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How can I improve my temps? Prolimatech Megahalem with AC5

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I decided to stick with base clock of 133 first to see how low I can go with the voltages.

I also tried 1.2V with a baseclock of 150 (3 Ghz) and while it booted up, my overvoltage lights for the CPU and RAM lit up (the green level, luckily), but I figured I may as well start with stock before i begin OC'ing.


Right now I have it manually set to .95something and my load temps are around 50C! 10C better than before! Although my idle temps are still 40C, the load is what matters, right? Should I try to go lower? .93V in the BIOS gave me a bluescreen -- safe or did I screw up?

My rationale: If I can keep going lower with VCore on stock until I can boot and run Prime95 without things dying on me, I should figure out what that minimum VCore is, no?

And then, from there, rev up the baseclock until I start getting errors, then jack up the voltages until I regain stability, repeat. All the while ensuring load temps don't go above, say, 75-80 at load (I hear 85 is particularly unsafe).

Is this process how one correctly adjusts the CPU voltages? Do I need to adjust anything else? Do I really even need to overclock 12GB RAM or is letting that do its Auto thing fine? What about Uncore? Speedstep?



Also, why do my VCore readings look different from what I set in the bios? At idle i was like .93V and then at load, now, I am at 50C and .912V? What is going on?
 
Undervolting stability testing is the same as overclock testing. Just run occt or linpack on it for at least an hour and you should be good. You really should see what your temps are like overclocked though. They may not go up as much as you would think. Also, if you aren't running apps that can use it, disabling hyperthreading will net you a big drop in temps vs having it on.
 
I'm just trying to, again, find the optimal point. What would actually DAMAGE my system? I don't want to go too high.

Is the general process to set the voltage and then find maximum clock that works, or do you set the clock and manipulate vcore until it works? Do I have to mess with QPI/Uncore?

What about RAM overclocking? Is that something I can mess with after the fact?
 
no it wouldnt. so long as you stay within the specs intel released for their CPUs (for example 1.3625v for C2Ds and 1.45v for Core i7s) and you have adequate cooling (which you do) you should be fine. i normally push the envelope on my OCs because trying to get that last little bit which is just outside intel spec isnt really going to do anything extra, at least for Vcore. it's different for different ICs, like DRAM for instance is extremely sensitive to extra voltage, and even overvolting it by .1v for to long can in some instances cause premature failure. the only damage you may risk, if any, is the possibility of OS corruption if your system crashes on boot while writing to boot files, but it could crash on boot for any number of reasons not related to the OC itself, and there is like a 1% chance every time you turn it on and off for it to do the same regardless. god knows i have had enough instances of SATA corruption due to cables failing over time hosing my OS. just dont overclock your PCI-express bus and you should avoid any overclocking related SATA corruption and you should be fine. as for ram OCing, you see what i said about voltages. normally it is pretty easy to tell if your ram is unstable, and i generally run it at much looser timings because it can actually decrease CPU overclockability. for instance, im running my ram @ 934mhz @ 5-5-5-15 @ 2.1v (stock latency and timings for 1066) so i can run 467FSB without putting as much stress on the memory controller in the northbridge, allowing for lower northbridge voltages with a stable OC. it will be different for you since you have an i7, and since the memory controller is on die, memory overclocking will directly effect your CPU temperatures and thus core overclocking ability. the only reason you will even benefit from memory OCing is if you are benchmarking competitively, so my opinion is dont even bother, and run whatever puts the least stress on the memory controller and the system bus simultaneously.


ed: to answer what to manipulate, i start with whatever my CPUs stock VID is (as measured from CPUz) as the voltage i set, and i see how high i can go at that voltage (being stock voltage), then i increase the voltage one notch from there and again see how high i can go. sometimes, depending on the "feel" i have for the system, i can start it out at a much higher speed (for instance i started at 1.25v @ 3.6GHz on my Q9650), and depending on how far i have taken the OC, i might kick it around a few notches at a time on voltage or clock increases, within a predetermined limit based on how high im willing to run the voltages up, the temperatures being measured @ a given OC, and of course system stability under prior situations. if you want, you can make a thread specifically for the CPU overclocking side of this in the cpus section and more people will see it. i myself do not have an i7 system, though my friend Shmee does, and there are many others who will be able to help you better in fine tuning your i7 settings to get the best OC with what you have. as for cooling, im changing up my pressure mod from what i had before, which only added minor extra pressure, to some 1mm thick steel washers. i will post my results tomorrow after i do some testing with it and i get my TIM application just right again LOL
 
How come my RAM overvoltage light goes off even though I am only messing with VCore and base clock?

Do you recommend setting a vcore and adjusting the clock, or setting a clock and adjusting the vcore?

