This is my first Intel build since a 1.5G P4 god knows how many years ago.
Gigabyte 965P-DS3
E4300 C2D
Corsair CM2x1024 - 6400
790GS
Antec 900 case
Antec Neo 550 PSU
Zalman 8000 CPU cooler
Jing Ting Rev 2 NB cooler
Vista Home Premium
The board shipped with the F10 BIOS, but I had cold boot problems and switched to F7 and the problems have declined substantially. I may go back to F10 once I get this all sorted out, however, because it allows you to save multiple BIOS settings and F7 does not.
Right now, I am a few minutes into Orthos at 345 x 9 (3095) and CPU temps are cycling between 38 and 42C in a very cool room. Voltage is at 1.4v, and I suspect I can go lower.
The biggest problem for me right now is that whenever I choose some "bad" settings, the boot process will cycle through a few times and take a very long time to get into Windows. With the F10 BIOS, the screen would simply go bad in the same situation.
Anyway, whenever it recycles, it puts the FSB controller back on AUTO, or something like that, and the speed goes back to 200 x 9. It remembers all of my settings, so all I have to is reenable that one control.
Most of my trouble seems to be with the RAM. I have revision 5.1, and that means ProMOS instead of D9 chips. I am not 100% sure of this, but it seems that anytime I try to do anything to ask the RAM to run higher than its rated 800, even to 801, it will not boot until after it resets. Right now, I have the SPD at 2, so the RAM is only doing 345 x 2, or 690.
I've tried taking the CPU completely out of the equation by lowering its multi to 6, but so far at least, nothing I can do will let me get anything more out of the RAM. I am building this system for a friend, and will eventually dial back the settings anyway, but I would really like to get a handle on the problem here before I turn it over to him at lower, safer, settings.
Similarly, my one attempt to go 'advanced' on the RAM timings quickly reset my BIOS as well.