Maximus II Formula Club

[grumpydaddy]

Hi cez, and welcome.

Is that Plymouth UK you are coming from?

First time overclocking huh? well you came to the right place...in this thread you will meet a guy called Deton among others all of whom will try to help you get up to speed (sic).

My first advice to you is to download a couple of monitoring programs so you can see most of your voltages and temperatures etc The first is called everest There are a couple of versions one is free the other has a few more readings and costs a few bucks. another is called cpu-z this will give details of overclocks etc.
Then there is another stress program (I see you found orthos) called prime95.

I use occt for quick (1hour) testing then run prime95 for say 12 to 24 hours when I want to test for stability.

When you have everest loaded my first recommend would be to set all voltages to auto (except the ram which should be set at the makers recommended volts and timings) and make notes about what all the settings are (print out deton's template and fill in the blanks)

I'm a bit concerned about your heatsink/thermal paste cos you seem to have a high core but we will come to that later.

When you have done the above let us know and we will take the next step

[Deton]

Cez, welcome to PureOC and MIIF club.

Its would been nice if you can fill out your rig specs in the UserCP so we don't have to ask you what kind of hardware you have. Second, try not to use short hand to post your message because not many people will understand it. We have member around the globe on here, some might don't understand slang wording.

For example, I'm going to ask you what type of cooler are you using, stock air cooler or aftermarket, type or water cooling?

With your temps I'm assuming you're still on stock air cooler.

Let summary your problem;
1hr of Orthos is not enough to declaring stable, max load temps usually reach its max after 1 hour or so and it depends on which stress software you're using. So you should to at least 8hrs of Orthos before you call it a day.

Your current voltage settings are still at stock with 3.4ghz overclocked, if you want to stable or go pass 3.4ghz then you have to inscrease Vcore, FSB, NB...etc. Take a look at bios setting sample table.

My advise before you go any further, you should upgrade your cooler, 60ish degree at 1.17v. That is poor cooling.

Ok, I'm going to show you a quick trick to give you a starting point to get to 3.5ghz.
set every settings in the bios at AUTO except FSB (410), CPU ratio (8.5), set your RAM at its spec. The board will automatic taking everything for you, but the board will over voltage a little bit. Use Everest or Ai Probe to read all the voltages, write them down.

Now go into the bios change those voltage accroding to your note and work your way down to the lowest voltage but much pass the stress test.

Try it and let us know the result.

[cez]

thanks guys

check out my profile again I updated the hardware etc kinda took me a bit of time to figure out all the features of the forum etc hehe

ok deton ill do as u adviced, do i have to set all the ram settings from the bios table u wrote in post nr1 and can i put excatly the same values?

and if i do as u said above do i have to run orthos for at least 8hrs everytime i lower the voltages?


im wondering if my thermalright 120extreme is properly fitted cos it aint the easiest cooler to install but i done it twice and i was getting the same results so probably its all good mhmm

[Deton]

LOL...Grumpy, you beat me with the above post.

Cez, leave RAM Freq at its stock, such as 800mhz and all the other ram settings at AUTO. You don't want to touch the RAM at this stage because it's must easier to get the CPU stable overclocked if RAM is not overclock it. You can overclock ram later.

edit: ok I just looked at you spec, your air cooler is not bad but why you have so high of load temps at 1.17v? The only thing I can think of is bad case air flow, perhaps? you have X2 in there, that thing run pretty hot.

[Deton]

and if i do as u said above do i have to run orthos for at least 8hrs everytime i lower the voltages?

no you don't have too....I like to use OCCT (overclocking checking tool) program, you can set the time to do stress test, 1hr or 2hr. If it is not stable, it will crash right away. You can find a link to down load this program in Maximus Formula club but I'm not sure that's the latest version or not, haven't check that link for sometime now. The latest OCCT is version 2.0, it's support new quad core procs.

So keep work your way down untill you find a sweet spot and you're happy with temp than you can run 8hrs or more stability test. Pick your poison, Prime95 or Orthos, OCCT or Intel Burn Tool (linkpack), this program put trememdous heat to the cpu.

im wondering if my thermalright 120extreme is properly fitted cos it aint the easiest cooler to install but i done it twice and i was getting the same results so probably its all good mhmm

If you had have remounting the cooler and keep getting same results, I guess that it is.

what was your ambient temp when you took the load temps reading?

[cez]

ok at all default and fsb at 410 nd cpu ratio at 8.5 my idle temps are about 50-55deg which is bad i think :S

when ill be lowering the voltages do i have to do that with all of them ?

ambient temps in the case yeh ? mhmm not sure how can i check them? any programs?

wot about the thermal compound maybe its not enough of it there or something so the temps are quite high

probably the airflow isnt really good got one fan at front and 1 at the back and one on the side window dont know if thats enough any advice much appriciated

[Deton]

can you report all the voltage now.
50ish idle temp is bad, it should be late 30 or early 40 for air cooler. It's definetly something with the cooler. Do you have any pic of mounted cooler?

