Fail blend test twice in a row.. about 4 hours each time.

[firefoxx04]

Hi, i have my Phenom II x2 560 oced to 4ghz @ 1.55volts (cpu z reads 1.536 when under full load in prime)

I let it run for 10 hours with prime 95 at small ffts and it was just fine and temps never went over 40c.


Now when i run blend test i have failed twice. Both after about 4hours. Is my ram to blame? i only overclocked with the multiplier so my NB, HT, and memory speeds are stock.

my ram is gskill ddr3 1066 RIP JAW 4gb. I have 2 of them but for now i only have the one stick in incase i fry them.

specs

Phenom II x2 560 4ghz 1.536v under load, 1.55 idle.
4GB 1066 gskill "rip jaw" ram. 7 7 7 18 2t
Asus m4n75td mainboard
Raidmax 530W psu
ati 4350 video card
plenty of case fans keeping the system nice and cool

asus put my ram at 8 8 8 20 1t by default, i changed them to gskill's specs manually. Im running blend test again with the 8 8 8 20 1t settings to see if it makes a difference.

any help appreciated.

 

[lowjack989]

The loose timings might help it but I am feeling like those RAM modules might be botched from the factory as far as those CL7 timings are concerned...MEM mods should not have a problem running at mfg. spec....BTW....your Avatar is the bomb....


Iron Maiden Rules

 

[firefoxx04]

Your thinking my ram might be defective ? Im running blend right now with the looser timings, hopefully it passes.

should i run memtest all night with ALL STOCK settings (stock cpu voltage and mult) along with stock ram settings? ASUS put my timings to 8 8 8 24... kind of concerns me. it has that MEMOK! feature but im still unsure of what that even does..


and yeah, maiden is easily one of my favorite bands!

edit: btw, my temps for the current blend test are maxing at 36, sitting at 33. i think the artic silver is breaking in

 

[firefoxx04]

5 hours 15min, stable

max temp of 36C freaking WOOT

 

[lowjack989]

SWEEEETT !!!...........Great to hear you got 'er going strong....and 36c wow thats a FROSTY CPU....

memok! ...its just doing its own, POST before, POST...if you don't know POST stands for...Power On Self Test...its making sure the timings and speeds are ok to boot with....if all is ok you will see solid red light for about 15 sec. on the MOBO after you press the power button..then your POST splash screen will appear...if the settings are not able to be booted from then your suppose to reset CMOS then pres this memok! button it flashes and flashes and flashes until it gets back to a bootable config.....there is a whole section in your boards owners manual about it...BTW....My first system crash with my 965 machine I ran memtest86 for 14 hours at my now stable settings which are in my sig.....1600 MHz@1.6v...7-9-8-24-40-1T...It was at like 1100%...Run an instance for each of your cores....example.....4 core open 4 instances of memtest....set ram to be tested at since I have 8 GB each one instance is allocated a certain amount : 1--->1024 MB 2--->1024 MB 3--->2048 MB 4--->2048 MB...then click start test on each one...it will test all of your memory yet still leave you with 2 GB free to be able to interface with the computer while it runs...read the "read me" file in memtest after you download it...it explains how and why to not allocate "All available RAM"

 

[firefoxx04]

ill be sure to read the manual. Kinda disappointing in the ram though. I lowered the mult. last night and brought the fsb to 228 and i thought i saw windows boot noticeably faster

would this be a result of my ram speeding up or the HT and NB. I failed blend but i kind of expected that with stock ram, nb, ht voltages.

.. i should prolly check my memory thread

 

[firefoxx04]

just saw your edit

i was just booting to my flashdrive with memtest running from there.

in 10 min ill be 8 hours stable. I wonder if a 1.55 voltage on the ram will let me run 7 7 7 18 timings. or maybe go from 1066 to 1333 with same timings with just a voltage bump?


edited first post, i wasnt at 2t on the timings.. its 1t. not sure why i thought it was 2t

 

[lowjack989]

probably not...1066 ram is limited really...you might get to 1200 MHz at stock voltages...If you are going for 1333 on that RAM I would drop the timings back to 8-8-8-24....if you want to see if your booting faster check it by using a program called boot racer.....Yeah the performance increase you saw would be attributed to the NB being OCed to 2228 MHz...your NB and HT multiplier are set at x10 on those two...I personally just OC with the CPU multiplier...and turn my NB up to 2800 MHz which is what my CPU is limited to....and manually set my NB and HT voltage to 1.2v...I keep my HT at 2600 MHz....Thhe biggest increase in performance that you will see when OCing will be when you get the CPU stable and then you start turning up that NB...The NB is essentially your Memory controller so the faster it goes the faster it can transmit data to the CPU...Keep in mind that the NB is very voltage sensitive even more so than most components...your voltage window is 1.1v to 1.2v....never exceed 1.25v on the HT or NB..

