Alright here's the deal, my overclocking experience has a little bit of a story to it, but if you can bear with me, I think it will help me achieve a much higher overclock than I originally intended. I have the following hardware:
Intel Core i7 920 C0
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
OCZ DDR3-1600 7-7-7-24 OCZ3P1600LV2G (3x2GB=6GB)
Corsair HX750W
Xigmatek Thor's Hammer (Push/Pull with 2x120mm 90CFM 2000RPM Fans)
I've been having a lot of problems with getting a stable overclock and I was hoping someone here could help me shed some light on my issues. Originally I was trying to get my CPU to 3.8 GHz, but I've been hitting all kinds of walls. First I couldn't even POST at 3.8 GHz without overvolting to 1.4v-1.42v which is well beyond my comfort zone. Secondly, my motherboard refuses to POST with a BCLK of 200 or higher, which is quite strange for a board of this quality, and sucks because a BCLK of 200 can give me a perfect 3.8 GHz using a 19x multiplier and a perfect 1600 MHz on my RAM using a 10x multiplier. Third, my system was giving me all kinds of problems when I tried to take my RAM to 1600 MHz, which is strange because that's what it's rated for. All said and done, I said screw it and decided to put everything back on AUTO and give up on overclocking. Well originally, I had thought my stock voltage was 1.25v, and I couldn't get 3.36 GHz relatively stable without overvolting to 1.25625v, which I figured wasn't much of an overvolt considering the performance increase I was getting. Well once I put everything back to stock settings, I noticed that the stock voltage wasn't 1.25v, but rather 1.225v and this confused me considering many people can get to 3.4 GHz without overvolting and I had to overvolt quite a considerable amount from stock just to get it stable for a few hours. So I said what the hell and tried 3.2 GHz using a BCLK of 160 MHz, and the stock voltage of 1.225v. Well after starting up a Prime95 small FFT torture test before taking a nap, I woke up 4.5 hours later surprised to find everything still running stable. I was happy to discover that I was severely overvolting the entire time, so I decided to run a Prime95 blend test just to check that the system was entirely stable. Well, it failed and I was puzzled as to why because I assumed it was my RAM causing the problem. My BCLK is currently 160 MHz, my RAM multiplier is 6x, putting the RAM at 960 MHz which is nothing since it's rated at 1600 MHz, the RAM voltage is 1.5v, and the QPI voltage is 1.2v all of which are stock voltages. JEDEC recommends timings of 6-6-6-14 for 914 MHz at 1.5v, and my RAM AUTO timings set my RAM to 6-6-6-18 at it's current 1.5v, which should be perfectly stable at 960 MHz. Well I've been on the OCZ Support Forums trying to figure out the issue, thinking there is something wrong with my RAM and trying all different kinds of settings. I ended up running MCI Memtest on the RAM, and after a few hours I came back and there were no errors, which makes much more sense since this RAM isn't being stressed at all and is running well within the JEDEC specifications. But now this raises the question, what is causing Prime95 large FFT tests to BSOD after a few minutes, and causing Prime95 blend tests to either report a rounding error after 5-30 minutes and me physically stopping the test, or BSOD after I let it run for a few hours? I don't feel it's my CPU or RAM, since these specific tests are showing that they are stable, so I want to point the finger at the motherboard, but I have no evidence.
I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me with this issue, and I'm sorry for rambling but I find that I miss certain details if I don't tell everything as a short story. For reference, here are all the BIOS settings reported by ASUS TurboV:
BCLK = 160 MHz
CPU Voltage = 1.225v
DRAM Bus Voltage = 1.5v
QPI/DRAM Core Voltage = 1.2v
CPU PLL = 1.8v
ICH PCIE = 1.5v
IOH PCIE = 1.5v
ICH = 1.1v
IOH = 1.1v
All DRAM Reference Voltages for CHA, CHB, and CHC are 0.5x
Also worth noting, my CPU Multiplier is 20x, my RAM multiplier is 6x, and my Uncore and QPI multipliers are on AUTO. C1E is disabled, and so is SpeedStep. CPU-Z reports my QPI Link around 2880 MHz, my NB frequency around 2560 MHz, and my RAM timings as 6-6-6-18-44-1T.
