Just got my VNF4 Ultra and got a couple of OCing questions

[LuckMan212]

Major Payne (or anyone else!) can you guys please help me out?

first, here's all my specs:

[*]CoolerMaster WaveMaster Black Aluminum case
[*]Chaintech VNF/4 Ultra + Beta Bios from 1/17/05
[*]Winchester 3500+ XP-90 + Panaflo 92mm
[*]PC Power + Cooling TurboCool 510 Express PSU
[*]Gf 6600GT pciE
[*]2 x 1GB gigaRAM PC3500
[*]2 x Maxtor SATA-II 3gb 250gb HD
[*]NEC 3520A DVD+RW
[*]ASUS E-616P2 DVD-ROM
[*]SB Audigy 2 ZS Plat Ex
etc

I just got my VNF4/U yesterday and am breaking it in. I am new to A64 overclocking (but I have done P4 o'c for years) so I am learning the new terminology (HTT, LDT, etc).

Right now I am Prime95'ing to try to find my max OC for each component (HTT, CPU and RAM). For cooling I have an XP-90 (that was a bitch to install due to the poorly-placed caps on the VNF4, but I managed to do it without damaging my board! )

My CPU (Winchester 3500) seems to be stable at least to 2.6ghz, and maybe higher. Temps are nice and in the low-mid 30's under load. I added a fan blowing on the chipset because that crappy aluminum heatsink they put on was 70C after a few minutes of Prime! I dare anyone to touch it with your finger you will get a burn!! :shocked:

I have a couple of problems---

1) I have tried upping the CPU vcore voltage in the BIOS to 1.475, 1.500, 1.525 etc but no matter what when I boot into Windows CPU-Z and ClockGen always report that I am at the 1.425 default voltage. Is this broken in the BIOS or what? Or do these utilities just report wrong..?

2) I am still a bit confused about RAM timings. I have PC3500 ram, so it should be good to about ~230mhz at least. Is there a FAQ or guide somewhere that describes the different dividers (1:1, 166, 133, etc) and how to find your max RAM overclock? I use MemTest86+ usually.

3) Has anyone gotten SpeedFan, Motherboard monitor, HMonitor or DigiDoc to work on this board? When I installed any of those (well, DigiDoc I could not even find, it wasnt on the CD that came with my board) -- they just hung or froze the machine. Does any of the hw sensor softwar work on the VNF4? (interestingly, Everest Home edition seems to be able to read the temps just fine)

well thats all for now, I hope I can get this thing broken in soon so I can get back to the important things in life, like HL2, Far Cry, etc .. heh thanks guys

 

[urfage]

Possible answer to #1: I believe Cool&Quiet drops the voltage when the CPU isn't under load, and what you set in the BIOS is the max voltage. I could be complete wrong, can someone else back me up?

-Bryce

 

[LuckMan212]

thank you for the answer but actually I have checked the voltage while running Prime95 and it still reads 1.425.

 

[slash196]

You must have screwed up the stock HSF, because theres no WAY a correctly installed HSF would get that hot.

 

[nvbtye]

utzwrb

 

[LuckMan212]

Originally posted by: bpm3k
P3500 is 215 Mhz

actually PC3500 is 217mhz. but most chips have at least 5-10% of 'headroom'

 

[LuckMan212]

Originally posted by: slash196
You must have screwed up the stock HSF, because theres no WAY a correctly installed HSF would get that hot.

huh? how could I have "screwed up" the heatsink? and its not a "HSF" because there's no fan on it. I am talking about the CHIPSET heatsink (the small aluminum one that is bolted to the NF4 chipset), not the XP-90 that I have on my CPU. did you get confused? If you read the VNF4 review that just got put up at Xbitlabs, you will see that they discovered the same problem with the VN4 and actually burned out their board cranking the HTT.....