You don't have to spend a lot, or get nuts about it - any damn thing you can buy in the 'aftermarket' will beat the pants off Intel's included 'rotary postage stamp... I often recommend these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134
as they are well made, get the job done, and are small enough to fit in nearly anyone's rig (you're a little late - I just gave one away to someone here for the cost of shipping - it was 'unemployed' and I felt sorry for the poor little thing!), but, truth be told, even this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103039
will handle this overclock, and be head and shoulders above the stock piece...
I have searched extensively, and cannot find that Corsair #; it may just no longer be an active P/N, or they might have renamed it (they recently transitioned a whole bunch of stuff to a 'TWINX2' designation), but it shouldn't matter - the first step in the process will cause your system to 'read' the RAM, and set itself accordingly - usually works just fine...
To get a mild, safe, low-voltage (but noticeable) 20% overclock (when you get anything else but stock cooling), the
italicized
parameters are all that need be changed...
GA-EP45-UD3R
Intel Q9550 1333FSB x8.5mult 2.83GHz/3.4GHz .85-1.3625V
Corsair CM2X2048-8500CC5D 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 memory: 5-5-5-15-2t nominal 2.1v (I think...)
If you haven't yet done it, pull out two sticks, leave two in the slots labeled "DDR2_1" and "DDR2_3" (I think, on your board, it's the orange pair), and start with a BIOS' "Load Optimized Defaults" - save, exit, and reboot...
Before we start ramping things up, I want to teach you a skill involving the BIOS: Do the <DEL> at the boot to enter the BIOS; notice, at the bottom, the <F11> "Save CMOS to BIOS" - hit this, and you should get a menu that will show a number (the count varies by BIOS) of empty 'slots', each of which will store an entire set of BIOS parameters, to be re-loaded from the corresponding <F12> "Load CMOS from BIOS"; this is a wonderful overclocker's feature. What I do with it, is to save my 'baseline' working parameters, so if I change something that 'irritates' the board, and forces a reset of all the parameters to defaults, or, even worse, get so screwed up I need to do a 'clear CMOS', I can get back to my starting point with no effort, and without having to remember 85 separate settings! Another thing it prevents is two hours' troubleshooting, having forgotten a change to a crucial parameter - like, "wait a minute - didn't I have the tRD at seven?!" It's pretty self-explanatory, and I always urge people to start right away by taking the time to give the 'slots' names that mean something: in two hours, "Try2" and "Try3" will not be very helpful, but "450@+10MCH" and "450@+15MCH" will! Another use is for 'green' settings; overclocks, as a rule, do not 'play well' with green features, such as 'down-clocking' and 'down-volting'; with the storage slots, you can set up one profile, say "Green", with all the settings at 'stock' values, and all the 'green' features enabled; another, say "Balls2Wall" with a full overclock, and all the 'green' stuff turned off... Another neat feature of this 'slot' system is, for most BIOS, the mechanism itself will keep track of which ones have booted successfully, and how many times (up to, I believe, a max of five)!
In the BIOS, on the "Advanced BIOS Features" page:
"CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)" to "Disabled"
"C2/C2E State Support" to "Disabled"
"C4/C4E State Support" to "Disabled"
"CPU Thermal Monitor 2 (TM2)" to "Enabled"
"CPU EIST Function" to "Disabled"
"Virtualization Technology" to "Enabled" - this allows use of Win7's fantastic VirtualXp feature...
"Full Screen LOGO Show" to "Disabled"
On the "Integrated Peripherals" page:
Your manual shows "Legacy USB storage detect", but later BIOS say "USB Storage Function" - either way, set to "Disabled"
On the "Power Management Setup" page:
"ACPI Suspend Type" to "S1(POS)" (for now...)
"HPET Support" to "Enabled"
"HPET Mode" to whichever OS type you're running - "32-bit" if an x86 version, "64-bit" if an x64 version...
On the "MB Intelligent Tweaker(M.I.T.)" page:
"Robust Graphics Booster" to "Auto"
"CPU Clock Ratio" to "8"
"Fine CPU Clock Ratio" to ".5"
"CPU Frequency" - this one can't be set, it's calculated, and will change when we set the next few items...
******** Clock Chip Control ********
>>>>> Standard Clock Control
"CPU Host Clock Control" to "Enabled"
"CPU Host Frequency (Mhz)" to "334"
"CPU Host Frequency (Mhz)" to "401"
"PCI Express Frequency (Mhz)" to "100" (not auto...)
"C.I.A.2" to "Disabled"
******** DRAM Performance Control ********
"Performance Enhance" to "Standard"
"Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P.)" to "Disabled"
"(G)MCH Frequency Latch" to "333"
"System Memory Multiplier (SPD)" to "3.20B"
"(G)MCH Frequency Latch" to "400"
"System Memory Multiplier (SPD)" to "2.66D"
The "(G)MCH Frequency Latch" which we mostly refer to as a 'strap', is the reason we used a 334 or 401 clock instead of a nice even 333 or 400: the 'straps' are sets of northbridge timings - much like memory latencies, the faster you go, the 'looser' the timings have to be... There are four straps, corresponding to the Intel FSB ratings: 200 (800FSB), 266 (1066FSB), 333 (1333FSB), and 400 (1600FSB); each strap has its own set of available memory multipliers (ratios).The strap latencies, for some northbridges, don't 'kick in' until one over the selected strap; so, in other words, setting the clock to 334 guarantees that we're getting the 333 latencies/timings...
"Memory Frequency (Mhz)" - again, can't be set, it's calculated...
"DRAM Timing Selectable (SPD)" to "Manual"
You should be able to leave the rest of the memory settings alone; we haven't changed its actual speed, so it should keep working...
"Load-Line Calibration" to "Disabled" (this works differently on different boards - on mine, it's worse "enabled" than "disabled" - the function is supposed to cure a phenomenon called Vdroop - the CPU voltage regulation circuit causes the CPU core voltage to sag, or 'droop' under high loadings; hopefullt, we're going to be at a low enough voltage to just ignore this...)
"CPU Vcore" to "Auto"
"CPU Vcore" to "1.3250V"
"MCH Core" to 1.200V"
& check that "DRAM Voltage" is set to "2.100V" (this should have been done by the earlier "Load Optimized", but sometimes it doesn't work right...)
And that should do it!
I should point out that getting two reboots in a row here is perfectly normal behavior; it seems that, when you change certain settings (and we don't exactly know which ones - the only sure one I know is Trd - if you change it, I think you get the 'twin' reboot) it boots once to 'see where it's at', recalculates its remaining 'auto' settings, saves them, and then boots again. Three reboots in a row, however, usually indicates that the board was 'given indigestion' by your settings, and is going back to defaults. This sometimes goes astray, and it doesn't get back into proper operation - for example, at this point, mine will sometimes 'lock' itself into 111MHz x a six multiplier - and take a week to do a whole boot - that's time to do a CMOS reset, and use your 'stored' <F12> profile to get back to where you were...
Once this procedure has been completed, and you're booting normally, you can shut down and replace the other two DIMMs.
Good luck!
Bill
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