Thanks again for taking the time to read this and I hope someone can help me solve this bottleneck problem which was probably holding me down the entire time I was trying to overclock.
Intel Core i7 920 C0
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
OCZ DDR3-1600 7-7-7-24 OCZ3P1600LV2G (3x2GB=6GB)
Corsair HX750W
Xigmatek Thor's Hammer (Push/Pull with 2x120mm 90CFM 2000RPM Fans)
I've been having a lot of problems with getting a stable overclock and I was hoping someone here could help me shed some light on my issues. Originally I was trying to get my CPU to 3.8 GHz, but I've been hitting all kinds of walls. First I couldn't even POST at 3.8 GHz without overvolting to 1.4v-1.42v which is well beyond my comfort zone. Secondly, my motherboard refuses to POST with a BCLK of 200 or higher, which is quite strange for a board of this quality, and sucks because a BCLK of 200 can give me a perfect 3.8 GHz using a 19x multiplier and a perfect 1600 MHz on my RAM using a 10x multiplier. Third, my system was giving me all kinds of problems when I tried to take my RAM to 1600 MHz, which is strange because that's what it's rated for. All said and done, I said screw it and decided to put everything back on AUTO and give up on overclocking. Well originally, I had thought my stock voltage was 1.25v, and I couldn't get 3.36 GHz relatively stable without overvolting to 1.25625v, which I figured wasn't much of an overvolt considering the performance increase I was getting. Well once I put everything back to stock settings, I noticed that the stock voltage wasn't 1.25v, but rather 1.225v and this confused me considering many people can get to 3.4 GHz without overvolting and I had to overvolt quite a considerable amount from stock just to get it stable for a few hours. So I said what the hell and tried 3.2 GHz using a BCLK of 160 MHz, and the stock voltage of 1.225v. Well after starting up a Prime95 small FFT torture test before taking a nap, I woke up 4.5 hours later surprised to find everything still running stable. I was happy to discover that I was severely overvolting the entire time, so I decided to run a Prime95 blend test just to check that the system was entirely stable. Well, it failed and I was puzzled as to why because I assumed it was my RAM causing the problem. My BCLK is currently 160 MHz, my RAM multiplier is 6x, putting the RAM at 960 MHz which is nothing since it's rated at 1600 MHz, the RAM voltage is 1.5v, and the QPI voltage is 1.2v all of which are stock voltages. JEDEC recommends timings of 6-6-6-14 for 914 MHz at 1.5v, and my RAM AUTO timings set my RAM to 6-6-6-18 at it's current 1.5v, which should be perfectly stable at 960 MHz. Well I've been on the OCZ Support Forums trying to figure out the issue, thinking there is something wrong with my RAM and trying all different kinds of settings. I ended up running MCI Memtest on the RAM, and after a few hours I came back and there were no errors, which makes much more sense since this RAM isn't being stressed at all and is running well within the JEDEC specifications. But now this raises the question, what is causing Prime95 large FFT tests to BSOD after a few minutes, and causing Prime95 blend tests to either report a rounding error after 5-30 minutes and me physically stopping the test, or BSOD after I let it run for a few hours? I don't feel it's my CPU or RAM, since these specific tests are showing that they are stable, so I want to point the finger at the motherboard, but I have no evidence.
I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me with this issue, and I'm sorry for rambling but I find that I miss certain details if I don't tell everything as a short story. For reference, here are all the BIOS settings reported by ASUS TurboV:
BCLK = 160 MHz
CPU Voltage = 1.225v
DRAM Bus Voltage = 1.5v
QPI/DRAM Core Voltage = 1.2v
CPU PLL = 1.8v
ICH PCIE = 1.5v
IOH PCIE = 1.5v
ICH = 1.1v
IOH = 1.1v
All DRAM Reference Voltages for CHA, CHB, and CHC are 0.5x
Also worth noting, my CPU Multiplier is 20x, my RAM multiplier is 6x, and my Uncore and QPI multipliers are on AUTO. C1E is disabled, and so is SpeedStep. CPU-Z reports my QPI Link around 2880 MHz, my NB frequency around 2560 MHz, and my RAM timings as 6-6-6-18-44-1T.
Thanks again for taking the time to read this and I hope someone can help me solve this bottleneck problem which was probably holding me down the entire time I was trying to overclock.