Need a little Core i7 980X overclocking advice

[AdamK47]

I received a Core i7 980X yesterday along with a Cooler Master V10 cooler, Antec 1200 case, and a Corsair HX 1000W power supply. The rest of what I have in my system is listed in my sig. The 980X replaces my 930 which I ran stable at 4GHz with 1.375V with a Cooler Master V8 in an Antec 900 case. I don't see too many people around here with the 980X, but I hope some of you can give me some advice on how to properly overclock this 6 core 32nm beast.

I read Anands post overclocking article on this CPU and it looks like he used 1.35V+ to get slightly over 4GHz. In my short experience with the CPU I've noticed that anything above 1.3V shoots the temperatures up dramatically. I cannot get 4GHz with anything less than 1.35V. The temperature as reported with Real Temp GT shows temps in the mid 80s and spiking to the upper 80s. This is a new 32nm process so I'm not sure 1.35V is even acceptable with air cooling. 1.275V at 3.78GHz (180 x 21) is good and passed 8 hours of Prim95 + LinX + MemTest. I'm not even sure if 1.275V was even required, but the system was stable. Temps were at upper 60s / low 70s during the whole run.

One other odd issue I discovered is that the CPU seems less tolerate to memory timings. With the 930, I could run my 6GB Mushkin Redline at 1600MHz with it's rated 6-7-6-18-1T timings. The 980X will blue screen at these timings within 10 minutes of system uptime. 1800MHz with 8-8-7-18-1T is fine.

Any overclocking advice from those who have the CPU?

 

[Rubycon]

Sounds like a cooler issue with those temps. Either a remount or a different cooler. I'm not familiar (hands on) with the V10. I do know it uses a TEC. Perhaps it's overwhelmed? I can do 4.4GHz at 1.4V with a Venomous-X and loaded temps are in the lower 80s TOPS. That's truly fully loaded with LinX.

Memory timings will depend on your uncore and QPI settings as well. Higher QPI is going to mean less aggressive memory timings generally. It took some trial and error to get running here weeding out the best of the bunch 980X, memory and even motherboard! 4GHz should be a walk through the park even at 1.3V. Verify your voltage is correct as well! Some boards sag under load and your CPU may be getting less than 1.3V loaded. A batches tend to need north of 1.3V to hit 4GHz and above. B and F batches will go higher it seems. It can be frustrating but never give up!

I received a Core i7 980X yesterday along with a Cooler Master V10 cooler, Antec 1200 case, and a Corsair HX 1000W power supply. The rest of what I have in my system is listed in my sig. The 980X replaces my 930 which I ran stable at 4GHz with 1.375V with a Cooler Master V8 in an Antec 900 case. I don't see too many people around here with the 980X, but I hope some of you can give me some advice on how to properly overclock this 6 core 32nm beast.

I read Anands post overclocking article on this CPU and it looks like he used 1.35V+ to get slightly over 4GHz. In my short experience with the CPU I've noticed that anything above 1.3V shoots the temperatures up dramatically. I cannot get 4GHz with anything less than 1.35V. The temperature as reported with Real Temp GT shows temps in the mid 80s and spiking to the upper 80s. This is a new 32nm process so I'm not sure 1.35V is even acceptable with air cooling. 1.275V at 3.78GHz (180 x 21) is good and passed 8 hours of Prim95 + LinX + MemTest. I'm not even sure if 1.275V was even required, but the system was stable. Temps were at upper 60s / low 70s during the whole run.

One other odd issue I discovered is that the CPU seems less tolerate to memory timings. With the 930, I could run my 6GB Mushkin Redline at 1600MHz with it's rated 6-7-6-18-1T timings. The 980X will blue screen at these timings within 10 minutes of system uptime. 1800MHz with 8-8-7-18-1T is fine.

Any overclocking advice from those who have the CPU?

 

[RaistlinZ]

I haven't seen many people with that CPU yet either, which disappoints me. I thought all ATOTers make $250,000 to start.

I guess the fact that you have 6 cores running means it's going to put out some heat, even thought it's on the 32nm process. Might just be luck of the draw. Just out of curiosity, do you run may apps that even take advantage of 6 cores?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm late in the game myself for moving up to I7 or I5 technology, but I expect to do it this year. I think everything Rubycon has said is solid.

However, she may have forgotten to mention some additional considerations.

You specify your voltage to the thousandths of a volt, and the BIOS scale for "set" voltages is even more precise -- but these latter "set" values are only relatively accurate. Often, and it may be more a rule than an exception, what is "set" in BIOS yields a different actual voltage. So I guess I'm saying here that it depends on whether you're citing the setting in BIOS or a reading taken by a utility like CPU_Z. At least -- that was a fairly prevalent consensus here a year ago.

