Need help with overclocking

Ezciel · Jan 24, 2009, 01:00 AM

I come here humbled by all the OC enthusiasts of my generation and seek your wisdom to help me overclock my own rig for the very first time. I'm just starting out for the moment but from reading i know all about heatsinks, cooling fans and the likes. What i really want to know is how i can overclock my rig without it relying on all the accessories for the moment and still keep pretty good temperatures with the stock heatsinks and the likes.

Here's my system. It's pretty high end i guess because from what i've read, the better the system the more potential to overclock because of better stability.

RAM timings and voltage adjustments pique my interest (but nothing too drastic that will wear out/overheat the RAM without additional cooling) as well as OC'ing the processor/motherboard (i've read about multipliers and FSB but not sure where to go from here. I need expert help on this to lower my chances of screwing things up)

Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe (says it can be OC'ed to support 1600Mhz)
Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz)
Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) - running at 1333Mhz
W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm / 16mb SataII
XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5
Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU
Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690

nicnik · Jan 24, 2009, 04:54 PM

with 1600Mhz Ram, you can easily run 3.2Ghz on the CPU with very low temps on default Voltages and cooler (or a small increase in voltages). That's using 160 FSB x20 Mult. There's lots of guides for overclocking the i7 on a P6T. It'lll be better for you to read those than to read anything I might tell you, as the naming/notation I would use would be according to my board/Bios.

I'm running 3.3Ghz until I need more performance/better cooling. I'm on stock voltages and am getting max temps of around 65C using RealTemp, typically lower when gaming, as 65 is tops when I run multiple stability tests. Jus some figures for your reference.

Do be careful that CPU Voltage isn't set to AUTO, as on my board AUTO was higher than required and actually pushed my max temp to around 70C.

Lowfat · Jan 24, 2009, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nicnik

with 1600Mhz Ram, you can easily run 3.2Ghz on the CPU with very low temps on default Voltages and cooler (or a small increase in voltages). That's using 160 FSB x20 Mult. There's lots of guides for overclocking the i7 on a P6T. It'lll be better for you to read those than to read anything I might tell you, as the naming/notation I would use would be according to my board/Bios.

I'm running 3.3Ghz until I need more performance/better cooling. I'm on stock voltages and am getting max temps of around 65C using RealTemp, typically lower when gaming, as 65 is tops when I run multiple stability tests. Jus some figures for your reference.

Do be careful that CPU Voltage isn't set to AUTO, as on my board AUTO was higher than required and actually pushed my max temp to around 70C.

70C is nothing if you are actually reading the core temps. i7's will handle a lot higher temps than that.

nicnik · Jan 24, 2009, 05:13 PM

ya, but lower temps the better

and i'm pointing out my motherboard defaults the voltages to be allot higher than required. The P6T may be better or worse on "auto".

Ezciel · Jan 25, 2009, 05:16 AM

thanks for your feedbacks. I shall scour the net for some i7 guides.

Ezciel · Jan 26, 2009, 07:58 PM

Okay i have a problem. I'm not too sure if my OC'ing caused it or not but i also recently fixed a wi-fi card into the PCI slot and i had to re-attach my side casing fan back onto the motherboard since i'm using a CM690. I had shut down windows after satisfactory results with running BLCK at 160Mhz and being able to up my corsair dominator up to 1600Mhz.

Onto the problem. I realised the startup was slightly different. Express Gate did not load and the Asus P6T Deluxe splash screen appeared for the first time. I had disabled the Marvel Bios Adapter recently - all those attributed to the P6T Deluxe bios but it loaded again...so i went to check my bios and the time and date had resetted to 00:00:00 and 1/1/2002 ...what went wrong and how do i restore it back to the norm?

However all my bios settings were the same as when i OC'ed except that the time and date had just been reset back to 1/1/2002 and 00:00:00 ...also when vista loaded i noticed some motherboard drivers had gone missing and needed reinstallation....what could have caused this?

Ezciel · Jan 27, 2009, 01:04 PM

Nvm i seem to have solved the problem. I flashed and updated my bios and reinstalled all the missing drivers. The PC is running smoothly for now and i hope it will continue this way for a long time

isaak · Apr 17, 2009, 07:21 AM

Were you just looking to overclock the RAM?

