What is going on?

[ingeborgdot]

Is my bios messed up? I went in to my computer to start on the oc. I only went up from 2.4 to 2.5 with this board and a Q6600 with crucial ballistix 4-4-4-12 memory. I didn't do too much at all. I restarted and the bios reset itself . So I tried again and it did it again. Ok, now I decided maybe not to oc right now until I can work things out and see what is going on. Well, I went back in and reset all the settings to default and all the others that I had disabled or enabled back to where they were. I have had this thing running for 5 days straight with no problems at all.
Well, anyway now the thing won't boot back up. I clear cmos and redo the bios and reset to where I had first set the bios again NO OC at all again and it won't go. It just sputters and spurts. Right now the only way it works is if I leave the Abit splash screen enabled. What is going on?????????

 

[Zorg]

Post your complete specs, we are not mind readers.

 

[ingeborgdot]

What kind of things do you need?

 

[Zorg]

Mobo make abit model ?
CPU Q6600 are you using the stock heatsink ?
RAM Crucial Ballistix 2 sticks ? DDR2 800?
PSU make and model
VGA make and model
HD how many? Make and model is less important.
Anything else you have connected.

What does sputters and spurts mean?

 

[ingeborgdot]

My computer has been running good for five days. I did have a little issue before any os was installed but it all was happening when I went into the bios and did some presettings before the os was installed. After the os was installed it has run great for 5 days now. Then I went into the bios to start oc and that is when it started. I could not make the slightest adjustment at all.
IP35 Pro
Q6600 with Arctic cooling pro 7
4 gb of crucial ballistix ddr2 800
leadtek 7900 gs tdh
2 seagate 500gb 32mb cache
HT omega claro sound card
rosewill pci 1394 add on card
Sputters and spurts is that it will start up for a short period of time 1 or 2 seconds and shut off and then it will retry again and do the continuous cycle of trying to turn on. It will then either reset itself of just keep cycling until I shut down power and reset cmos.

 

[notherdude]

Elaborate on the splash screen thing please - that sounded really odd.

What is the make/model of your power supply?

Ah! It just occured to me. It's probably your RAM voltage. Start up the PC with 1 stick only, set the RAM voltage to 2.2 ( I think) Crucial Ballistix specs out at over 2.0 volts) I had this SAME problem. We see this kind of thing all the time. MOBO's default to 1.8 usually but this high per RAM needs more.

I checked the specs for Ballistix. The stuff listed at Newegg indeed runs at 2.2. You need to address this immediately. It should start up with only 1 stick in there, enough to set the voltage in the BIOS. The Vdimm setting is usually found on the same page where you overclock.

 

[ingeborgdot]

It does run with 4 sticks in already. It's only when I adjust anything in the bios that this happens. So, what you are saying though is that I should go into the bios after pulling out 3 sticks and then adjust ram voltage and it should be able to be adjusted later?
My psu which I forgot to put down is a corsair 620.
Is the abit start up screen. I did finally get it so that it does not come on though. Now everything is fine and it starts up great. Just can't oc yet.

 

[notherdude]

Yes. Be sure you set that RAM voltage to 2.2. Your RAM is being overclocked when you increase the bus speed in your OC attempts and it isn't capable of doing this when it is undervolted. If the PC is booting up with all the sticks in there at this point then you do not need to take the sticks out to change this setting. I only said that because at one point you were unable to boot at all.

You also want to read the OC guides for your chip and system. You need to set the RAM speed low enough at the outset such that when it rises with the OC it doesn't end up attempting to run too far beyond 800 mhz. Assuming this is 800 mhz RAM.

Since you can't OC anything at all I really think that voltage is the problem. Check it first. I had this same problem with Crucial Ballistix, it would run at 1.8 but I could not OC at all. After the adjustment it went right up to 3.2 on stock cooling.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Yes, for some stupid reason I was thinking my ram was a 2.1 but it is 2.2. That does make a difference. It did boot up. I have upped the fsb to around 2.5 right now. Would you mind telling me what the cpu voltage should be and any other settings that you can think of? I am looking at only going to 2.8. I don't think I need any more right now. What should I set the ram back to? How much higher than 800 do I dare go?

 

[notherdude]

What I did on the system I mentioned above, with the Ballistix, is a little foggy as it was my son's machine and he has it at his apartment.