The Thermal Design Power on these I7 cores -- including the 980X -- is 130W. It's going to be hot! The V10 is -- INDEED -- a TEC hybrid cooler. I'd have to check recent reviews for it -- impartial reviews that provide real, measured thermal resistance results. But it had always been my understanding that TEC -- BY ITSELF -- was only effective when TDP was less than 65W. How these hybrid coolers implement or profit from the TEC component -- that's something else. Frankly, without doing more research on this and admitting that I dismissed TEC hybrids for the builds I made in 2007 and 2008 -- I'd pick a heatpipe cooler without TEC known to provide the lowest thermal resistance. I've seen some new designs -- for instance, yesterday I looked at a Xigmatek model -- which my be very effective at keeping the temperature as low as possible on a core with 130W TDP. And 130W TDP is nothing new -- the old Pentium D cores of four years ago generated that much heat . . . .

Also -- as said -- haven't been posting to the forums for a while, and I read Rubycon's post more carefully a second time. The Venomous X appears to be an improved design over the old TRUE, but it's a simple heatpipe cooler. I can think of ways to make it work better -- and pretty sure Ruby knows what they are. But 130W TDP means that such improvements would still have a smaller effect than you'd find for a 95W (TDP) core.

 

[AdamK47]

Could it be my temps are being reported too high? I'm using Real Temp GT and my motherboard is an EVGA x58 SLI.

 

[SHAQ]

Try Core Temp too. V10 is supposed to cool 200 watts isn't it?

 

[RussianSensation]

Can you try multipliers of 22x or 23x? My board has serious issues with QPI above 186. I have to raise my Vtt from 1.25 to 1.41V. This may be the reason you are having problems with high temps (esp. if you left vTT voltages at Auto).

 

[AdamK47]

Try Core Temp too. V10 is supposed to cool 200 watts isn't it?

Yes, 200W. It's a hybrid TEC cooler. The TEC turns on at 50% at 25C and ramps up to 100% at 35C.

I'll try Core Temp. Does Core Temp support Gulftown?

 

[AdamK47]

Can you try multipliers of 22x or 23x? My board has serious issues with QPI above 186. I have to raise my Vtt from 1.25 to 1.41V. This may be the reason you are having problems with high temps (esp. if you left vTT voltages at Auto).

I have my VTT at +200 mV in the BIOS (EVGA motherboard). The boards BIOS doesn't say what the stock value for VTT is.

 

[Rubycon]

I have my VTT at +200 mV in the BIOS (EVGA motherboard). The boards BIOS doesn't say what the stock value for VTT is.

1.25-1.275 is typical if you set the offset to 0mV. ALWAYS verify with a DMM if your board has test pads. The Classifieds do and I find the VCORE and VTT values displayed in BIOS and ELEET are considerably LOWER than real values measured off the pads with a trusted 5 digit DVM.

Realtemp GT is accurate.

Odd multis seem better than even but try all as your mileage may vary - always!

I'm sitting at 211x21 for now.

 

[AdamK47]

1.25-1.275 is typical if you set the offset to 0mV. ALWAYS verify with a DMM if your board has test pads. The Classifieds do and I find the VCORE and VTT values displayed in BIOS and ELEET are considerably LOWER than real values measured off the pads with a trusted 5 digit DVM.

Realtemp GT is accurate.

Odd multis seem better than even but try all as your mileage may vary - always!

I'm sitting at 211x21 for now.

What VTT are you using? I had to increase my VTT in order to run at 3600MHz uncore for 1800 DDR.

 

[Rubycon]

What VTT are you using? I had to increase my VTT in order to run at 3600MHz uncore for 1800 DDR.

+70mV on Classified 4X SLI
1.325 on Asus P6T7 SC

BIOS shows about 1.385, DVM reads 1.33755
Keep it below 1.4 to preserve CPU life (supposedly).

 

[AdamK47]

+70mV on Classified 4X SLI
1.325 on Asus P6T7 SC

BIOS shows about 1.385, DVM reads 1.33755
Keep it below 1.4 to preserve CPU life (supposedly).

OK, two questions. What's your uncore frequency on both systems and why do you have two systems with the 980X CPU?

 

[Rubycon]

OK, two questions. What's your uncore frequency on both systems and why do you have two systems with the 980X CPU?

I keep the uncore as close to 3600 as possible with a high QPI. Lower QPI I've run it as high as 4000 but it requires a bump in VTT as well.

Why? I do lots of batch encoding and SMP is fully supported. Having the extra cores frees up the system faster. With the OC it's quite fast and gives the much more expensive dual Xeons we have a run for the money!

