New to the i7. OCed to 4GHz D0 stepping. Need advice

[jay2tall]

So I am starting to tinker with my i7 that i FINALLY got replaced due to a bad memory controller on the CPU. They sent me a D0 stepping as a replacement, sweet. Anyways, im still a noob on this i7 OC stuff and I've been referenceing my buddy constantly, since he has his on water at 4GHz.

I am running mine using an ASUS P6T mobo and Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 cooler at 4GHz. I am checking all temps with OCCT 3.0.1. Idle and I am at about 53-55C on all cores. However using OCCT with custom setting on High priority, Large data set, and HT as dual core (basically the CPU death test), I top out at about 90-91C. It hovers around 86-89C throughout most of the test, but seems solid as a rock. Now I know this is hot, but is it TOO Hot? I notice people get different temps from different programs. I've really only changed a few settings.

BLK: 200
vcore: 1.3v
Dram: 1.6v (using gSkill DDR3 1600 8-8-8-21 timing XMP profile)
Speedstep: off
Turbo: off
Line-lock: off
CPU Ratio: 20

Is there anything that could bring my temps down? I've trie with line lock on, but when the CPU kicks in it boosts my voltages much higher than they usualy are when vdroop sets in. Any thoughts?

 

[Jim_L9]

Is hyperthreading on?

 

[jay2tall]

Yes, sorry HT is on. I did not turn it off.

 

[daship]

I cant see how/why the othr CPU had a bad memory controller. You must of cooked it.

 

[Jim_L9]

Turn off hyperthreading and watch your temps go down...

 

[nickhoff]

Did you lap your heat sink? I'm running the same spec, but the highest i've seen after running prime 95 for 30 hours was 71c. I idle at 35c max. The temps are with hyperthreading enabled... Alot of OCing has to deal with luck of your chip, so perhaps you got a shitty chip, idk... You can always try to reseat it and lap it.

What type of thermal paste did you use?

 

[jay2tall]

I cant see how/why the othr CPU had a bad memory controller. You must of cooked it.

No it was a bad memory controller. I did not even overclock it one bit, I was going to run it stock for a little and do some benches. I could run my memory at 1066 for a little bit, but after a hour it would blue screen on me with a memory error. Setting it to the XMP memory profile blue screened on OCCT in 1 second and the mouse was chattery and it would be slow and act wiered. I borrowed my buddies memory and did the same thing. I also RMA'ed the motherboard, because I couldn't believe it was the chip. We actually underclocked the CPU and them the memory ran fine, but we know it was bad. However, now everything is fine. I have read a few reviews with people who had the same issue. I thought it was also interesting that the original chip did not come with an intel book and sticker like my new one did. I wonder what was up with that.

 

[jay2tall]

Did you lap your heat sink? I'm running the same spec, but the highest i've seen after running prime 95 for 30 hours was 71c. I idle at 35c max. The temps are with hyperthreading enabled... Alot of OCing has to deal with luck of your chip, so perhaps you got a shitty chip, idk... You can always try to reseat it and lap it.

What type of thermal paste did you use?

I did not lap my heatsink. I've always found the Thermalright to be pretty freakin flat. I did have a different one that I had lapped in the passed and didn't see any improvement till I lapped the CPU heat spreader, which I am not doing.

I am using Arctic Silver Ceramique.

What are you using for monitor your temps? Download OCCT 3.0.1 and turn on the same settings as me.. Let me know how much your i7 heats up ;-) im actually curious.

 

[nickhoff]

My BLK is 200, my Vcore is 1.1, and my Dram is 1.3, I also have speedstep, turbo, on, and linelock off.

My mem timing is 9-9-9-24

I have the same Heatsink and even though it's flat you can still see the small grain rivets. I have a mirror like finish on my heatstink.

I also used Artic Silver 5.

As to monitoring my temps, I'm using real temp.

 

[Jim_L9]

You two have a big difference in vcore.

 

[nickhoff]

My guess is I got lucky on my chip.

 

[jay2tall]

Yeah I guess considering 1.2 is the stock voltage. I have line lock off and if I go one notch less than 1.3v it eventually crashes on OCCT. You have the golden chip or something. haha.

 

[IntelDiesel]

How do i diable speedstep in Gigabyte bios Doh!

 

[jay2tall]

Funny thing.... So I was not home this weekend and when I returned and powered my PC on and continues to play. I noticed my temps were MUCH lower. As in about 5C lower. My ambient temp is the same and has not changed. The only thing I can think of is I got my CPU last Wednesday, and has pretty much been on all day and off at night. This weekend it was off for several days. I wonder if the thermal paste has had time to settle a little and start doing it's job. I ran OCCT for an hour last night and it touched 86C on one core one time and maxed at 85C for the most part. Otherwise it hovered between 80-84ish. Interesting. Actually it touched 86-87 more, but I set the QPI voltage to a constant 1.2 which is the stock setting. This seemed to shave ~1C off things. It idles at around 55-58Cish still but the max temps are better.

ALSO... I downloaded CoreTemp, whatever the latest one is and then updated to the beta version (which both give me the same temps). I noticed they are LOWER than OCCT. By maybe 3C ish. It actually isn't a constant 3C which is odd. But it idles around 49-50C and maxes around 83C in Coretemp. Now sure why this is. I know you can change the offset, but if it isn't constant how do you know what to change it to?

Any ideas on this? I am not THAT concerned because its running solid so far.