(don't reply if you've got everything you need as i realise this thread is quite old)

Ezciel · Apr 17, 2009, 12:14 PM

Yes. Especially with timings and voltages. I run my ram at 8-8-8-24 at 1T stock voltage atm.

nicnik · Apr 17, 2009, 12:34 PM

So hows the overclock going?

I use 2 profiles, 1 at 3.5ghz another at 3.8 (HT OFF). But i dont use 3.8 often when 3.5ghz is more than adequate for gaming at 1920x1080. I jus switch profile when im encoding or wot not.

My chip seems to be able to reach 4.0 and remain stable, but i'm not comfortable running it at 4.0 long term. tried pushing for 4.2 but can't find stability. Probably can if i spent more time on it.

The new rev d0 920s can hit 4.4 >.<

Ezciel · Apr 17, 2009, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nicnik

So hows the overclock going?

I use 2 profiles, 1 at 3.5ghz another at 3.8 (HT OFF). But i dont use 3.8 often when 3.5ghz is more than adequate for gaming at 1920x1080. I jus switch profile when im encoding or wot not.

My chip seems to be able to reach 4.0 and remain stable, but i'm not comfortable running it at 4.0 long term. tried pushing for 4.2 but can't find stability. Probably can if i spent more time on it.

The new rev d0 920s can hit 4.4 >.<

You run stock cooling right ? How does the 3.5ghz hold up? Very stable? I currently run at the safest OC speed of 3.2ghz but overall i know the differences in performance and quality are pretty slim. Maybe i should push it up to 3.5ghz. My core temps don't run that high anyway. Only around 40-45C between idle and load.

nicnik · Apr 17, 2009, 08:57 PM

i'm using an akasa ak-967. It's cheap, but most importantly it's damn quiet for the thermal performance it delivers. It's prolly only 2-4C behind some of the best air coolers, but it runs near 30-34db compared with 50+db on the most high performance coolers.

You running 3.2 + HT and turbo mode on right? So you effectively gain closer to 3.4. with a 21x mulitplier.

Anyway, at 3.5 and 1.175v I'm running (according to realtemp) 32-34C idle. under full prime load I'll hit 52-56C, it takes a long while to reach 56, if weather is cool then it'll jus end up hitting 55C (AS5 is included). 3.5 is rock solid, no crashes whatsoever. 3.8 required some effort to tweak to find a sweet spot. Overall I'm not too happy with the voltages required to run 4.0. Which is why the rev d0 is so sexy. It can take 4.0 at lower temps.

Ezciel · Apr 18, 2009, 02:18 AM

actually i turned off HT and turbo mode to better gauge performance and readings. With those two turned on i could never get proper readings off cpu-z. I'll be buying some water cooling soon since my case is modded for it. OC'ing can be fun and rewarding.

Maybe i'll try 3.2 with HT and turbo on before pushing 3.5 or 3.8. Forgot how this pc ran last time with these 2 options on.

nicnik · Apr 18, 2009, 10:42 PM

nice! got your eyes set on a specific water cooling kit?

zemo · Apr 19, 2009, 03:51 PM

Hey Ezciel , here we go man , this link for Intel i7 Nehalem overclocking calculator , it's so cool free software to make you overclocking.
Icrontic Nehalem Overclocking Calculator
And ofcourse you need water cooling i suggest : The Exos-2.5 possesses triple 120mm fans or The ERM-2K3U or ERM-3K4U all this product from Koolance
Water cooling systems, pc liquid cooling kit, cpu, video card, hard drive

Good Luck in your OC ;-)

~~RE III - Frankie~~ · Apr 28, 2009, 12:35 PM

Are your CPU and RAM "unlinked"? When I overclock I set it to unlinked so I have more control over the CPU overclock and can focus directly on it! I find that the higher the voltage the more stable the setting. On my E7300 3.6GHz maxes out performance, but I have it set at 3.875GHz right now just for fancy and snapshots. On a standard cooler though if you go over 200-400MHz over standard frequencies you'll find that the temp sky-rockets. You probably want to keep it at 64c max under load at high performance frequencies.

