Can't overclock e8400 on an MSI P7N 780i mobo

[breakspirit]

I am having great difficulty overclocking my e8400 on my new MSI P7N Diamond motherboard. The same processor with the same RAM overclocked just fine without any voltage bumps on my EVGA 780i motherboard, but for the life of me, I can not figure out how to get this MSI board to do the very same thing. I am trying to get a 3.6ghz overclock going and it worked perfectly on the EVGA board and this processor is widely known to be easily capable of such an overclock, especially since I've done it before. I'm hoping you guys might be able to tell me what I'm doing wrong here. Here are my specs:

Intel e8400 processor
MSI P7N Diamond motherboard(Nvidia 780i chipset)
4 gigs(4x1gig) of corsair xms2 6400c4 ram
8800gtx x2 in sli
700watt seasonic PSU
3 SATA hard drives, 1 SATA dvd burner
Soundblaster extreme audio x-fi soundcard

Now, on my EVGA board, I'm pretty sure I achieved the 3.6ghz overclock by simply bumping the FSB to 1600 in linked mode. I am new to the Intel scene, having been an AMD man forever, so I'm not 100% knowledgeable about such things, but my memory tells me that's what I did. Doing the same thing with this MSI board, though, fully is not working.

Here are some BIOS screenshots of what I THINK should work, but these settings just lead to cold boots. If you guys have any idea why these settings don't work, I'd really love to hear it.

 

[beurling]

Your FSB should only be 400 dude... 400x9 = 3600MHz... youhave it set to 1600 which is why it is crapping out on you. Just a question though, why did you go from EVGA to MSI if it was working better on it?

 

[breakspirit]

the 400 is quad pumped, meaning its read as 1600. that's why the board's default is 1333, which is really 333x4. I moved to the msi because the evga runs hot as HELL. I'm talking 80 degrees C with a fan on it. It's really ridiculous. It was stable, but I was concerned that it wouldn't last in the long run at those kinds of temperatures. The MSI board has much better cooling, but doesn't seem to overclock pretty much at all.
Since posting this, I have tried many voltage increases and they did serve to stop the cold boots. I was able to boot into windows at 3.6ghz, but it was wildly unstable, even with the voltages well into unsafe territory. I can't seem to find anyone else on the internet who has successfully overclocked this board. I know for a fact that the e8400 is capable of doing 4ghz on air, so there's no excuse for this board to be unable to pull off 3.6ghz. Something is clearly amiss =/

 

[Lupiron]

Supposedly the 780i chipset is quite a bit hotter than the 680i, and supposedly its supposed to be that way. But I dunno about 80c!! Thats prolly an error!
Now you said you did 3.6 without changing anything but the FSB? Well, that means yer voltages were on Auto? In an OC situation, the Auto likes to use a bit more voltage than ya need. So I am sure it went up with the speed, and prolly your bridges as well.
You dont mention much as far as what you test with, etc. Or a range you have tried with voltages and such... Believe me, voltages mean everything! But you are right, 3.6 should be fairly simple with that processor. You said you can get into windows at 3.6... Thats a good set of settings to work with! Care to share?
It took me hours to realize that my q6600 b3's speed limit is around 3.4. After that it becomes not much of a fair trade as far as heat to speed ratio goes! I set it at 3220 and see 72c @bios vcore of 1.45000, its 1.40 in windows, and 1.34 under full load. if the droop makes it dip under 1.34, its toast. This is my minimally stable voltage for this, and the heat exchange is worth it.
To reach 3.6 and have it stable, I needed 1.7something in the bios, 1.64 in windows, and here is the secret! The droop on my 780i, this board right here, is huge! It dives to 1.56 under full load. The VDroop gets worse the higher the voltage is! That makes my $hit bomb out! If it had a minimal VDroop like my other boards, it would be alot more stable!! VDroop is good, VDroop is bad, whatever! Its bad when its that high! For my set up.
My other quad @3737 (g0) Needs 1.46 in windows, but the droop is 1.44. Thats very small, and easy to get stable. .02 is easy, .08 is huge!!! Makes it look stable while doing whatever, but when the processor gets a high drain load, it will bomb when it dips so friggin' low!!!

