Ok, I've finally got an x48 chipset mobo, Asus Rampage Formular. It came no sooner than P5E I had suddenly losing stability.
Anyhow, I thought RF would be a much more stable board than an x38 chipset board since x48 chipset is supposed be a cherry picked x38 for official 1600mhz support. I thought wrong.
At the exact same bios setting as P5E for overclocking Qx9650 to 4Ghz, my system randomly rebooted by itself during a 2D session. There were always a very quick flash of BSOD then reboot. After a week of trying various combinations of bios setting, I found a way to stabilized my system. It was by setting NB voltage to "AUTO" in the bios, but by doing so, it raised the temperature on NB by 5C on idle. I though "AUTO" setting means default setting, instead, this AUTO is feeding 1.62V to the NB instead of 1.25V. After the finding I've tried every single voltage in the bios available for NB within 1.25~1.60v range without success. It was only when leaving the setting AUTO made the system stable.
From what I've found from other people is that this overvolting occurs when FSB is 400mhz and higher.
I'd appreciate your input, and experiment with the bios setting on your Rampage Formula to find out the AUTO setting results in overvolting the NB when FSB is at 400mhz.
Anyhow, I thought RF would be a much more stable board than an x38 chipset board since x48 chipset is supposed be a cherry picked x38 for official 1600mhz support. I thought wrong.
At the exact same bios setting as P5E for overclocking Qx9650 to 4Ghz, my system randomly rebooted by itself during a 2D session. There were always a very quick flash of BSOD then reboot. After a week of trying various combinations of bios setting, I found a way to stabilized my system. It was by setting NB voltage to "AUTO" in the bios, but by doing so, it raised the temperature on NB by 5C on idle. I though "AUTO" setting means default setting, instead, this AUTO is feeding 1.62V to the NB instead of 1.25V. After the finding I've tried every single voltage in the bios available for NB within 1.25~1.60v range without success. It was only when leaving the setting AUTO made the system stable.
From what I've found from other people is that this overvolting occurs when FSB is 400mhz and higher.
I'd appreciate your input, and experiment with the bios setting on your Rampage Formula to find out the AUTO setting results in overvolting the NB when FSB is at 400mhz.