 

[Spike99]

FYI,

I have mine with MP = 31 and vcore = 1.3625. I'm a noob in OC'ing but with the extreme edition why not just play around with MP & vcore. With my H50, It idles in the 30's and Load is in the low 80. I could probably go higher but I'm happy at 4.1GHz.

I don't know why the Load is so important... during normal use the highest I've seen my temp is in the 50's.

Previously, I had QX6850 @ 3.66 and it was idling in the 50's. Now i have the 980x at 4.1GHz and it idles in the 30's. Not bad...

 

[Rubycon]

FYI,

I don't know why the Load is so important... during normal use the highest I've seen my temp is in the 50's.

Load is extremely important if you bought this CPU to use at its potential! With encoding ALL cores will be loaded (both physical and logical) and this will produce nearly as much heat as a stress test! Idle temperatures are what of little use IMO.

 

[AdamK47]

I bought my CPU to use it at its true potiental... which is gaming and... browsing this site I suppose.

Anywho, I got home from work 50ish minutes ago and decided to change up my overclocking strategy. After planning and mapping it all out on 20 pages of graphing paper I decided to use a 133MHz base clock, 1600 DDR memory with 8-8-7-18-1T timings - 1.60V, 3200MHz uncore with +50mV, and the CPU at 1.375V with a 31 multiplier for 4.13GHz. The system has been torture testing for 30 minutes and the temps are generally in the mid to upper 70s. Sometimes spiking 82 or 83. It's been stable so far. I managed to type this message before a BSOD occurred at least.

 

[Rubycon]

I bought my CPU to use it at its true potiental... which is gaming and... browsing this site I suppose.

Anywho, I got home from work 50ish minutes ago and decided to change up my overclocking strategy. After planning and mapping it all out on 20 pages of graphing paper I decided to use a 133MHz base clock, 1600 DDR memory with 8-8-7-18-1T timings - 1.60V, 3200MHz uncore with +50mV, and the CPU at 1.375V with a 31 multiplier for 4.13GHz. The system has been torture testing for 30 minutes and the temps are generally in the mid to upper 70s. Sometimes spiking 82 or 83. It's been stable so far. I managed to type this message before a BSOD occurred at least.

What's your batch?

I hope you mean RAM voltage 1.6V and not uncore voltage that high!

 

[Markfw]

Load is extremely important if you bought this CPU to use at its potential! With encoding ALL cores will be loaded (both physical and logical) and this will produce nearly as much heat as a stress test! Idle temperatures are what of little use IMO.

^^^^^ This. If I was spending $1000, I would have it loaded 24/7 like Ruby. And lower 80's is high. I think you need a Megahalem's or real water...I never like mine over 70c, ever.

 

[AdamK47]

Yes sir, sir.

I'm not sure what the batch is at the moment. The box is in the living room and I'm in my computer room, so...

 

[Spike99]

^^^^^ This. If I was spending $1000, I would have it loaded 24/7 like Ruby. And lower 80's is high. I think you need a Megahalem's or real water...I never like mine over 70c, ever.

Yes, I agree load is important... but what I really wanted to say is that during normal use, nobody really reaches load temp unless they are stress testing.

And like I mentioned before... Although I Idle in the 30's and load temp is like 82C I never reach load temp during normal usage... I think the highest I've seen it reach during normal/gaming usagae is like 60C. So in this sense... Load is not important because I'm not even close during normal usage.

 

[Gillbot]

you need real temp gt for the new procs, though i think the distance to tjmax is a tick off.

 

[Shmee]

hey, I have the B1 stepping of the engineering sample version of the chip. So far I am at 32xstock blck. so about 4.3 GHz. It needs about 1.43 Vcore in bios for this, but I have good water cooling. It seems to me that these chips need a tad bit more vcore than originally thought, and do better with odd multis. when I have time, i may choose a lower odd multi, and up the BCLK/uncore. See if I can get more clocks with less vcore.

When ocing uncore and blck, remember to look at VTT carefully, as this is another factor, which is often removed when using only the multiplier overclock.

So, I recomend you get even better cooling, and play around some more. Dont be surprised if you need more than 1.4 Vcore for higher oc's, I found that out eventually. Try to keep VTT safe though, that can be dangerous sooner.

Good luck!

 

[AdamK47]

I spent some time removing the V10 from my system and trying out the stock Intel cooler. To my suprise it performed better by about 5 degrees C. I thought that perhaps the V10 wasn't seated right, so I took the mounting plate and brackets off of my V8 and put it on the V10 and then put everything back together. Still the same problem. Temps didn't improve at all. I'm going to Micro Center after work to pick up a Rev 2 Megahalems. Any advice on what fans to get for it?

 

[Rubycon]

Lower noise - decent cooling w/PWM!

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0322507