Originally posted by: GnomeCop
damn I wish my Striker Extreme officially supported the E8600, I have one installed right now and I fear the bios is what is holding me back from a higher overclock
There's no reason it shouldn't.
I"ve posted many comments over months about BIOS revisions to the Striker Extreme.
For the B3 Conroes and Kentsfields, BIOS revisions up to v.1301 and v.1303 were optimal. So it is interesting, that as soon as the G0 steppings arrived, they produced v.1305.
v.1305 gave everyone (and even me, briefly . . ) some trouble. Its fix-list said "improve over-clocking for 1,333 FSB processors." But we were all using 1,066 processors -- even G0 stepping. People who had Q6600's couldn't reset to their over-clocks using the earlier BIOS -- all hell broke loose. I saw it firsthand, myself. I advised several people to re-flash their PLCC's to BIOS v.1301 or 1303. And there were forum posts with people saying that they couldn't go back from 1305.
When I ordered my E8400 (C0), I cautiously ordered two PLCC chips from BIOSMan, for v.1305 and v.1504. v.1305 would post with the message "Update your BIOS to take advantage of this new processor's features." It would also show idle TCASE in BIOS as 10C when room ambient was above 20C.
I popped in the PLCC with v.1504. This time, it recognized the E8400 succinctly (v.1305 only showed it as Core 2 Duo -- nothing else). But it reported TCASE as 50C when the room ambient was between 20 and 25C.
Around August 5, 2008, ASUS posted BIOS v.1603 for the STriker Extreme, and I flashed the chip that had contained v. 1504. Suddenly, all was wonderful. TCASE was "in the ballpark" for what you'd expect, the E8400 is explicitly identified upon post.
Now -- I cannot be sure what happens when you go from E8400 (C0) to E8600 (E0). I don't see why v.1603 would have trouble with it. And since the E0 steppings are the final Intel regurgitation, I'm pretty sure they'd post a BIOS revision again if they needed to.
I am willing to bet, and quite sure, you are using an old, pre-Penryn BIOS with your Striker Extreme. Go for version v.1603.
EDIT: I had my E8400 OC'd to 3.6 with the Striker -- ref.freq.= 400Mhz.
Be careful going beyond 400. It's doable, but especially, be careful with an 2x gfx SLI configuration. If the NBCore is on "Auto" -- it bumps the voltage up to 1.52V-something. Maybe that's safe, but then you should pay special attention to chipset cooling. I'm paying special attention to getting a response on my RMA request.
I replaced the Striker with an eVGA 780i board in the meantime. Much easier to clock beyond 400 Mhz. Also -- one more thing. Before you clock up to 400 Mhz, you'll have to set CPU_VTT (FSB) to 1.45V. This is at the threshold of risk for the Wolfdales and Yorkfields (but you can't use a Yorkfield in that board). With BIOS 1603, my voltage monitor showed 1.39V with that setting.