Am I a noob or do i have a crappy CPU that won't OC?

[Acanthus]

at 2,5 divider and 300FSB, his memory is running at 750 which is under DDR800 spec, assuming it is DDR800 memory and not 667. It should be ok. but I agree with other poster, put 2.0v-2.1v on memory to eliminate it as a suspect.

btw, that ds3 board is very ocable, used to own one, I think fsb can do 400+. which PSU are you using on this system?

Some of the memory dividers will give you no post even if all of the other settings are fine.

1:2 is the safest in this regard.

 

[Markfw]

Sorry I forgot to tell you about the other voltages as well. I have done this many times for these chips on these boards.

 

[DJFuji]

Ok so quick update...

So far so good with stability. I haven't run it through overnight PRIME yet but that's because i stayed up all night playing COD:MW2. I got one freeze up but other than it was fine.

CPU/GPU temps are coming in pretty low (at least according to speedfan -- note that i have not manually calibrated the sensor so it could be inaccurate).

Under load SF is reporting max 85 degrees on the conservatively overclocked GPU (500mhz -> 630mhz) and max 43 on each core.

GPU is idling around 63 and cores are idling around 28.

The one big problem i see is that the surface temp of the northbridge (measured with infrared surface thermometer) is pulling about 63 degrees... which i believe qualifies as 'burning hot to the touch.' And that's the HEATSINK. Don't even want to know what the actual chip is reading.

I'm going to dial back the voltages one by one to see how low i can take them before the system refuses to POST again.

Yes, default Ram Voltage is 1.8v.

Overall I'm pretty psyched so far that i got this thing to boot at more than 1Ghz OVER stock clocks. That's pretty insane.

Will report back with results.

 

[DJFuji]

Interesting...

So I removed all the voltage enhancements except for vcore. In other words, MCH and Mem voltage are back to stock. So the only real changes are a 2.0 divider (still don't understand why thats working when a 2.0 + 300 mhz fsb wont), 400 mhz fsb, and 1.4 vcore.

Still booted fine, although it's strange... i swear to god temps went UP. North bridge is still hot as hell but heatsink surface temp is now registering close to 70 degrees, and CPU cores have both gone up to around 32 on idle (from 28-29).

I just ran prime 95 for like 5 hours with no hiccups. I'm gonna try lowering vcore until it runs into instability issues and then hitting it with prime again.

Anyone know why temperatures would have gone UP in speedfan when i lowered voltages back to default?

And isnt 70 degrees on the northbridge heatsink too hot?

 

[MrK6]

Interesting...

So I removed all the voltage enhancements except for vcore. In other words, MCH and Mem voltage are back to stock. So the only real changes are a 2.0 divider (still don't understand why thats working when a 2.0 + 300 mhz fsb wont), 400 mhz fsb, and 1.4 vcore.

Still booted fine, although it's strange... i swear to god temps went UP. North bridge is still hot as hell but heatsink surface temp is now registering close to 70 degrees, and CPU cores have both gone up to around 32 on idle (from 28-29).

I just ran prime 95 for like 5 hours with no hiccups. I'm gonna try lowering vcore until it runs into instability issues and then hitting it with prime again.

Anyone know why temperatures would have gone UP in speedfan when i lowered voltages back to default?

And isnt 70 degrees on the northbridge heatsink too hot?

70C? How did you measure it? In order for the heatsink itself to be 70C, the chip would have to be insanely hot, probably past stability. What does SpeedFan report as the chipset temp?

Glad to hear you got voltages down. You can keep dropping Vcore to get a sense of where you are for stability, and then leave it as is or keep cranking the clocks.

Idle temps don't mean much though, I wouldn't worry about them changing. I mean, 5 hours of priming is more than enough to raise your case's ambient temps and have the CPU idle higher. Worry about load temps.

 

[myocardia]

Interesting...
And isnt 70 degrees on the northbridge heatsink too hot?

Yes, it is. The fact that your northbridge is even hotter makes it even worse. You'll want to invest in one of these really expensive 40mm fans, or better yet (because of increased airflow, with less noise) one of these 50mm fans. My northbridge's both run ~45C, after attaching a 50mm fan on top of each.

 

[DJFuji]

I measured 70C degrees on the surface of the heatsink with an infrared laser surface temp thermometer. You'd think that the rig wouldnt be stable at that temp, huh? Keep in mind that its registering 70 on IDLE.

I cant figure out how to find chipset temp in speedfan. It does show 3 different motherboard sensor temps, but i can't tell which is which. The highest one is only 40C.

Will cranking the fsb up cause overall system instabilities because i'll be running an out-of-spec system freq? e.g. 410 * 8 = 3280 but now my RAM is running 20mhz over spec at 820mhz...

The problem with idle temps rising is that they did that BEFORE i ever ran PRIME. Like I lowered voltage, rebooted, then saw that idle temps went from 28 to 32 on each core. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?