[cez]

ok voltages in everest:

cpu 1.43
cpu vtt 1.29
cpu pll 1.69
nb 1.29
sb 1.1 1.12
sb 1.5 1.50
dimm 2.10
dimm vtt 1.04

and no i dont have any pics of the cooler ill probably take out the motherboard later and refit the
cooler again


btw. at all default my idle temps were bout 33-39 so i dont know if its something wrong with the cooler or the voltages are way too high

[Deton]

Ok, your q9550 C1 stepping runs a little hotter than E0 but it won't be that hot though.

ok voltages in everest:

cpu 1.43 <-----somewhere between 1.33 to 1.38v
cpu vtt 1.29 <---- should keep this close to Vcore voltage
cpu pll 1.69 <---- 1.60v
nb 1.29 <--- leave at this for now, if you can't get it stable with the above voltage lower then you can increase a notch or two.
sb 1.1 1.12 <--- 1.1v
sb 1.5 1.50 <-- 1.5v
dimm 2.10 <--- set this at RAM spec
dimm vtt 1.04

and no i dont have any pics of the cooler ill probably take out the motherboard later and refit the
cooler again


btw. at all default my idle temps were bout 33-39 so i dont know if its something wrong with the cooler or erm :S

the reason I asked about the cooler, just to make sure you have the fan for the 120ultra exhaust it out the back of the case, not facing inward then you will have all the hot air trap inside the case.

If you have 39c idle stock speed, the only way you can do it now is trying to bring down the voltage and hopefully it will stays around 60c at load. If you can keep load temp at 60 or under, and your rig is stable then you are safe.

[cez]

ok ill have a close look at it in the morning and ill let you know the results, right now its time for bed thx nd cu

[cez]

ok so far running prime95 for bout 6 h and no errors yet real temp at tj max 95 shows temps bout 56-65 on all cores, speed fan at default settings probably tj max 100 shows temps around 60-69 (mb is bout 38 nb and sb is about 50 (everest))
and my system temp which is probably the temp inside the case im not sure wonders around 35-37deg

when i open the case temps seems to be goin down bout 4-5deg so probably the airflow in the case isnt that good

seems fully stable as browsing the net, using msn, listenin to music, run photoshop for a bit

bios settings:
cratio 8.5
fsb 415
Vcpu 1.25
cpu vtt 1.25
cpu pll 1.60
nb 1.25

btw does it matter which side fan is facing? i mean the side with a sticker on it should be facing the cooler or it should be outside of it ?

heres a little simple drawing of my case inside:

i hope thats the way it should work best of course id be happy to hear some advice about it so i can move things around to improve it

[Geralt]

if the yellow elipses are the stickers then turn around the fans coz atm the fan at the back is blowing the air into the case and other one ( on CPU) is in pull mode. Trun them around( so sticker would be beside the case/cooler) and see what happens. If your not sure are they pushing or pulling air you can take a cigarette ( lit of course) and put it beside it and see when it will suck the smoke in or disperse it ( i know its kinda ghetto testing but it works )

[cez]

haha ok Geralt done as you said and then after i boot the temps are about 37ish which i think helped a lot btw i done 6h of prime on all cores temps were bout 60ish and didnt get any errors so that should do I think cos i wont be playing games 6h straight will I so dont think any more testing under load is needed, however ill do run it longer someday

btw mhmm leave the ram at default or change it to the provided settings at 1066mhz?

after playing cod for like an hour my load temps were like 45deg so now bk to idle is bout 40 still pretty good result i think atm

[grumpydaddy]

Ok, I'm going to show you a quick trick to give you a starting point to get to 3.5ghz.
set every settings in the bios at AUTO except FSB (410), CPU ratio (8.5), set your RAM at its spec. The board will automatic taking everything for you, but the board will over voltage a little bit. Use Everest or Ai Probe to read all the voltages, write them down.

Now go into the bios change those voltage accroding to your note and work your way down to the lowest voltage but much pass the stress test.

Try it and let us know the result.

I know you want to enjoy you newfound settings and play a few games but Deton's comment above is really only your starting point...you really can do better/cooler by finding these minimum voltages or possibly faster by keeping these voltages and increasing the speeds......So when you are ready come and ask for a few tips again ....in just a short while you could really be getting the hang of this

[Deton]

Cez, I knew you had your fans installed wrong. Now the temps is seem in line with the current overclocking. You can try to bring the Vcore, NB voltages down a notch or two then run Prime95 test again to see if it stable or not, you can do like that back and forth until you find the lowest voltage.

When you done all that and you really want to OC your ram then you can start change its Mhz, increase its voltage and you might have to losing up the timing to keep it stable.

[cez]

but u know im on 1.25v instead of 1.33-1.38 ? :P