Xeon L5639 Overclocking on X58

[PG]

Got my X58 Sabertooth and I was initially very happy. Changed the core voltage to 1.3, BLCK to 200, Ram to 1600 and it worked. Note I was running some dual channel RAM because that was all I had for spare ram at the time.

Today some triple channel ram showed up and I put that in. It is a 6GB kit. Only 4 GB shows in the BIOS and in Windows. After some troubleshooting it seems the last 2 slots are not working.
After some google searching it seems this was a common issue a few years ago in the 1366 heyday. Lots of speculation, but I'm not sure of the real issue. Some said the cpu may have been seated wrong and after reseating it their problem went away. I gave that a shot but it didn't work.
I also changed from a Hyper 212 Evo to a stock heatsink because some said the pressure of aftermarket heatsinks may cause problems. No dice.
The last two slots are not working no matter what I try. It may be time for an RMA of the board since I got it refurb from a store.
Or can you guys think of something else I can try?
I don't see any obvious damage in the socket and I was careful with the cpu. I did not drop it in place or anything like that. I try to be really careful with intel sockets.

 

[eoniverse]

Long shot... a setting in msconfig that tweaks memory. Under boot > advanced options . Make sure max memory is unchecked.

 

[SunnyD]

Test each stick individually to make sure the ram is good.

 

[Burpo]

Got my X58 Sabertooth and I was initially very happy. Changed the core voltage to 1.3, BLCK to 200, Ram to 1600 and it worked. Note I was running some dual channel RAM because that was all I had for spare ram at the time.

Today some triple channel ram showed up and I put that in. It is a 6GB kit. Only 4 GB shows in the BIOS and in Windows. After some troubleshooting it seems the last 2 slots are not working.
After some google searching it seems this was a common issue a few years ago in the 1366 heyday. Lots of speculation, but I'm not sure of the real issue. Some said the cpu may have been seated wrong and after reseating it their problem went away. I gave that a shot but it didn't work.
I also changed from a Hyper 212 Evo to a stock heatsink because some said the pressure of aftermarket heatsinks may cause problems. No dice.
The last two slots are not working no matter what I try. It may be time for an RMA of the board since I got it refurb from a store.
Or can you guys think of something else I can try?
I don't see any obvious damage in the socket and I was careful with the cpu. I did not drop it in place or anything like that. I try to be really careful with intel sockets.

RMA the board..

 

[Agenesis]

Got my X58 Sabertooth and I was initially very happy. Changed the core voltage to 1.3, BLCK to 200, Ram to 1600 and it worked. Note I was running some dual channel RAM because that was all I had for spare ram at the time.

Today some triple channel ram showed up and I put that in. It is a 6GB kit. Only 4 GB shows in the BIOS and in Windows. After some troubleshooting it seems the last 2 slots are not working.
After some google searching it seems this was a common issue a few years ago in the 1366 heyday. Lots of speculation, but I'm not sure of the real issue. Some said the cpu may have been seated wrong and after reseating it their problem went away. I gave that a shot but it didn't work.
I also changed from a Hyper 212 Evo to a stock heatsink because some said the pressure of aftermarket heatsinks may cause problems. No dice.
The last two slots are not working no matter what I try. It may be time for an RMA of the board since I got it refurb from a store.
Or can you guys think of something else I can try?
I don't see any obvious damage in the socket and I was careful with the cpu. I did not drop it in place or anything like that. I try to be really careful with intel sockets.

You can solve it most of the time by changing the memory settings. Unless to you're sure that particular ram slot doesn't work (under stock settings) I wouldn't bother to RMA it. Missing ram is common and is often an IMC limitation. Just search x58 missing ram and you'll get tons of results.

 

[SunnyD]

RMA the board..

You can solve it most of the time by changing the memory settings. Unless to you're sure that particular ram slot doesn't work (under stock settings) I wouldn't bother to RMA it. Missing ram is common and is often an IMC limitation. Just search x58 missing ram and you'll get tons of results.

Seriously people... one step at a time. Don't jump to conclusions.

TEST THE RAM ONE STICK AT A TIME FIRST. Make sure every stick is good before you go blaming the board or the memory controller.

 

[Agenesis]

Seriously people... one step at a time. Don't jump to conclusions.

TEST THE RAM ONE STICK AT A TIME FIRST. Make sure every stick is good before you go blaming the board or the memory controller.

It sounds like he's already done that. He said the last two slots wasn't working and triple channel memory always goes in slots 2, 4, and 6. From the looks of it he also tried 1, 3, and 6, or at least both of them at once. And we can be sure he wasn't testing with a possible defective stick because only the last two slots were "defective."

Edit: correction, missing ram only happens when overclocking, so revert to stock and see what happens. If ram ONLY goes missing during overclocking then it's 99% the ram issue.

 

[PG]

I guess I should give more info on what I did.

