Qx6850 problem help !

[Ohatt03]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and I know this is a long one but thanks for reading..

First off I know this is an older system...And I don't know a whole lot about overclocking. I picked up this processor for free for my older 680i bases system. Before I was using an E6600 and had no issues with it, or with overclocking. If anybody can help it'll be appreciated. I'll list my specs at the bottom...

So as I said I had Intel E6600 before and had no issues, I had it overclocked to 3.2ghz. Everything worked perfect up untill yesterday when I picked up my QX6850. I installed the QX6850 correctly, and I have a corsair h70 cooler used a small amount of thermal paste.

Anyhow, it all booted up and recognized the processor fine.. System booted into windows and everything. Then I started up Battlefield 3 to try it out..I had been playing Battlefield 3 before with my E6600 and it worked fine (not on max settings).

Battlefield 3 looked way better and ran smoother than before...For about 2 minutes. Then the whole system rebooted on me unexpectedly. No blue screen, just a black screen reboot. I found this odd as I was monitoring my temps and they were normal, 60degrees under load which is well in the "safe range". I tried a few more times and the same result, always rebooted on me after a few minutes of playing ANY game. Btw this was with the CPU on stock settings.

So I started reading some forums and tried a few different things. One forum suggested to run 273x111 instead of 333x9. I don't understand how this helped but it did. After this, games would not cause the system to reboot but after playing for more than five minutes the game would freeze, not the whole system. I also upped the voltages to 1.5vcore and 1.4 bios and it seemed to help,...still not stable.

Then I did some more reading and I found a suggestion that possibly the ram was not keeping up with the CPU or something so I switched the Ram timings to expert and switched timings from 2-2-2-15-1 to 2-2-2-18-2 as someone suggested....This actually seemed to make the system run totally stable.. I am now able to run any game including BF3 totally stable. I ran Heaven DX11 bench and scored 1700 points which is good. The only problem now is if i try to overclock at all It goes unstable and games will lock up again.

I tried a modest overclock of 3.2ghz by increasing multi to 12 and it started to lock up...I'm totally stumped. I want to be able to OC this processor but can't seem to at all. I''m excited that I have it running at all now and it is stable.

Performance over the E6600 even at stock settings is much improved but I'm looking for some advice with my overclocking issue. Any help appreciated!

Thanks!


Mainboard: Evga 680i SLI
CPU: Intel QX6850 3.0 ghz with Corsair H70
Ram: G-Skill DDR2-800
Video: MSI GTX570 OC

 

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I've got a QX6850 as well, and it's been fraught with overclocking and performance issues since I got it.

Maybe you've solved your issue by now, but I can try to assist you if you're still facing the same issues.

What are your stock RAM timings? 2-2-2-15-1?
I would suggest dropping your voltages to flat stock, and test out 333x11 at 1.4 vcore from the BIOS and see if it will start at all. 1.5v is a little high, and you should honestly be able to take it to 5.0ghz with that voltage. But make sure you have copied down somewhere all the settings you were using before.
Heat definitely isn't an "issue" with these CPUs as under the stock cpu cooler that they come with without overclocking, they're typically sitting at somewhere around 70-80ºC under load. So, if it's running a little hot, don't worry too much about it honestly. They'll run fine, for a little while, over 100ºC. So your crashing is most likely unrelated.

What kind of frames are you getting on what sets of settings when playing BF3?
What kind of CPU usage (percentage wise) are you seeing with those settings?
How much of that DDR2-800 RAM do you have? If it's only 4GB, with background tasks and BF3 open, you're definitely pushing the bar.

Just let me know if you still need any other help and the results from any alterations you've tried, and I'll do my best to assist you.