That was easier than expected!

[benjaminm580]

So I finally got my Bios updated and was able to successfully overclock my processor (after building this PC back in October 2008). Last time I tried with a flash drive and it wouldn't work, this time I just use the @Bios utility and it worked just fine.

The system:

E8400 @ 3.6 Ghz
GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L
2 GB G.Skill @ 800 Mhz 1:1 (was originally 4 GB dual channel but one of the sticks went bad, going up to 8 GB dual channel soon most likely)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 (with stock grease, I was thinking about popping it off, cleaning the processor and adding some after market grease)

So here is a screen shot I took earlier. This was after about 8 hours of running Prime 95. I stopped it at a little over 9 hours with 0 errors and 0 warnings.

http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/9846/prime958hours.jpg

Everything look good so far? Am I missing anything? I know I still need to lower the voltage, but I was just testing at the stock 1.25 first. Anyone have a recommendation for a good low voltage to start at? I have a few questions though. Do I really need to run my RAM at the full voltage? According to G.Skill it is supposed to be run between 1.9-2.1 and I currently have it set at 2.0. If I drop it back down to 1.9 could that cause stability problems for the overclock? Also, I have heard that increases the amount of DIMM sockets used causes a lot more stress on the system, when I go from one 2 GB stick to four 2 GB sticks is it likely I will have a new stability issue pop up? If so how would I go about fixing that?

Thanks in advance for any information.

 

[lothdk]

Everything look good so far? Am I missing anything? I know I still need to lower the voltage, but I was just testing at the stock 1.25 first. Anyone have a recommendation for a good low voltage to start at? I have a few questions though. Do I really need to run my RAM at the full voltage? According to G.Skill it is supposed to be run between 1.9-2.1 and I currently have it set at 2.0. If I drop it back down to 1.9 could that cause stability problems for the overclock? Also, I have heard that increases the amount of DIMM sockets used causes a lot more stress on the system, when I go from one 2 GB stick to four 2 GB sticks is it likely I will have a new stability issue pop up? If so how would I go about fixing that?

Thanks in advance for any information.

Everything looks fine to me, voltage about where it should be, and good temps, just try to lower the voltage in small steps until you find the sweet spot.
If you are running your ram at their max latencies and speed, then yes, you should have them at the rated voltage too, if you lower your voltage you might have to loosen the timings/speed as well.
Using all 4 dimm slots have proven to make many overclocks unstable, so yes, if your intentions are to run 4 x 2 GB RAM you might find yourself with an unstable system.

 

[benjaminm580]

Everything looks fine to me, voltage about where it should be, and good temps, just try to lower the voltage in small steps until you find the sweet spot.
If you are running your ram at their max latencies and speed, then yes, you should have them at the rated voltage too, if you lower your voltage you might have to loosen the timings/speed as well.
Using all 4 dimm slots have proven to make many overclocks unstable, so yes, if your intentions are to run 4 x 2 GB RAM you might find yourself with an unstable system.

I see, thanks for the information. I guess when I do add the 4 sticks and switch to Windows 7 I will go ahead and drop it back down to stock and start testing again from there.

This is the RAM I am currently running.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231145

So at the moment it is 200 below what I could technically have it set to. I really didn't want to go higher than 3.6 Ghz and that gives me a 1:1 ratio at 800 RAM 400 FSB.

I didn't have to increase any voltage on my FSB, but I would like to be able to check the temperature anyway because I don't have a fan installed on it. I didn't see it listed on Hardware Monitor but maybe I am just blind. Any way for me to check it and what would be a good temp for it to be at?

 

[adamh9]

looks like you could even go higher, those temps are pretty low. I'm happy as long as I hover around 60C at full load because most likely I will never be at full load doing any daily tasks or gaming so you could def up the voltage a tad bit more and push it to at least 3.8? that'f me, of course =)

 

[benjaminm580]

looks like you could even go higher, those temps are pretty low. I'm happy as long as I hover around 60C at full load because most likely I will never be at full load doing any daily tasks or gaming so you could def up the voltage a tad bit more and push it to at least 3.8? that'f me, of course =)

Ya, I don't know. I might give it a try after I get the rest of the RAM in there and upgrade to Windows 7 next week.

I do have another question though. When I tried manually lowering the voltage on the cpu, I couldn't get it stable. Even when I went up to the same voltage as the normal 1.25. It got into Windows but ended up blue screening during the initial load. I set it back to normal instead of manual and it was just fine. Anyone understand why it is doing that?

Another thing is it says normal 1.25 in the BIOS, but when I look at CPU-Z or Hardware Monitor it never shows it as being that high. Currently it is showing 1.20 on both.

I also lowered the RAM to 1.9v and ran the torture test for 30 minutes and everything seems fine as far as I can tell.

 

[benjaminm580]

Testing signature.

 

[adamh9]

yea windows programs typically report a lower voltage then what you have set in the BIOS. So if you were stable at 1.25(windows) that means you were actually running at something around 1.3 or so.