Jan 24, 2009, 01:00 AM	#1
Ezciel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Malaysia Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Need help with overclocking I come here humbled by all the OC enthusiasts of my generation and seek your wisdom to help me overclock my own rig for the very first time. I'm just starting out for the moment but from reading i know all about heatsinks, cooling fans and the likes. What i really want to know is how i can overclock my rig without it relying on all the accessories for the moment and still keep pretty good temperatures with the stock heatsinks and the likes. Here's my system. It's pretty high end i guess because from what i've read, the better the system the more potential to overclock because of better stability. RAM timings and voltage adjustments pique my interest (but nothing too drastic that will wear out/overheat the RAM without additional cooling) as well as OC'ing the processor/motherboard (i've read about multipliers and FSB but not sure where to go from here. I need expert help on this to lower my chances of screwing things up) Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe (says it can be OC'ed to support 1600Mhz) Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz) Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) - running at 1333Mhz W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm / 16mb SataII XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5 Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690 __________________ Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz) Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5 Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690 Vista Home Premium 32-bit Last edited by Ezciel; Jan 24, 2009 at 12:25 PM.

Jan 24, 2009, 04:54 PM	#2
nicnik In the Land of Snow Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 569 Rep Power: 46 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking with 1600Mhz Ram, you can easily run 3.2Ghz on the CPU with very low temps on default Voltages and cooler (or a small increase in voltages). That's using 160 FSB x20 Mult. There's lots of guides for overclocking the i7 on a P6T. It'lll be better for you to read those than to read anything I might tell you, as the naming/notation I would use would be according to my board/Bios. I'm running 3.3Ghz until I need more performance/better cooling. I'm on stock voltages and am getting max temps of around 65C using RealTemp, typically lower when gaming, as 65 is tops when I run multiple stability tests. Jus some figures for your reference. Do be careful that CPU Voltage isn't set to AUTO, as on my board AUTO was higher than required and actually pushed my max temp to around 70C. __________________ Follow Me on Twitter Battlefield 3 \| youtube \| TwitchTV

Jan 24, 2009, 05:13 PM	#4
nicnik In the Land of Snow Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 569 Rep Power: 46 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking ya, but lower temps the better and i'm pointing out my motherboard defaults the voltages to be allot higher than required. The P6T may be better or worse on "auto". __________________ Follow Me on Twitter Battlefield 3 \| youtube \| TwitchTV

Jan 25, 2009, 05:16 AM	Thread Starter #5
Ezciel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Malaysia Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking thanks for your feedbacks. I shall scour the net for some i7 guides. __________________ Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz) Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5 Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690 Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Jan 26, 2009, 07:58 PM	Thread Starter #6
Ezciel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Malaysia Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking Okay i have a problem. I'm not too sure if my OC'ing caused it or not but i also recently fixed a wi-fi card into the PCI slot and i had to re-attach my side casing fan back onto the motherboard since i'm using a CM690. I had shut down windows after satisfactory results with running BLCK at 160Mhz and being able to up my corsair dominator up to 1600Mhz. Onto the problem. I realised the startup was slightly different. Express Gate did not load and the Asus P6T Deluxe splash screen appeared for the first time. I had disabled the Marvel Bios Adapter recently - all those attributed to the P6T Deluxe bios but it loaded again...so i went to check my bios and the time and date had resetted to 00:00:00 and 1/1/2002 ...what went wrong and how do i restore it back to the norm? However all my bios settings were the same as when i OC'ed except that the time and date had just been reset back to 1/1/2002 and 00:00:00 ...also when vista loaded i noticed some motherboard drivers had gone missing and needed reinstallation....what could have caused this? __________________ Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz) Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5 Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690 Vista Home Premium 32-bit Last edited by Ezciel; Jan 26, 2009 at 08:03 PM. Reason: Added additional paragraph.