What do I need to do with that QPI speed thing/uncore settings? Leave them on Auto? Do I need to mess with the RAM if I am OC'ing the CPU?

And no I am not benchmarking competitively... I figure I'll let the RAM be.
 
sorry, i didnt finish editing my post before you responded again lol. read the part after ed:

as for what to manipulate where, again you should take a look at an i7 overclocking guide, they will be able to help you better than i can. also, read the c2q overclocking guide. while the exact details may not be the same, the principles still hold true, like finding your max system bus speed you can get stable without overclocking the CPU, finding your max stable ram speed @ stock voltages, ect, before you OC, so you know what your system may actually be capable of before you take it to the limit. keep in mind as well, that testing these things without also overclocking the cpu will probably give you different results than when you do OC the CPU, so only use them as a point of reference. for instance, i was able to get my motherboard to run 500FSB @ stock voltage if i dropped my CPUs multi down to 6 (6x500=3GHz or stock cpu speed), but i needed 1.38v to get it stable at 467 with the CPU overclocked as well, and 1.42v on the northbridge
 
Awesome, thanks!

If I am ramping up the voltages and base clock, am I going to damage anything if I leave QPI on auto or the uncore settings/voltages?

I actually have an i7 OC thread already but I'm having a hard time getting the process down from the guides, and it feels like it's hard to get a straight answer for things. I really, really don't want to ruin things, haha.

I feel like there are so many voltage settings and multipliers I need to pay attention to. I just want a guide that tells me exactly the process for properly finding the optimal overclock point, and it seems IMPOSSIBLE to find one.
 
Would this be safe to try booting?

Base clock 180 (3.6 ghz)
QPI Link Speed x36 (6.48 Ghz)

UNCORE:
QPI Link Speed: 36X (6.48 Ghz)
Uncore Frequency 13X (2340 MHz)

Speedstep and Turbo Boost disabled

Performance Enhance: Standard

System Memory Multiplier: 6 (1080)

LLC: Disabled
CPU Vcore: 1.4V
QPI/VTT Voltage: 1.315V
IOH Core auto
DRAM Voltage auto
 
Originally posted by: Sekkai
Awesome, thanks!

If I am ramping up the voltages and base clock, am I going to damage anything if I leave QPI on auto or the uncore settings/voltages?

I actually have an i7 OC thread already but I'm having a hard time getting the process down from the guides, and it feels like it's hard to get a straight answer for things. I really, really don't want to ruin things, haha.

I feel like there are so many voltage settings and multipliers I need to pay attention to. I just want a guide that tells me exactly the process for properly finding the optimal overclock point, and it seems IMPOSSIBLE to find one.
Click to expand...

i always recommend manually setting any voltages that directly affect anything you are overclocking. some bioses are smart enough not to overvolt anything to much, and while most will usually undervolt if anything, some badly coded bioses have been known to massively overvolt your system in a quest for stability, resulting in component failures. while most mild to moderate overclocks are obtainable on auto voltages, and more than half of the voltages dont even need to be touched unless you are doing LN2 benchmark tuning type OCing, it is always best to set the primay voltages (in your case ram, CPU, QPI, northbridge, and one or 2 others i forget which) manually.

as for your PSU, that sould be way more than enough, most boards cant supply more than 300w to the CPU, and except on LN2 even that is ridiculously overkill since any air cooling solution doesnt have the raw capacity to cool a CPU drawing that much power lmao. measured with a kill-a-watt at the outlet, my Q9650 @ 4.2ghz with 1.42vcore in bios (1.376 cpuz), 8GB of DDR2, a 9800GTX 65nm, an X-fi XtremeMusic (has external floppy power), 7 case fans, a Vraptor and 2 Barracudas, and 2 opticals, draws a max of 470w running OCCT PSU tester while ripping CDs to all 3 hard drives. i have a 750w Real power Pro with combined 12v of 60 amps running the whole thing and i still have 200w of headroom lol

ed: you could get away with a lot less than 1.4vcore at 3.6. like i said, my CPU did it at stock, and unless you have a 920 C0 stepping they usually can do about the same lol
 
I just tried setting it at 1.25 VCore and seeing how high I could drive up the base clock... once I hit 150, it let me boot, but my overvoltage lights were on! So I tried bumping my clock up to 151... utter failure. That makes NO sense to me.
 
It seems as if .96250V is the lowest possible setting that I can both boot into Windows AND run a stable Prime95 without things getting hardware failure (at the setting below this voltage, I could boot, but Prime95 would bite the big one after about 10 seconds).