Overclocking was done with 2x2GB Ripjaws in slots 2 and 4. No problems that I know of.

I reset the bios to defaults after that and before I added the triple channel memory, so no overclocking with the new ram.

I was trying 2,4,6 at first and slot 6 was not picking up the ram. My first guess was bad ram so I tried each stick individually in slot 2. Each stick worked so I think the ram is fine.

Then I tried 1,3,5 but it would not boot up properly. Fans start and everything, but that was about it. No post.

I also tried 1,5,6 to test those last two slots and they were not recognized or it wouldn't boot right. I tried so many things I'm a bit foggy but I know there were problems.

The triple channel ram is OCZ and on the QVL for the board. I know, not the best brand there but it was cheap.

I tried stock timings and voltage and also timings and voltages on the sticks itself.
It is detected at 1.5V, but the sticks and the specs online say it should be run at 1.65 so I gave that a shot too. Same problems with the last slot not being detected.
It is some odd RAM. OCZ didn't bother adding an XMP profile. If you want the faster speed and tight timings you have to set it yourself.

I also have some of that really nice Samsung Green ram so I gave that a shot in 2,4,6 but it wouldn't boot right either. Actually it kept starting and rebooting. Maybe the board just can't work right with that low voltage stuff. It made me nervous to run that ram in this board so after that I took it out. I don't want to risk frying it since it's not made anymore and very expensive even available used. Sure wish I had bought more of that when it was $35 for an 8GB set.

I don't have a magnifier yet, but maybe I will try to find one and take a look at those socket pins. I did some google searches and it seems sometimes the pins are the issue.

A few people said they got triple channel ram with an i7 920 but when they upgraded to say a newer cpu like a 980x they lost a channel. Then they changed back and got triple channel again. I do have a 920 so maybe I will give that a shot too. It's a quick test and if it works then I know I can't blame the board. Or at least I wouldn't think so.

I wonder if the contact pads on all these 1366 cpus are the same size?

 

[SunnyD]

If you have a can of air, try blowing out the dimm sockets and giving it one more shot. Take a good look at the dimm sockets to make sure there's no visible damage or whatnot.

You did say you got the board as a refurb, odds are this is the exact reason it was returned in the first place. LGA1366 is a triple channel IMC, the only way you "lose" a channel is if you have defective ram, board or CPU. If you can't populate dimms 1/3/5 (A1/B1/C1) then there's already an issue in the first place.

 

[Adamantine]

This is Gulftown and not Bloomfield, so the uncore is correct. As for the board limitation, I've tested it and it's well capable of 230 bclk.

At this point I've given up and chalking it as a IMC limitation. Maybe if I see someone going beyond 1800s with this chip I'll go back and rework some things. But I'm happy that I got a rock solid 3.99ghz hex core for $70.

I did some testing after reading your comment that westmere requires a 1.5x uncore minimum. My R3F would do weird stuff at boot with it instead of using 2x uncore. Might be caused by crappy ram, though too.

I have some old 1333 ram (6x2GB from late 2008) and it can't post with command rate 1T after ~1750 or so, maybe with 1 or 2 sticks it could. Also, channel B disappears randomly after ~1830 even though channel A and C are good. I have some DDR3 2400 on the way, so I'll be able to find out what this chip can do then.

 

[Adamantine]

If you have a can of air, try blowing out the dimm sockets and giving it one more shot. Take a good look at the dimm sockets to make sure there's no visible damage or whatnot.

You did say you got the board as a refurb, odds are this is the exact reason it was returned in the first place. LGA1366 is a triple channel IMC, the only way you "lose" a channel is if you have defective ram, board or CPU. If you can't populate dimms 1/3/5 (A1/B1/C1) then there's already an issue in the first place.

My DFI UT x58 usually won't post with ram in slot 1, 3, or 5 (slot 1 meaning, closest to CPU) unless all slots are filled. To check channel C, just put one stick in slot 6 and then try 4+6 if 6 works solo. Odd number slots apparently have already been tested.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Sigh, missed the USPS man.. i7 970 comes in with a Xeon L5639 ready board!

 

[Bad Dude]

Update with who has the chip and who has overclocked it to what:


Myself: P6T Mobo, 3.2GHz @200BLCK, @1.25V, 3200-4000Turbo
So consensus seems that some ASUS boards (mainly vanilla P6T) have problems with turbo of 18x working in Windows. Other boards seem to work fine with it. Most system should be easily be able to hit 3.6GHz (18x200BCLK) at or under 1.3V.

Hey,
Could you post your detail settings for your P6T? I can't get it pass 2.4Ghz.
Thanks.

 

[Bad Dude]

Holy cow,
Which board are you using this chip on? What's the other BIOS settings? PQI and all. This is like a dream setup.
Thanks.

If super means Turbo.. The advantage of having 20x Multiplier on 1 or 2 cores really doesn't mean much (except benchmark screens)..