BIOSs differ but on my home system (c2d 2.4 e6600, Asus p5b-deluxe, Patriot ram 2x 2gig.) I set the RAM to run in sync with the CPU and then set the RAM speed as low as it would go, 533 on my system. When I got the CPU up to 3.5 the RAM ended up running right at about 800. So I suppose you would start your RAM out at 700 or so. Just guessing. It depends on the multiplier on your CPU.

I don't think you really want to push the RAM past 800 at all, no point in doing that on current Intel systems, the performance gain is next to nothing. So you will need to adjust the starting RAM speed (before any OC, that is) to whatever you need to have it end up at 800 when the CPU is at 2.8. As you increase the FSB to make the CPU run faster the RAM will increase in step.

I'm a little foggy on OC details ATM, so I suggest reading the OC guide here at Toms. Here is a link to the quad guide http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/240001-29-howto-overclock-quads-duals-guide

I'm not sure either what the safe voltage limits are for the q6600. Your RAM timings sometimes need adjusting to the 5,5,5 area too on some overclocks.

Of course if you don't plan on a big overclock I doubt you need to make too many adjustments anywhere. Seems like 2.8 should be very doable at stock Vcore and your RAM timings would stay where they are. But check out the guide.

 

[badgtx1969]

4 sticks is harder to OC, have you tried 2?

With 4 sticks I had to up VTT and NB voltages (w/o touching core voltage) to get Orthos stable above 3.0 Ghz.

 

[ingeborgdot]

I took out two sticks and it did start to work I got it to about 2.62 and it reset itself. What the heck. I set the ram to 2.2 like it said. I put the ration back to 1:1 so there was no pressure there. I don't know of any other settings that would affect it. I did notice that when I put the other two sticks back in now cause I was going to take a little break that maybe the ram was not seated as good as it should have been. Any comments on that????

 

[notherdude]

Any little mis-seating of the RAM is a bad thing for sure. Hard to say if that was the problem. You'll just have to test.

Things are a little confused at this point. Not sure if your getting it to OC, at least a little, was due to the voltage adjustment or to the taking out of two RAM sticks. Some MOBOs have a bit of a hard time with all 4 sticks in the slots. Which may or may not be a factor.

When you have it OC to 2.5 and it's booting. What speed does the BIOS report that the RAM is running?
What voltage is the CPU (Vcore) set to?
Have you locked the PCI and PCIe bus speed to 33 and 100 respectively?

Read the guide if you have not already and check out the official thread for your board at Abits forum here: http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=124502&page=1

I would try OC the system with 2 sticks RAM only until you sort this out. The four stick problem makes it too complex. You might also want to run memtest with the system non-overclocked just to be sure you don't have some flakey RAM.

Last but not least: are you using the stock Intel cooler? If yes are you sure it snapped down tight? What are your CPU temps reported in the BIOS?

 

[ingeborgdot]

It says the ram is running at 696 right now. The voltage on pc wizard shows 1.1. In bios core voltage 1.2125. Cpu VTT voltage is 1.2. What do I need to do the lock the pci and pcie bus speed. I think it is but am I not doing something I should?
Not stock cooler. It is an arctic cooling pro 7. Idle temps at 29-34 depending on room temp and fan speed (fan mate). I have had it down to 25 idle with fan on high (not too loud either.)

 

[notherdude]

696 is fine.

1. Try increasing Vcore up to 1.4 or so, which seems very safe from what I see on Google, with some guys running 1.5, sounds very much like the ranges I saw for e6600. With that cooler you should be fine with that vcore. (Increasing vcore is usually need for high overclocks and you are just trying a mild one. But systems vary quite a bit and yours may need more at this level. Anyway, 1.4 should be safe and it's well worth a try.) Your temps look good.

2. The PCI and PCIe bus speed will be in the bios setup probably on same page with the other overclocking options. They don't tolerate much OC so you always lock them down so they don't rise with the FSB. It's a common BIOS option, unless its automatic on your board.

3. Try taking the RAM timings off SPD, if that's where they are in the chipset options, and set them manually to 5,5,5,xx where xx will be a number slightly higher than what they are now. Say 15 instead of 12 for ex. I know you are rated for 4,4,4, but try this anyway and see if it helps.

Beyond that I'd try taking this over to the overclocking section. OC the q6600 is a very popular thing now and you may find ppl over there who know all it's ins and outs.