Waaaaahhhh!!

Oh, sorry. have a good day!

--Lupi!

 

[breakspirit]

I was able to get it to boot at 3.525ghz seemingly stable. That's absolutely insane since my goal has been 3.6ghz. It just won't do it though, no matter what I do to the voltages. Here's a screenshot of what settings in the BIOS worked to get my current speed. Hopefully either someone will see a miraculous way to hit 3.6ghz or at least I will save some other poor soul the days of misery that I've endured trying to reach it on this board.

I really appreciate the help, guys. If you have any other ideas, I'm all ears.

 

[darkage]

Whats insane is you wasting money on MSI when you had a perfectly great board with the evga .... RMA it, re-seat the boards HS/attach the FAN for it ... I own both the e8400 and 780i ... OC'd at 3.71ghz, passed prime95 ... 37c cpu temps, board temps never pass 65c ... idle around 47-50c ... and thats in a room with no windows in a basement! ... Your either way off on what the real temps were, or there's an issue with the board .. but, seriously ... MSI?? ... blah, i'll end the rant ... If you want more out of that chip, the way it should be ... Run a real board.

 

[breakspirit]

dont be a hater. ive had several good msi boards in the past. this one is rock solid stable except in overclocking and the chipset is running a full 50-80 degrees F cooler. Score one for MSI right there. Trust me, I wanted the evga to work. Like I said, I was using the fan and even mounted a better fan in an attempt to cool it better. Maybe the board was faulty and maybe its all evga boards, i dont know. I even went so far as to reseat the chipset heat sinks with AC5 and the temps did drop some, but nowhere near the msi's. Plus, the MSI board has much better capacitors a few other enthusiast-level things that make it an overall better board. I did like the EVGA board, but I'm not going to go through RMAing and all the hassle just to get another ganked board. I just took the easy way out and went MSI and got some other benefits in the process. Like I said, I've got it to 3.5ghz stable thus far. I just installed the beta BIOS and I'm gonna see if that helps too. Thanks for the reply though, even if I disagree =)

 

[Lupiron]

Does that CPU Voltage say 0.12500???? Zero??

 

[breakspirit]

Yeah, the CPU voltage field means it's .125 higher than stock...it's weird like that. The other fields show the real values though.
In other news, I'm now running at 3.75ghz strangely enough. The damn thing won't do 3.6ghz but it will do 3.75. How does that make any sense at all? I increased the cpu and nb voltages a tad and put the fsb to 1666 and it's running stable it seems. I'm currently stress testing it.

 

[beurling]

That bios really makes me appreciate my ASUS much much more... seems like MSI is making it difficult for you...

Some chips have sweet spots and 3.6ghz just wasn't one of them for you.

My numbers (if they're any help to you):

Vcore: 1.425 (registers about 1.38 in windows)
NB: 1.45
Dram: 2.12

4Ghz takes quite a bit more voltage than 3.6, but I could care less about the high temps.

Good luck getting it stable spirit.

 

[Lupiron]

Well, the 680i are known for FSB holes and such, so why not the 780i as well? Sounds about right. If you find a spot where you fail to post, try 10 fsb points lower or higher. Thats how it goes!

--Lupi

 

[jampack714]

i have a msi 650i and i cant oc my e6750 above 3.0 ghz after 1500fsb setting it gives up

 

[breakspirit]

conclusion: I got an Asus Striker Formula II and it hit 3.6 ghz with no voltage changes and my ram runs at 4-4-4-12 and it took about 5 seconds of work and the system is super stable. So, the moral of the story is that this MSI board blows at overclocking and this Asus board is freaking awesome. Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[Lupiron]

LOL, Love it. Its not MSI per see, its the 6xxi chipset. I had a 680i and like everyone else, it did its own thing when OCing. The best I could get was 2.88! Tossed it in a 780i and can get to 3.6, but the processor is a flamer, really high base VID.

The moral? I'm not one of the lucky 10 percent that can get an OC outa a 6xxi board! Waaaahhhh! I just want mt maximus formula back from the shop!! Asus repairs things like a slug!

--Lupi!