E4300 Overclock Fail - Why?

[Pixieking]

Right. I was wondering if anyone here could shed some light onto why my overclock fails past a certain point. System specs first of all.

Asus P5N 32 - SLI Premium
Intel E4300 (Stock HS/Fan)
Palit 8800gt Sonic
2 x 1gb Kingston ValuRAM (yes, it's cheap as all hell. I don't care. )

So.

I Overclock to 1066fsb, giving me a 2.4ghz clock speed. Memory timings of Auto give 5-5-5-15-20. Run Orphos, CoreTemp and Rightmark CPU to check temps. Runs fine. Left it for hours stressing CPU specifically, as well as the Blend option to stress RAM and CPU. Stable as all hell. (Max temps were about 55 degrees on both cores.)

Then, I copy files over from either my external HD or my second internal, and it crashes. With the external it was USB BugCode BSoD, with the internal it's just a Machine Exception Error. Under no other situations does it crash. I played Empire: Total War for a couple of hours, and it was fine; copy a couple of files over and it always crashes after a couple of minutes or so.

Currently, I've got it oc'd to 2.84ghz, and it's stable throughout, which isn't too bad, but I've googled and can't find anyone else who has had this problem. I've tried everything I can think of - changing memory timings, upping voltage... Everything.

Any help? I'm not bothered if I can't OC it above where it is now, but I really would like to know why I'm the only one with this problem, and whether it's possible to overcome it.

Thanks.

 

[Pixieking]

And, of course, where I put

"oc'd to 2.84ghz"

I mean 2.184

Sorry, can't edit my post for some reason.

 

[Pixieking]

Well what speed is your ram? If its 800mhz and your running it at 1066 then it will surely fail. Set your fsb/cpu ratio so that the ram runs 800 or under and you should be fine.

O. M. G.

You're right. Just restarted, changed the FSBRAM to 533 (1:1) and it's fine.

6 years building computers, and I ignore a basic tenet of oc'ing. :lol:

Thankees man. You're a godsend.

 

[stridervm]

I'm thinking that your SATA drivers are overclocked as well, causing the problems.

 

[Pixieking]

I'm thinking that your SATA drivers are overclocked as well, causing the problems.

How do you even overclock sata drivers? I haven't noticed any settings for them, but I might've skipped over them. :s

 

[Pixieking]

Again what speed is your ram?????

533 is 1066 (533xddr2=1066)

Doesnt seem you changed anything at all.

]

Sorry, been checking it for stability.

Speed of the sticks is DDR2 5300 (so 333mhz). I manually dropped it from 667 to 533 (so x2 it's 1066), and it seems to be running fine. Originally when oc'ing it I had it stuck at 667 (x2 = 1333mhz). So, yeah, it appears the RAM was oc'd well above its limits (because I'm a muppet. )

 

[Pixieking]

Right. I totally don't understand how this works.

This is how I have set it up:

It's entirely stable at 333x2 (666mhz) memory, 969 fsb in bios. Past that point I get Machine Exceptions and Kernel Stack Inpage Errors when copying files across hardrives of sizes larger than 500mb or so. No other time.

 

[Pixieking]

I've tried moving the FSB and the RAM speed up, and the PC BSoDs at the 970fsb point, whether I have the RAM at 533 or 667. It makes no difference. The last BSoD I got was a general fault 0x0000007f, which MS Knowledge Base says is hardware related - overclocking the CPU, bad RAM, failing HD or such. I've checked the RAM and that's fine, and the HD is no problem at the current settings (969FSB/667mhz RAM), so as far as I can see XP has an issue with an FSB of 970+. I don't get why.

 

[Pixieking]

Dude, I have no idea what your doing. What do you mean you moved the fsb to 970?? FSB at 300x9 would be 2.7ghz. Where are you getting 970 from?

Sorry.

The P5N has the bios fsb laid out so that it says FSB (QDR) - that is, it asks for 4 times the FSB that is desired. So, whereas other bios's may ask you to put 266, for the P5N you need to put 1066 (4 x 266). I assumed most motherboards did that nowadays.

Anways, this means that my oc'ing is stopped at 243 (243 x 4 = 972). Which is where I get 970 from.

 

[daft]

yeah, i would just keep the ram at 266Mhz (ddr533) the results that you would get from upping to 333Mhz with 5-5-5-15 timings would not be noticeable, and you can have your ram running cooler meaning greater change from stability. basically, the settings in your pic should be fine. in theory of course.

 

[orangegator]

First off, set your memory timings to 5-5-5-15 manually. Then set your fsb:ram to 1:1 in the bios. This will allow you to get to 3.0Ghz (333*9) without overclocking the ram. Use memtest86+ to test the ram to make sure it's not giving you errors.

 

[Pixieking]

yeah, i would just keep the ram at 266Mhz (ddr533) the results that you would get from upping to 333Mhz with 5-5-5-15 timings would not be noticeable, and you can have your ram running cooler meaning greater change from stability. basically, the settings in your pic should be fine. in theory of course.

See, this is the thing. The settings in the pic look fine. But it BSoDs on copying files when I use those settings. I mean, if the CPU-Z pics look fine to everyone else, then why shouldn't it run fine? I've already tried it with the 5-5-5-15 timings, and it does the same thing. I'm about to do a memtest, but I don't see why the memory should fail when it's fine when I don't oc it. :s

EDIT: Updated the bios purely as a shot in the dark, since no-where does it say that it fixes anything like this. It appears to be working fine on 266 x 9 = 2.4ghz, 533mhz memory (FSB-DRAM 1:1), timings of 5-5-5-15-20. If anyone else with his mobo and cpu comes across this, update your bios.

 

[daft]

well, at least it works, but if it does have problems in the future, try upping the voltage a bit.

 

[tapher]

But at the price point, for somebody getting a new processor, isn't it worth it to get the E5200? Haven't people reliably OC'd it to 4ghz?

 

[Pixieking]

Quick update.

OC was fine for a couple of days, then started failing on copying files again. Spent most of today checking settings, with no luck. Then lowered the LDT multplier down from 5X to 3X. Seems to have solved all the problems for now. Really strange - no other person on the internet has had this specific problem, and as far as I can tell only one other person on the 'net had their overclocking problems disappear after lowering the LDT.