Jan 27, 2009, 01:04 PM	Thread Starter #7
Ezciel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Malaysia Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking Nvm i seem to have solved the problem. I flashed and updated my bios and reinstalled all the missing drivers. The PC is running smoothly for now and i hope it will continue this way for a long time __________________ Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz) Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5 Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690 Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Apr 17, 2009, 07:21 AM	#8
isaak HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 2,286 Rep Power: 112 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking Were you just looking to overclock the RAM? (don't reply if you've got everything you need as i realise this thread is quite old)

Apr 17, 2009, 12:14 PM	Thread Starter #9
Ezciel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Malaysia Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking Yes. Especially with timings and voltages. I run my ram at 8-8-8-24 at 1T stock voltage atm. __________________ Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz) Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5 Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690 Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Apr 17, 2009, 12:34 PM	#10
nicnik In the Land of Snow Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 569 Rep Power: 46 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking So hows the overclock going? I use 2 profiles, 1 at 3.5ghz another at 3.8 (HT OFF). But i dont use 3.8 often when 3.5ghz is more than adequate for gaming at 1920x1080. I jus switch profile when im encoding or wot not. My chip seems to be able to reach 4.0 and remain stable, but i'm not comfortable running it at 4.0 long term. tried pushing for 4.2 but can't find stability. Probably can if i spent more time on it. The new rev d0 920s can hit 4.4 >.< __________________ Follow Me on Twitter Battlefield 3 \| youtube \| TwitchTV

Apr 17, 2009, 08:57 PM	#12
nicnik In the Land of Snow Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 569 Rep Power: 46 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking i'm using an akasa ak-967. It's cheap, but most importantly it's damn quiet for the thermal performance it delivers. It's prolly only 2-4C behind some of the best air coolers, but it runs near 30-34db compared with 50+db on the most high performance coolers. You running 3.2 + HT and turbo mode on right? So you effectively gain closer to 3.4. with a 21x mulitplier. Anyway, at 3.5 and 1.175v I'm running (according to realtemp) 32-34C idle. under full prime load I'll hit 52-56C, it takes a long while to reach 56, if weather is cool then it'll jus end up hitting 55C (AS5 is included). 3.5 is rock solid, no crashes whatsoever. 3.8 required some effort to tweak to find a sweet spot. Overall I'm not too happy with the voltages required to run 4.0. Which is why the rev d0 is so sexy. It can take 4.0 at lower temps. __________________ Follow Me on Twitter Battlefield 3 \| youtube \| TwitchTV

Apr 18, 2009, 02:18 AM	Thread Starter #13
Ezciel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Malaysia Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking actually i turned off HT and turbo mode to better gauge performance and readings. With those two turned on i could never get proper readings off cpu-z. I'll be buying some water cooling soon since my case is modded for it. OC'ing can be fun and rewarding. Maybe i'll try 3.2 with HT and turbo on before pushing 3.5 or 3.8. Forgot how this pc ran last time with these 2 options on. __________________ Asus Intel X58 P6T Deluxe Intel Core i7 920 Quad (8mb Cache @ 2.66Ghz) Corsair Dominator Triple DDR-3 @ 1600Mhz (3 x 1Gb) W.Digital 320gb @ 7200rpm XFX Radeon 4870 1gb DDR5 Cooler Master Modular 700w PSU Mid Tower Cooler Master CM690 Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Apr 18, 2009, 10:42 PM	#14
nicnik In the Land of Snow Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: London, UK Posts: 569 Rep Power: 46 System Specs	Re: Need help with overclocking nice! got your eyes set on a specific water cooling kit? __________________ Follow Me on Twitter Battlefield 3 \| youtube \| TwitchTV

Apr 19, 2009, 03:51 PM	#15
zemo DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Cairo,Egypt Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	Re: Need help with overclocking Hey Ezciel , here we go man , this link for Intel i7 Nehalem overclocking calculator , it's so cool free software to make you overclocking. Icrontic Nehalem Overclocking Calculator And ofcourse you need water cooling i suggest : The Exos-2.5 possesses triple 120mm fans or The ERM-2K3U or ERM-3K4U all this product from Koolance Water cooling systems, pc liquid cooling kit, cpu, video card, hard drive Good Luck in your OC ;-)

Apr 28, 2009, 12:35 PM	#16
~~RE III - Frankie~~ Banned Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,754 Rep Power: 0	Re: Need help with overclocking Are your CPU and RAM "unlinked"? When I overclock I set it to unlinked so I have more control over the CPU overclock and can focus directly on it! I find that the higher the voltage the more stable the setting. On my E7300 3.6GHz maxes out performance, but I have it set at 3.875GHz right now just for fancy and snapshots. On a standard cooler though if you go over 200-400MHz over standard frequencies you'll find that the temp sky-rockets. You probably want to keep it at 64c max under load at high performance frequencies.