 

[firefoxx04]

how can i monitor NB voltages when in windows?

i failed large ffts not even an hour into it. and by failed i mean i got a BSOD and it also restarted the computer for me.. before when i was getting a bsod i think it was for a different reason because it use to do a "memory dump" and have me manually turn it off. this time it was different.. makes me think its a different issue

ram is actually at 8 8 8 20, not 24.

so right now im sitting on stock ram speeds with 8 8 8 20. cpu at 4ghz and it is acting great but the only issue is failing large ffts in less than an hour.

im going to head to bed and keep the computer off tonight.. first time its actually been off sense i put it together.

 

[lowjack989]

Hmmm...

What exactly are all of your BIOS settings? NB volts? NB speed? HT speed and volts? Do you have load line calibration enabled (LLC), or PCI Spread Spectum? What were the temps at BSOD?

 

[firefoxx04]

NB volt - AUTO
NB SPEED - 2000mhz
HT speed - 2000mhz
HT volt - AUTO
LLC - im not sure, i was told to keep it enabled but ill have to go check for it
ALL spread spectrum are disabled (by default, love asus), including pci
temps at bsod were max of 37*c on the cpu. not sure about any other temps.


ill reboot and check for llc. Im not sure what i should set the volt for stock speeds on the ht and nb. im assuming 1.1 for NB and 1.2 for ht.

 

[firefoxx04]

no llc settings that i can find..

 

[lowjack989]

NB and HT both have the same voltage envelope so you can set them both the same....1.1v - 1.2v

LLC is just a vdroop compensation device in BIOS ....it may just be on certain boards that it allows for adjustment....


Great that all the spread spectrum stuff is disabled...

I would re-check that temp with another program or something just to be sure that 37c is the correct temp.. it just seems really low to me... I suggest using....speedfan or coretemp....Also, Asus had some sensor problems on some of their boards...I had to Flash the BIOS to a newer version and viola temps reading perfect.....Just a thought.

 

[firefoxx04]

i have the newest bios. first thing i did.

i have speedfan as well as core temp.. i was only using core temps so ill check the max temp with another blend test. Ill go manually set my voltages to 1.2 and see what happens.

as far as vdroop goes.. i think 1.53 is required for my cpu to stay stable at load.. not 1.55. I think i just had to set it at 1.55 because of the vdroop dropping the voltage.

 

[firefoxx04]

speed fan reports

CPU 37C
MB 25C
core 34

coretemp reports
34

 

[lowjack989]

Wow...those are some really cool load temps they look like idle temps....Well I do not believe your BSOD was temp related...lol...nor was it your NB or HT....I would say loose up the timings some more on the RAM....Your voltage looks good on the CPU and RAM....I got to think a bit more on this.....

 

[firefoxx04]

well im almost 2 hours into large ftts stress test and everything is good

only thing i changed where the hot and nb voltages to 1.2v

nothing about 40C

remember, it is only two cores on a cpu that was prolly meant to be a quad??

 

[lowjack989]

So it may have just been the NB and HT voltages making your OC...BSOD out

 

[firefoxx04]

Yep, lets hope.

what about these settings. they are at AUTO right now

cpu/nb voltage
cpu vdda voltage

im going to check the manual right now but as usual, it prolly wont be any more descriptive than the bios was

 

[lowjack989]

Anything on auto I change to the default value...instead of leaving them on auto...So look at what its defaulted to then enter the corresponding value

 

[firefoxx04]

i tried to look for a default value but the bios didnt tell me. It told me some of the other values' defaults but not those two.

prime stable after 3 hours so far. cool

 

[lowjack989]

Those ought to be OK on auto anyways....Glad its priming stable....So, far

 

[firefoxx04]

5 hours large fft stable

off to work, shouldnt be gone to long.. we wont be busy. ill post progress when i get home.

 

[firefoxx04]

failed prime on large ffts after 6 hours and 50min. Not good enough

assuming that it was "more" stable than before, the only thing i changed was nb and ht voltage from auto to 1.2

should i increase them more? the nb can go from 1.2 to 1.3.. not 1.25

also, does v dropp effect nb and ht voltages? maybe i should relax the timings even more and see what that does?

 

[lowjack989]

Damn.....I wouldn't push the NB past 1.25v...the absolute maximum is 1.35v...USE EXTREME CAUTION when upping this value...loosening the timings might work, hard to say at this point...Depends on the board as to how vdroop will act...Some boards actually compensate for the droop through LLC...vdroop can affect the MOBO as a whole in some instances...Not usually though...NB and HT are not prone to vdroop...