K8N Neo4-F

[Cobalt]

Has anyone here with this board gotten any success trying to OC with it? It doesn't even want to post for me with an FSB higher than 229, even with the 1.5 BIOS. My Venice 3000+ is just aching to be OCed.

 

[Serpentor]

Got it to replace a Gigabyte K8NS, had it for a week and love it so far! Screams with my 3000+. 2808mhz at 1.6, but I prefer to run the chip a little cooler and the RAM a little faster (at settings in my sig). I have not upgraded from the stock BIOS (3/2005 I believe).

229mhz is the max of my Corsair VS, are you making sure to run a mem divider if taking the HTT above 229?

 

[Serpentor]

I just did a search on anand for the Neo4-F and there many users reporting a bug with this board and overclocking past *specfically* 220 HTT. Since you are able to hit 229, I don't think you have the same problem, but try searching around. What mem divider are you using? The 133 mem divider is the devil..

 

[Cobalt]

What divider do you suggest?

 

[Serpentor]

I'm running with the 150 divider right now rocksolid. I've also used the 140 divider to hit 2808mhz. With the 133, I can't even POST..

 

[Cobalt]

Won't even POST with any divider with a FSB past 228... Really making me angry, gonna see if I can run 1:1 at 228 because that OC is almost nothing. I'm pretty sure it's the board. Maybe it's one of the bugged ones, I've heard complaints of this board, and the nForce4 vanilla chip, not being able to OC very well, but your results are great. :/

 

[Furen]

did you happen to forget to lower the hypertransport multiplier??

 

[Cobalt]

I'm at 243x9 atm, 5:10 mem div. and 1.5x HT multi. Over VID CPU 3.3% and mem at 2.70.

EDIT: mem divider is now at 7:10 and it POSTs.

 

[Cobalt]

Any other help/tips/info would be appreciated.

 

[Serpentor]

After much hair pulling, I solved every Neo4-F user's problem. After having such great luck out of the box, I was really hesitant to upgrade the BIOS with nothing wrong happening. Well I updated anyway, and then everything went wrong. No POST on v1.5 or v1.4. Back to v1.2 and everything is kosher once again :: phew ::

 

[Cobalt]

Solution is 1.2 BIOS?

 

[Merovingian]

man, I almost bought this for a system I was building for a buddy. Phew, I'll wait till that works out.

 

[Serpentor]

Originally posted by: cobalt
Solution is 1.2 BIOS?

Yes, or the 1.3. I also tried the 1.7beta and it too worked beyond 220HTT where the 1.4 and 1.5 wouldn't. Although the 1.7b oddly lacks the 150 and 140 mem dividers which I use the most, so I went back to 1.3 and is all good.

http://www.lejabeach.com/MSIK8N/k8nneo4ultra/k8nneo4.html

 

[Cobalt]

Hmm.. might as well try the 1.7b since this system doesn't have a floppy drive. I'll need to use WinFlash to do it.

Originally posted by: TheMerovingian
man, I almost bought this for a system I was building for a buddy. Phew, I'll wait till that works out.

It's a great board aside from some problems I'm having ocing at the moment. I'm running at 2187 right now, I'm gonna try the new BIOS. It's a stable board otherwise and I'm pretty happy with it. It's a great budget board, got mine for $85 off NewEgg.

 

[Cobalt]

WOW. The 1.71b BIOS really did the trick. 2:3 div, 1.54v and it's POSTing and booting into Windows at 300x9. Gonna test stability with some gaming and then run Prime overnight. Thanks for all the help guys, will keep you posted.

 

[Serpentor]

Wow, you're using the 2:3 (133) divider too! I guess they finally fixed it. It was the BAIN of my existence for over a month.

I'm sticking with v1.3 for the 140 divider, even tho whenever I use it, CPU-Z, Clockgen, and Core Center can't seem to detect my RAM speed.. SuperPi 1M still takes 31sec so I imagine the divider is working correctly. Going to try some 9x308 tonight, as the RAM wasn't quite happy in a non-A/Ced room overnight at 228, but the chip is happy at upwards of 2.8ghz. That'll put me at 2772mhz with 213 on the RAM, hopefully at 1.55 vcore.

I'm so addicted to this endless tweaking.. BF2 and my new 19" LCD have been sitting in their boxes for almost a week!

 

[Cobalt]

It wasn't stable at 6.6% over vid so I gave it 9.9% and it seems to be stable now, just played some BF2. Will run SuperPI tonight.

 

[DoobieOnline]

Serpentor - thanks for all the great work you've done on figuring out what makes this board fly. In your bios link above, the ones listed are for the Neo4 Platinum. Is it ok to use these for the Neo4-F?

cobalt - thanks for trying out 1.71b. It's good to know that the 133 divider is working!

I have 2x1GB PC3200 Patriot Value RAM that I'll be using in the board and I'm not sure if it will OC so a working 133 divider will save my butt if the mem won't OC very much. I'm rebuilding my rig this weekend with a 3000+ Venice and NEO4-F and I'm sure you guys just saved me hours of headaches.

I'm assuming both of you are running your mem in dual channel. What slots are you using? The manual is totally confusing when it comes to dual channel configs. Thanks!

 

[solariusx3]

Thanks for all the work guys. really appreciate the tip
i hav the same mobo
Currently on a 3200+venice / neo4-F cosair value select 2x 512mb

wat should tweak for a safe speed bump to 2.4ghz using my config?
multiplier =?
FSB = ?
HTT =?

 

[Cobalt]

No problem guys, someone has to be the guineau pigs. I dropped it down to 2.6 because I had gotten an error in Prime95, it was stable though. I might give it a touch more voltage and see if i can hit 2.8, 2.7 was stable. 1.71B BIOS is great, it reads as the Platinum BIOS on there but you can use it for the Neo4-F.

 

[Merovingian]

Please post bios settings in total, please. =)

 

[Serpentor]

I'm still on the 1.3 BIOS. I brought the mem divider down to 140 last night, chip to 2772mhz (9x308), 1.6v, RAM 216mhz @ 2.5-3-3-8-1T and it Prime'd Large FFT (extra heat) test all night fine, with the room A/C off. Not bad on stock HSF, no reapplication of thermal compound..

I'd keep her slightly slower at 9x306 (1.55v) with the 150 divider, but the RAM @229 wasn't quite happy >30mins on the Prime Blend test, no matter what vdimm voltage I tried. I'm sure if I slowed down the timings (2T maybe) it would prime, but I'm fine with "settling" with 2772mhz and tight-timed 215 RAM.

Doobie: Use slots 1&2 for dual channel (one purple slot, one green slot, the two closest to the CPU)

Solarius: Depends on how high your RAM can handle. 10x240 might not be possible 1:1 unless you have high end RAM. So just use a divider. Follow Zebo's Guide to find your independent maxes, then use the A64 OC Script to find the best combination.

 

[DoobieOnline]

Thanks Serpentor. I'm going to try to do the rebuild tonight so I'll have all day tomorrow to test it and then play some BF2 tomorrow night. Still hoping I have as much luck as you with my 3000+.

 

[Cobalt]

Topic update due to request. I might try for some higher clocks today, 2.7 was stable through all tests in Prime95 but it gave me 1 error in the calculations so I dropped it to 2.6 for the time being. Running at 1.53v.

 

[Serpentor]

After several days of Prime torture, my NB fan now makes the infamous leaf blower noise. Has anyone else encountered this? I'm going to look into getting a less noisey NB fan.