Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Not overclocking & E6400

[gabell]

When first purchased 4 months ago I could overclock easily to 333 without voltage adjustments but never actually left it overclocked. After reading the latest reviews I have updated to F10 bios and followed the recommended settings in the bios, However, whenever I set MCH voltage manually the system does not get past the boot screen and I a have to reset the bios. It does this at stock speed and I have noticed I can't seem to overclock either. I have tried going back to various bioses all the way back to F5 but all experience the same problem. The only changes to the system I have made in these 4 months, is change my hard disks (Now have sata2 WD 320 and Samsung 400), added a SATA samsung SH-183 DVD-RW and a Pinnacle Dazzle PCI video Collector 2006 card.
I could experiment in removing these but can't understand why increasing the volts on MCH by 0.2 at stock speed and standard settings would have any relationship to these device.
Am I missing something. I have even tried turning off Chip virtualisation etc..
p.s. What is the best SATA settings.

Thanks in anticipation.....

 

[thilanliyan]

Try OCing with the MCH voltage at the "auto" setting. I use this "auto" setting, the PCI-e frequency at 100MHz, and the memory at 5-5-5-12 on my DS3 with an E6400. I am able to overclock to 425fsb with ease. Only voltages I change are the CPU voltage and the memory voltage....the rest I leave on "auto".

What are the rest of your computer specs?

Also, I remember for some reason my overclock screwed up when I used a PCI video card for a bit.

 

[gabell]

SPecs Are :-
Intel E6400 with Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler and Arctic Silver Compound - running at 34 degC
2GB Geil DDR2
F10 Bios
Asus EAX1600Pro 512
Additional Cooling fan added to North Bridge
Samsung Spinwrite 400GB Sata2
WD Cavier 320 SATA2
Samsung SH-183 Sata DVDRW
Dazzle VideoCollector 2006 PCI TV Tuner
550W psu

 

[gabell]

Think I've sorted it. I noticed that the north bridge heatsink and fan where slightly leaning, probably after installing the gigantic arctic freezer pro fan. So I just took the board out and reseated the heatsink with Arctic silver, gave it a good clean first with the arctic cleaner and prep fluid. Now I just clocked up to 401 FSB instantly with the voltage settings you suggested. It's breathed new life into the machine.

p.s. What setting do you have your SATA controller, Native or Legacy IDE, and if you choose Native, there is another 3 settings below that........

Am tempted to also try a raid setup next, get another identical disk. Anyone any thoughts or pitfalls on this......

Many Thanks
G

 

[thilanliyan]

Hmmm...I can't remember about the SATA settings and I'm not at my comp while typing this.

Glad to see you got it sorted. How are your temps like? Use Coretemp or Intel Thermal Analysis Tool to measure the temperatures. The motherboard programs (Easytune for you) usually under report.

IF you are going to do RAID, make sure you don't just do raid 0 by itself. Use either Raid 0+1 or some other raid form with some redundancy. I had a raid0 drive with 2 80GB Western Digital drives and both drives ended up failing on me (ie. not one but both drives don't work anymore) and I lost all my data. Raid puts a bit of extra wear on the drives if I'm not mistaken.

If you want a really fast drive just get a WD Raptor. Although they cost more, they are very good drives. Having said that though, I'm not saying definitely don't do Raid...I'm just saying you have to be careful when doing it. When I did have the raid set up it was definitely faster but in the end I would sacrifice a bit of speed for reliability.