Brand new e2180 build won't overclock

[dmeyer85]

I just put together a brand new build last night:

E2180 2.0ghz
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P
OCZ DDR2 6400 4GB
EVGA Nvidia 8800 GTS 320MB
Corsair 550w pwr supply
Seagate 7200.10 250GB HD

I read the article on tom's hardware about the overclocking potential of the $89 e2160, so I decided to go ahead and give this a shot, but I purchased the e2180 because it was the same price, assuming it would have the same overclocking potential. Everytime I go into the bios to try and up the FSB to 333mhz x 9 for a speed of 3.0ghz and adjust the voltage to 1.525 the system reboots, starts running, stops, then restarts again with the original default bios settings. I bought the same mobo and processor line as the article stated, why wont the mobo allow me to oc it? Has anyone else done this kind of setup as well? is there something im just failing to see here? Any questions or help would be greatly appreciated. Also when I run the system in windows, it seems to struggle with multi-tasking, it moves slowly and freezes up, this is without oc'ing it at all. I thought with 4gb of memory and a dual core processor normal windows processing would be effortless.

 

[Evilonigiri]

Your RAM is probably causing the issues. Read the guide here on OCing the C2D.

In short, what you'll have to do is run the ram ratio to 1:1 with the fsb. Then you'll have to adjust the voltages until stable.

 

[dmeyer85]

I'm fairly the certain the ram was running at 667, which would be correct divided by 2, would make it 333. I updated the bios to the latest version on the gigabyte site for my mobo, doesnt seem to make any difference.

 

[Evilonigiri]

I'm fairly the certain the ram was running at 667, which would be correct divided by 2, would make it 333. I updated the bios to the latest version on the gigabyte site for my mobo, doesnt seem to make any difference.

So you did change the system memory multiplier to 2? You'll have to manually do this, so if you don't remember changing it, chances are it's running at 1066 or something.

If you are certain, you probably have a poor OCing cpu. For some reason, the E2180 doesn't OC as well as the E2160.

 

[dmeyer85]

voltages would be my main concern, i havent played around with them much in previous systems because "auto" usually takes care of it for me, but in this case, auto doesnt seem to be working stable.

 

[Evilonigiri]

voltages would be my main concern, i havent played around with them much in previous systems because "auto" usually takes care of it for me, but in this case, auto doesnt seem to be working stable.

If you left everything to auto, your ram would be running at 1066MHz, which is a speed your ram will have difficulties to run on. It's specified for 800MHz after all.

Grab a copy of CPUz and it'll show the settings. It would help if you post it here.

Also leaving the voltages would normally guarantee stability, however it's usually set a little too high.

 

[mikecdm]

I was using the E2180 for a few weeks with my board and after messing around some I found that It'd have a hard time booting when the ram was running lower than 750mhz. At 333x9 I couldn't boot, so then I started trying with an 8x multi. My last stable speed using stock cooling was 3.2ghz. I had it set too 400x8, memory 1:1, voltage in bios was 1.41875 which was 1.36 in cpu-z. It was prime stable for over 11hrs and I ran it like that for like 2 weeks then I picked up an E6600 for a good price.

 

[dmeyer85]

i will try what you suggested mikecdm

 

[Mondoman]

... I go into the bios to try and up the FSB to 333mhz x 9 for a speed of 3.0ghz and adjust the voltage to 1.525 the system reboots, starts running, stops, then restarts again with the original default bios settings. ...

As others have mentioned, make sure you are running the RAM unlinked. Since the default multiplier of your e2180 is 10x, not 9x, perhaps you were actually running at 10x 333MHz? In any case, 1.525V seems quite high for CPU voltage to start with. Better would be to find out the VID from CoreTemp and then set the CPU voltage about 0.075V higher than that to start with.
Finally, OCZ RAM often causes problems for people. It is normally sold according to a spec voltage higher than the DDR2 standard 1.8V, so make sure your DIMM voltage is set to that spec voltage in the BIOS, then save and reboot before making your other changes.

 

[dmeyer85]

gah this build is driving me insane. I believe the Tom's Hardware article was supplying me with visions of grandeur. Everything runs sluggish, the mouse pointer jumps on the screen, and its freezing up doing normal tasks! Can someone, anyone please give me some numbers to plug into this build.

 

[Mondoman]

...Can someone, anyone please give me some numbers to plug into this build.

Every build is unique, but try the CPU and DIMM voltages I suggested in my post above, as well as making sure your RAM is running unlinked from the FSB. Also, the e2180 is *not* the same as the e2160, so try running a 300MHz FSB instead of a 333MHz FSB (that will give you a 3GHz core speed: 10x 300MHz).