Help me prepare for an Opty 165 O/C

[brad481]

Hey all, here's the main layout of my new system, will be built by end of week (waiting for delivery):


Antec P180
Enermax Liberty 500w
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
Opteron 165
Artic Cooler Freezer 64 Pro w/ Artic Silver 5
OCZ Gold Edition 2GB PC4000 OCZ5002048ELGE-K
eVGA 7800GT 256-P2-N516

Now I don't have the hardware yet so I don't have the specifics of the chip, but I hope to get 300x9 (2.7GHZ) out of this system MAX and perhaps 2.5 to 2.6 stable 24x7. I know max voltage for CPU is ~ 1.45v. My main question is what memory settings should I use to attain these speeds? I guess just kind of a summary to cover all the steps to a good overclock using this motherboard. Also, I'm getting 2 WD SE16 250GB SATA hard drives. Can I hook them up to nVidia's SATA ports and not have to worry about hooking up a stupid floppy (aka f6 during xp install) to load drivers? Thanks in advance, can't wait to build

 

[lopri]

Should definitely change your board from A8N-SLI Premium to one of the DFI NF4 variants. This is from a person who owns both.

 

[lopri]

Well, I'll try to be a bit more helpful.

The reason I recommend to avoid A8N-SLI Premium for OC'ing is its crazy vcore fluctuation. Single-core processors don't seem to suffer from this issue, but anyone with dual-core processors and this board will tell you that. Also, it varies slightly by BIOS revision, max vcore the board allows is just about 1.5V. Some might say that's high enough voltages for dual-core CPUs, but if your chip happens to scale well with voltages and if you find the chip's potential to be limited by the vcore, along with its fluctuation, it could be quite frustrationg.

The rest of your setup look awesome. OC'ing will mostly depends on the CPU's stepping (luck) and your setup's cooling/airflow (skill ), but your goal looks quite reasonable. As far as memory is concerned, the first thing to be aware of is that every single memory has different potential. (Just like CPUs) Follow the stickied Zebo's guide, find your CPU/HTT max first using low enough dividers, then start with the stock (SPD) setting. In your case, that would be 250MHz @3-4-4-8? (I'm not sure about the exact stock specs of your memory). Using memtest first (running whole test suits for long period of time might be ideal, but it's not very practical since it'll take too much time. Looping Test 5 and Test 8 for a couple hours would be sufficient for initial setup. Once in Windows, SuperPI 32M is second-to-none for testing memory configuration. If your memory is inadequately configured, it will almost always give you an error message, or the system spontaneous reboot/hang, etc. It only takes about 25~50 mins depending your CPU/memory speed. Also check the latest AnandTech review here : http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2676 You can get an idea what the limit of your sticks would be.

The rest of the parts are practically non-issue for OC'ing. (Even the video card) You should be able to install Windows XP without any drivers using NF4 SATA ports. No floppy needed.

I can't stress enough the importance of cooling. Staying within safety zone (say, under 50C) doesn't mean you should get the max OC out of your chip at that temp. If your chip does 2.7GHz @50C load, it's very possible that it will do 2.75GHz @40C load. Socket 939 Opterons seem to be extremely sensitive to temperature.

Cheers,
lop

 

[brad481]

Thanks for the info! Well i am gonna be nervous to see how well it will overclock. I recieve my stuff today and tomorrow so i'll be able to report back the info on the cpu. I'm hoping that my Enermax Liberty will be able to provide rock solid power (aka solid voltage to the cpu's) so it'll remain stable. I'll give it a shot and then decide if it'd be worth sending back the motherboard if I'm not pleased and perhaps try a DFI board