Mine is more stable at 212 & here are similar results as yours at 212 (Turbo & SpeedStep on).
As you can see below, it allows the chip to drop to 12X at idle, conserving power & making less heat.


Load it up however & it performs nearly the same..




On a side note, I had blue screen issues after waking from sleep, and had to edit the registry for Intel Processor Power Management..

hkey_local_machinesystemcurrentcontrolsetservicesprocessor
Set Start value to 4..

Actually you can also set minimum at 100% in Power options, advanced settings in Control panel too.

 

[mithmorgul]

So I was able to get my L5639 working stable at around 3.8 gHz. Trick was to set mobo to XMP OC profile...downgrade DRAM to 1066 or so...then up BCLK until ram clk returns to 1600 mHz. Upped vcore to 1.3 and set the PLL up a smidgen. This was after having to do a CMOS flash + Windows 7 reinstall due to something knocking my LAN out. HyperX genesis triple channel memory gives me fits no matter what I do. Will only run dual channel and run two sims...CPUz sees all three. 1600 1.65v 8-8-8-27 They all work individually and in pairs. They exhibit this same behavior on my Dell X58 board. Sometimes they have worked intermittently in triple. Ran stress test at 3.8 and seems very stable for about 4 hrs max temp about 62 c with H100 in Corsair R600. Also installed 40mm fan on NB because it was running in 70s now down to low 60s.

 

[Burpo]

Bad Dude, It's the Asus P6X58D Premium, and Patriot Sector 7 1600 ram.. If i had it to do over I'd get lower voltage, better ram. My board has a problem, & bank 0 doesn't work, so I tried an Asus P6X58 D E.. All sticks worked & the board was fast, but not stable at my current speeds. The Premium is a little better board.. I built it for video editing, and it does that pretty well. A GTX-570SE Zotac makes sure games are smooth & GPU transcodes fast. You can always go bigger & better, but this is my $500 rig doing what it was built to do..
Rendering times are 6 to 7 times faster than my quad core.. Bluray authoring went from 9+hrs to 1 1/2 hrs



& transcoding a whole movie in 7 1/2 minutes



All pieces are important tho, not just the board..

 

[SunnyD]

As promised, some server porn. No, it's not a porn server.

Plenty of room to grow. That Define XL R2 is one monstrous case.

And here she is in her native habitat, a nice little server "closet" (okay, it really is a closet) serving up my home network and VOIP system.

It ain't much, but for me, it's splurging.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Nice :thumbsup:

 

[Burpo]

Very Nice! Thanks for the pics Sunny D!

 

[SunnyD]

I should also point out that it's a fairly small closet with rather poor ventilation. Even so, the sensors are reporting CPU0 at about 40C under Tmax and CPU1 at about 43C Tmax.

Granted the machine is only "lightly" loaded, ESXi 5.5 running only 2 VMs - pfSense (FreeBSD) and FreePBX (CentOS 6.4). Of course ESXi 5.5 seems to be giving me an issue where the host system process is pegging one core at 100% usage and bouncing it around the machine...

It's supposed to look like this:

not this:

So temps should actually be a bit lower. I'm sure things would be a bit better also if I had my other Zalman on instead of the retail Intel heatsink for CPU0. But I custom modded that heatsink to fit around some of the board components and mounted it, and I haven't felt bothered enough to swap stuff out in the meantime.

TIM is Antec Formula 7 for whatever that's worth.

Also forgot to mention that the ram is 1333MHz stuff too.

 

[mithmorgul]

As a side note...I think those Cinebench scores under your two are mine lol. I'm suprised it does that well with only 4 gb ram. The other 6 gigs got lost in shipping (waiting for resend) and 2 won't post. Has anyone ever RMAed to Kingston's for their lifetime warranty?

 

[mithmorgul]

Here is what I'm working with. Still trying to resolve the RAM issue.

 

[Agenesis]

Here's mine. Passes IBT at 30 runs with 98% ram. Took about 5~6 hours. It failed on Prime blend on the 5th hour however and I had to up the voltage to 1.38 and now it's rock solid.

Also been having weird blackouts as if someone flipped my PSU switch, but I'm 90% sure that's just the AMD drivers acting up. Going to replicate the issue using the "stable" drivers and see how it goes from there.

 

[NTMBK]

As promised, some server porn. No, it's not a porn server.

Plenty of room to grow. That Define XL R2 is one monstrous case.

And here she is in her native habitat, a nice little server "closet" (okay, it really is a closet) serving up my home network and VOIP system.

It ain't much, but for me, it's splurging.

That is one weird fan setup. Do you get decent airflow like that?

 

[SunnyD]

That is one weird fan setup. Do you get decent airflow like that?

Already mentioned the temps.

It's not ideal, but the temps hardly move. I'm just too lazy to swap the Intel heatsink out for the other Zalman I have. I mean, it works.