I might just give up on this overclocking stuff. I feel like I am going to ruin my computer with all these constant hardware failures, failed boots, voltage errors, etc. The 1.25V thing showing up as overvolted for 150 baseclock but then FAILING TO BOOT at 151 baseclock just totally confuses me, and I feel like this system is destined to not ever pass 3.00 Ghz safely.
 
is your memory running at ~twice the speed of your uncore? if you dont match the memory speed to your uncore speed (by altering memory dividers) it will fail to boot or post depending on how far out of sync the clocks are.
 
I have all that stuff set to Auto

I mean I am reading about people here getting 3.6+ Ghz off 1.25VCore, and I can't even set my base clock past 150!
 
yea, if you leave it to auto you wont balance your memory and uncore speeds properly, resulting in instability similar to why the phenom 1 CPUs couldnt make it past 3GHz without SB750. basically, if the memory and the memory controller (uncore) clocks dont harmonize properly (at a ratio of approximately 2 to 1), the system wont be stable and it will fail to boot or post, no matter how much voltage you give it. it is possible, if your memory is set properly, that you simply need to add QPI voltage. as for your overvolt warnings, idk exactly what gigabyte does for their X58 boards, but my friend shmee has a UD5, so i will forward this to him for more information.
 
I feel like crying.

I think I just broke my computer.

I tried these settings:

CPU clock 20x
QPI Link Speed 36x (4.8 Ghz)
Turbo Boost On, C1E/Speedstep On
Uncore Linkspeed x36 (4.8 Ghz)
Uncore Frequency x12 (1600 Mhz)
Performance Enhancement (Turbo)
Baseclock 133
System Memory Multiplier 6x (800)
VCore 1.0V

So I put the baseclock up to 143 (other things adjusted accordingly) and then I saved and exited BIOS. Now it won't even start up properly. The lights turn on, fans go... and then it shuts down, then restarts again, etc, and I never get to the BIOS screen. At least before if I screwed up a clock I could always get to the BIOS screen. I am sobbing right now 🙁 I just spent over $2000 on this thing. I am so stupid.
 
no more than you would by turning it on or off in the first place. with gigabyte's dual bios it usually reverts itself if you F*ck it up enough so it wont post anyway, was a godsend for me in getting my Q9650 stable @ 4.2GHz on my EP45-UD3P. there are so many fail safe countermeasures in place on todays overclocking boards that its really quite hard for someone, even with limited overclocking experience, to burn anything out. i was in the same place you were just this time last year in fact. i bought my e5200 and HD4670 right around the same time as an upgrade to my athlon 64 4000+, and it was the first computer i overclocked. had all the same concerns you did, and i went through some growth pains again when i transitioned to my Q9650 in may as well. it may be daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it you will look back and laugh at how daunting the task looked from the other end, vs how simple it becomes once you understand everything. as i said, i forwarded this to my IRL friend Shmee. he has a much closer setup to your own (TRUE 120 with virtually the same fans as your own, 920 D0, and a gigabye UD5), and should be able to help you better than i can. he is sleeping now, since it's 1:45 am here and he isnt a late nighter like me, but i PMed him and sent him a text, so he should see it when he wakes up lol

ed: try pulling the bios battery and the wall power out. the backup bios probably just didnt kick in properly, happens from time to time, and removing power to it will reset it to default.
 
LOL you beat me to editing my post xD. anyway, im gonna play some crysis before i prep my system for a cooler strip down before i change up my pressure mod tomorrow, good luck getting your i7 overclocked 😀, im sure shmee will know what you need to do lol
 
Haha 😛

Seriously though, I am even following an i7 guide right now

http://www.tomshardware.com/fo...ore-overclocking-guide

I basically set those variables I stated above to the recommended settings to begin overclocking (although I don't know where I should start my voltage... apparently 1V wasn't enough!?)

I mean the Uncore freq was double the memory yes? (800 vs 1600). What went wrong most likely?



Thanks so much for your help -- I really appreciate that you took the time to discuss all this with me
 
After CMOS reset:

I set my memory mult to 6x (800), restarted, fine.
I set my QPI Link Speed to 36x (4.8 Ghz), restarted, fine.
I set my Uncore Frequency to 12x (1600 Mhz), restarted...... failed, ended up with that weird reboot error.

What the hell?
 
lol its np. the best way to grow the community and "team knowledge" is by sharing your own personal experiences with your hardware with others new to the field. no one person can know everything in the enthusiast hardware field, since no 2 builds will behave exactly the same way. the only way we can learn as a whole is by seeing how our individual parts interact with each other, share our experiences, and see if we can reproduce similar results in other setups. for example, if you can get your i7 stable using the information i provided for cooling, it will be invaluable to me in the future if i determine that i need more PCI-e bandwidth than what my Q9650+P45 chipset can provide, and i sell it for an i7, since i will already have an idea of what to expect out of my cooler when i set it up with the new board and CPU, and i will have this thread as a point of reference in the future. i also keep a running log of any significant threads i either create or assist in, which i link certain fry's in store customers to in case they need online support once they get home to set up their new systems. it's 10 times better than having them spend all week trying to get their stuff to work, or getting frustrated with phone support and giving up, and 100 times better than them coming back to return what they bought lol.
 
