Pentium D 805 concerns, first build

[Oliver_FF]

I've just brought the following from overclockers.co.uk for my first build:

ASUS P5WD2-E Premium
Pentium D 805
1GB OCZ Special Ops Edition PC2-6400
ATI Radeon X1800XT
Zalman CNPS-9500 Socket 775

I've got it all plugged in, connected and powered up. It works great, got windows on it without much fuss...

And then i went to look at CPU-Z to see what voltage it was running at, and was met by "1.5v". It looked a bit high, so I assumed it was a bad reading and loaded up ASUS's PC Probe. This too gives 1.5v on the core. To be sure I looked in the bios (didn't occur to me to look when i assembled it) and it is definately taking 1.5v, plus minus a small bit.

The CPU temp is also reading 50+ degrees even with my Zalman cooler whirlinig away, and don't forget this is at the stock speeds. The cooler also feels cold to the touch, another reason why I didn't notice anything when i'd got it all assembled.

I'm sure I applied plenty of thermal compound to the processor before putting the cooler on top, and the base looked pretty smooth.

Can anyone advise me on what to do? The processor is taking 1.5v which is waaay higher than anyone else is reporting (and the 'safe' maximum voltage of 1.4v as stated on the side of the box), it's at the standard clock and it's waaay too hot aswell.

 

[SirNicholai]

I'm having the same problem with the same CPU and motherboard.
I'm also using

-OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit System Memory
-ASPIRE ATX-AS520W BLACK ATX 520W Power Supply 115/230 V CB IEC 950/ TUV EN 60950/ UL 1950/ CSA 950
-XFX PV-T71G-UDE7 GeForce 7900 GT EXTREME (520MHz) 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
-Thermaltake 745 Liquid Cooling Kit

I also get 1.5 volts at regular clock speed.

I've tried overclocking it, and ran some stress tests at 3.6 and 3,8 ghz. It got through some, but it was never completely stable, and it couldn't handle playing Prey for more than 30 minutes. I checked the heat everywhere, and the motherboard didn't go above 45C, the CPU was below 55C, and the GPU below 70C, so they all should havebeen fine. The only thing I can think of was that something wrong with the voltage, becase it's 1.5V at 2.66ghz
Should I return it? Is there some way to fix this?

 

[Oliver_FF]

As far as I can see, there's two possible answers:

1. We've got some really poor silicon, they need a higher voltage just to function at the regular clock speed.

2. It's a result of some of ASUS's AI NOS automatic overclocking that it does. Unfortunately i'm struggling to find any documentation regarding it and couldn't see an option in the bios to disable it.

 

[Spaceham]

I've got a similar set up myself, using a ASUS P5W DH. I get a core voltage of 1.33 but understand that different chips can require different voltages based on the quality of the chip. It's a overclockers lottery when buying a chip, and toms hardware point out on their overclocking the 805 article that not all processors are the same, and even when they are, you still may not achieve the say high clocks speedes due to variations in the processor. Looks like you guys just got unlucky on this one.

If your concerened it's the motherboard doing something, just go into the BIOS and reset the settings to default, just to make sure.

 

[Oliver_FF]

I'm not so much concerned that it won't overclock as far, but that it's running at a voltage higher than the specified 'maximum' on the box...



<EDIT>

Well, I bit the bullet and phoned the tech support guys from the place I got my processor from...(shhh, don't tell anyone )

It seems there was just something up with the initial voltage, I went to the bios and just set a much lower core voltage and it booted normally. It's definately running cooler aswell now.

 

[SirNicholai]

I've got a similar set up myself, using a ASUS P5W DH. I get a core voltage of 1.33 but understand that different chips can require different voltages based on the quality of the chip. It's a overclockers lottery when buying a chip, and toms hardware point out on their overclocking the 805 article that not all processors are the same, and even when they are, you still may not achieve the say high clocks speedes due to variations in the processor. Looks like you guys just got unlucky on this one.

If your concerened it's the motherboard doing something, just go into the BIOS and reset the settings to default, just to make sure.

Welll, thanks for that analysis...I think I'll try and get an RMA then, since it's operating over-voltage at regular clock speeds, but if not, I'll probably just end up buying the E6600 in a few months, since I've heard that it sounds like a very powerful chip for a decent price. It will work with the Asus Motherboard I've got, right?

Regarding reseting the motherboard to default, I've tried that several times, and I don't think the problem is the NOS, because I did manual over-clocking, which shouldn't turn on the NOS feature.

Oh, and you don't need to disable the NOS feature, if you want it on you have to enable it by going to the "Advanced" Tab in the BIOS menu, then go to "Jumper-Free Settings," and then the first option is what type of overclocking you want, and it's either disabled, NOS, or Manual, or something like that. But by default NOS is off, so unless you've turned it on that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Spaceham]

Glad you sussed it Oli.

I think the ASUS P5WD2-E Premium runs conroe on later revisions...I found this link but I'm don't know how correct the information is...

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40895&sid=0adeb49781945bbd67babf669579e1d2

 

[mag820]

Oliver, I have seen similar voltages with my Asus P5LD2 and Pentium D 820. The default MB settings set the VCore to something near 1.5V. I have entered in the Bios and set the VCore to 1.225 V (the lowest setting), and the CPU is running perfectly stable (always resulting in a VCore of 1.2 or higher, even under load).

I don't think you should worry about the 1.5 V, your CPU will probably not suffer. But lowering your VCore as low as possible (while running stable) will reduce the temperature of the CPU.

 

[Skidd]

CPU-Z doesnt report the voltages correctly, even in toms article they pointed it out. Its the same with my setup. Also I found after a while once the chip settled into its socket its running slightly hotter than when i first installed it. It now idles 40c and loads to 55c as apposed to when it was just installed 35c and 50c load.

As a result I have to up the voltage to maintain the clock. Downclocking it decreased the tempretures again and I didnt notice any deference in performance. So now im running at 3.8. And it seems happy there.

 

[SirNicholai]

Well, I wasn't using CPU-Z, I was using the motherboard probe and some other programs, but I'm now pretty sure the issue was a problem with my power supply, because I switched to a different one, and the voltage was regular, and I was able to OC to 4.0, and run all the benchmarks I wanted, and it's perfectly stable and happy. (there was also a little problem of artifacting with my video card, but after reading comments on newegg I set it to auto-overclock, and now all the artifacts went away too). So unless something doesn't work in the next week, the new power supply seems to have solved all my problems.