. Assuming you are going to settle ~ 3.0ghz, next step would be to see how tight you can take your RAM timings. I'm assuming you're at 4-4-4-12 correct? What vDIMM are you using at the moment?

 

[AkumaX]

curious: what's the difference between orthos and prime? i use 2 x prime with the priority set to 9 and affinity on each cpu

 

[mazeroth]

Originally posted by: AkumaX
curious: what's the difference between orthos and prime? i use 2 x prime with the priority set to 9 and affinity on each cpu

I have no idea!

 

[perdomot]

Here is a chart with the latest coolers from Anand. I plan on getting a Scythe Ninja and trying to push my OC even higher than the current 3Ghz I've achieved on my E4400. This is on default voltage too:
http://www.anandtech.com/casec...howdoc.aspx?i=3005&p=4