Changing Uncore Freq to 13 instead of 12 seemed to work (apparently it needs to be 2x+1 the memory frequency?) Memory's at 800, Uncore Freq at 1733


EDIT: Ahh that makes a lot of sense. I do hope this thread proves useful to someone 😛 I am a total noob at this, haha.

Good news though is that, after resetting the CMOS, I have successfully gotten back into the BIOS with 36x QPI linkspeed, 6x memory mult, 36x uncore QPI linkspeed, and 13x uncore frequency. Apparently now I start revving up the baseclock until I bluescreen at some given voltage... unfortunately I'm on Auto right now. I figure I'll start it off at 1V and see where I can take that.

Gonna try VCore 1V and Baseclock 143

Boots into Windows fine... Prime95 seems to hold up okay, 50C... 3 Ghz achieved! (143*21)

I am ecstatic, hahaha 😀 😀 😀

Going to reboot and try 153... if that fails, I'll keep raising the VCore until shit starts to happen.

Alright, some trouble booting into Windows... raising VCore to 1.01250

Okay I reached the login screen but logging in just bluescreened me. This process is gonna take a while. 🙁 Gonna give it a bigger jump up to 1.05V.

Booted into Windows this time... 3.212 Ghz achieved under load (153*21)! around mid-50C. The cool part is that, so far, none of my overvoltage lights have been going off. Gonna raise to 163 and look for higher voltages (gonna try 1.1).

3.422 GHz achieved with baseclock 163 and VCore 1.1... load teps around 55C-56C. Looking good! Going to raise the baseclock to 173 and keep the voltage at 1.1 just to see what will happen.

FUUUUUUUU--- Alrighty, 1.1V was not enough, lmao. Bluescreened right before login screen. Trying 1.125V.

Logged into Windows fine... running Prime95 bluescreened me. Need more voltage, jeez. What do you want from me, man?! Trying 1.13750V.

3.632 Ghz achieved at load! (173*21). Load temps are around 60C, which is what I was at load before at 2.8 Ghz with my VCore set to Auto, lmao. This is looking VERY good so far, I hope. Gonna boost the clock to 183 and set VCore up to around 1.2V.

Logged into Windows at 1.2 VCore 183 baseclock... gonna try Prime95. Bluescreened after 10s. Raising VCore to 1.21250V.

3.842 Ghz achieved at 1.21250VCore (183*21)! Load temps are around 63-64C or so. Doesn't see to be bluescreening... then again I am only testing each one of these for about a minute (I know you're supposed to do it for like an hour, but I figure once I get something somewhat stable up high I can start the heavier stability testing).

Gonna raise to 193 baseclock and see what voltage will let me stay alive in Prime95. Trying 1.275V (the default BIOS setting now).

4.053 Ghz achieved, holy crap!!! (193*21)! Load temps are a TAD below 70C... I wonder if I could drop my voltages down a bit though since I basically estimated the next jump from 183 to 193 base clock).

Now I am not really sure where to go... lmao. Then again I had all those other settings (QPI Link, memory mult, Uncore, etc) set to lowest. I figure 70C is a good stopping point... it is 4 Ghz, after all, and that was the goal. Thing is, I figure going to baseclock 200 will put me at temperatures near 80 or something. I think it's perhaps worth checking out.

Raising the baseclock to 200... may God help us all, lmao. Trying 1.3 VCore because I don't know if I overshot my 1.275V estimate, so I figure it's a reasonable guess.

Alright my overvoltage lights are on (crap, they may have been on earlier, too) and I just bluescreened upon logging into Windows. Not really sure what this means now. Despite the fact that I was overvolted, my baseclock 200 still failed? Does this mean I need LESS voltage for 200 baseclock?

Gonna try 1.275V (stock) with baseclock 200. My overvoltage lights are STILL on AND I bluescreened. Went back to 193 baseclock, 1.25V, and bluescreened (MEMORY_MANAGEMENT).
 
Ok now my 1.21250VCore 183 clock isn't working... trying 183 baseclock with 1.225VCore.

That didn't work either... not even booting. Trying 1.25VCore.

Nope... what the hell is going on? Why are my old settings not working?

Screw it, I'm going back to 2.8 Ghz. I don't like what's happening, here.
 
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