@MrK6-- I'm running dual 28" 1900x1200 LCDs. I'd like to game at default res, which so far has been doable after CPU + GPU OCing. I can't turn on AA with Street Fighter IV (lags or crashes), but with these new overclocks, I can run at default res with every other setting maxed out and still get > 60FPS. Compare that to what I used to run -- 800 x 600 with medium settings and ~50-55 FPS.

 

[MrK6]

Did you touch the heatsink and was it actually that hot? Maybe the thermometer is off. If it is that hot, look at cooling it down (check the thermal paste, add a fan), as temps that high will contribute to instability.

Yes, increasing the FSB speed will cause system instabilities just like overclocking any other component. Just like you need to add voltage when you increase the frequency of the CPU, you also need to add voltage to the northbridge (MCH voltage) when you increase the frequency of the northbridge to stabilize it.

At this point, I think you'd want to start "dividing and conquering" in order to decrease variables and find weak points in your overclock. By this I mean that since you're forced to overclock your RAM when you increase CPU frequency past 3.2GHz, find out just how far you can stably overclock your RAM by removing the CPU from the picture. Do this by simply decreasing your multiplier to 6x while keeping voltage the same. Providing your temps on your northbridge aren't as bad as they seem (touch test is crucial ), give it some MCH voltage (+0.2V is usually sufficient) and start increasing your RAM. Using a bootable USB key with Memtest86+ on it is a quick way to test stability (boot, let it run for five minutes, if no errors, reboot, increase frequency, run again, etc.): http://www.memtest.org/ . Give your RAM up to 2.0V for daily use and see how high you can take it. After you have a ball park range of its capabilities, consider them when overclocking your CPU so that all components are working within their capabilities.

If your video card can handle your games fine, don't upgrade. If you feel like you want to push it further, both the GTX 260 216 and HD 4890 are great bang-for-your-buck solutions that will be significant upgrades over an 8800GTS 320MB

 

[DJFuji]

Yeah the heatsink was blazing hot. Though I've thrown nearly everything at it and i can't find any instability. I'm thinking about going down to stock and then measuring temps to see what it SHOULD be at.

I'm gonna start 'dividing and conquering' as you recommended, mrk6. Thanks all you guys for all the advice.

And I was tempted to grab a 4890 (they're 159AR @ newegg) but I'm not a huge gamer and so far with the OC'ed CPU and GPU everything is going smoothly. SF4 looks AMAZING with all details turned up.

How fast is my 6400 @ 3.2 compared to a newish i7 or more modern CPU? Is it close? Or will a modern day CPU run circles around it?

I guess the only thing i'd really want at this point is to speed up desktop apps. Most things run fairly smoothly, but FF still legs with more than 50 tabs open. Sometimes i'm pushing 150 tabs and it starts to really bog down. I'm not even close to pushing the 4 gigs of ram though. Anyone know anything that might help with that?

 

[fffblackmage]

I managed to keep my north bridge chip cool by having a really fast side 120mm fan. It's a bit noisy at that level, so I usually leave it running on 5V. That leaves the north bridge a bit hotter, but kept it cool enough.

A lot of the newer CPUs can overclock to around 4GHz now. So your 3.2GHz E6400 and my 2.8GHz E6320 are slow compared to them, I guess. It's still fast enough for my needs for now though.

 

[MrK6]

Yeah the heatsink was blazing hot. Though I've thrown nearly everything at it and i can't find any instability. I'm thinking about going down to stock and then measuring temps to see what it SHOULD be at.

I'm gonna start 'dividing and conquering' as you recommended, mrk6. Thanks all you guys for all the advice.

Sounds like a plan

And I was tempted to grab a 4890 (they're 159AR @ newegg) but I'm not a huge gamer and so far with the OC'ed CPU and GPU everything is going smoothly. SF4 looks AMAZING with all details turned up.

Only upgrade when you think you need to; if your card is meeting all of your demands, be happy and enjoy it.

How fast is my 6400 @ 3.2 compared to a newish i7 or more modern CPU? Is it close? Or will a modern day CPU run circles around it?

It depends. Since the E6400, there have been about four generations of CPUs to come out - the Core 2 Duo 65nm refresh, the 45nm wolfdale chips, then the core i7's, now the new core i5 and i7's. For the Core 2 Duo's, each new generation introduced optimizations that gained 0-10% performance in most areas while reducing power consumption and increasing overclockability. With the Core i7 release, there was a more dramatic change as Intel went with an IMC. In short, depending on the application, there can be very little change to a dramatic change even while running at the same clock speed. Add in the fact that newer CPUs overclock much better/higher, and it becomes more complicated to give a simple answer.

I guess the only thing i'd really want at this point is to speed up desktop apps. Most things run fairly smoothly, but FF still legs with more than 50 tabs open. Sometimes i'm pushing 150 tabs and it starts to really bog down. I'm not even close to pushing the 4 gigs of ram though. Anyone know anything that might help with that?

My knowledge on the requirements of browsers is limited, but that might just be Firefox being Firefox. I don't think it's ever been recognized as resource efficient, so open 50+ tabs and throw in a few flash pages and some other heavy media content and if your CPU doesn't hold you back, something else might.