Can't get my i7 860 OC stable. Thoughts?

G

Gorilla

[H]F Junkie
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So I just replaced my stupid thermaltake spinQ with a Cogage TRUE Spirit, and the temps are great, sort of. You see, I can't get prime95 to run for more than a minute before one of the workers fails. Using RealTemp, the hottest that any of my cores get is 65C before one of the workers stops. Generally a 2nd worker will stop before the 1st torture test is even done. I'm using a core i7 860 at 3.8ghz with an EVGA P55 LE. CPU freq is at 181, multi is 21, vcore is 1.325, CPU VTT is 1.4, memory voltage is 1.6.

Idle temps are generally between 23-29C (two of the cores run cooler than the other two), though I've heard that you can't really trust idle temperatures.

Anyway, what should I do? I had actually never had a problem with the workers just stopping before I upgraded to an i7. I had always gotten a blue screen. I have no problem getting into windows, or with stability during normal use (gaming).

Do I just need to up the Vcore more until it's stable?

Oh and just to let you know, I had basically followed the instructions here http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=20029
 
Another for pushing the Vcore up a bit more. Your RAM should be at 1.65v anyway, but pushing the 4ghz mark on the Lynnfield usually requires a bit more voltage from what Ive seen.
 
Alright, I'll give that a shot.

Another thing that I meant to ask about is whether I should leave hyperthreading enabled. I've heard that most of the time you won't get a lot of benefit from it. Any truth to this?
 
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I'm not seeing the one with the dram setting , the one right below my Cpu tab. Btw, i was showing that you could run dual channel with 3 sticks in my screenshots :)
 
gwarren007 said:
I'm not seeing the one with the dram setting , the one right below my Cpu tab. Btw, i was showing that you could run dual channel with 3 sticks in my screenshots :)
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I edited my above post.

Also, after upping the vcore to 1.35 and the memory voltage to 1.65 I tried running prime95 again. One of the workers stopped within 20 seconds. Within two minutes there were only 2 workers still going.
 
JapaneseGorilla said:
I edited my above post.

Also, after upping the vcore to 1.35 and the memory voltage to 1.65 I tried running prime95 again. One of the workers stopped within 20 seconds. Within two minutes there were only 2 workers still going.
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Try lowering your vdimm to 1.5 or 1.55 volts. Is it a GSkill Ripjaws kit?
 
OpStar said:
Try lowering your vdimm to 1.5 or 1.55 volts. Is it a GSkill Ripjaws kit?
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Not a ripjaws. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193



I tried upping the vcore to 1.4 and disabling hyperthreading. Temps dropped greatly thanks to getting rid of the hyperthreading, but two of the four workers still stopped within 45 seconds.

Update: I'm starting to suspect that there is an issue with my ram. Tell me what you think. Normally when I run prime95 I just go with the default blend test (that supposedly tests lots of RAM). However, after switching to the other test (the one that says little memory tested) I have run stable for 10 minutes.
 
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Ya, they're rated for 1.5v, that is what I'm saying. Did you ever try them at 1.5 or did you immediately go to 1.65v?

When I built my box I used 1.65v due to the spd settings but prime would fail instantly and I couldn't figure out why, and like you I upped the vcore to 1.42 or something ridiculous but after hours of messing around I finally lowered my vdimm to 1.5v and my overclock became 24/7 stable at 1.3 vcore.

Just a thought.
 
OpStar said:
Ya, they're rated for 1.5v, that is what I'm saying. Did you ever try them at 1.5 or did you immediately go to 1.65v?

When I built my box I used 1.65v due to the spd settings but prime would fail instantly and I couldn't figure out why, and like you I upped the vcore to 1.42 or something ridiculous but after hours of messing around I finally lowered my vdimm to 1.5v and my overclock became 24/7 stable at 1.3 vcore.

Just a thought.
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You my friend deserve a pat on the back, a banana sticker, or something like that. I haven't re-enabled hyperthreading yet, but with just 4 workers prime95 has been stable for 15 minutes with my memory voltage at 1.5 and the cpu vcore at 1.3. Originally I just took my voltage up to 1.6 just because that's what the guide on the EVGA forum suggested. Then it was suggested here that I go to 1.65. Anyway, I'm going to go enable hyperthreading and see how things go.

Oh and I'm loving my Cogage TRUE Spirit. The only downside is that it was so tall that I had to remove the 120mm side mounted fan from my Antec 900 because it was completely in the way.


Update: I ran prime 95 for around 30 minutes and everything was fine, so I enabled hyperthreading. Not having much success with hyperthreading enabled. Two workers stopped within two minutes. Should I start upping my cpu vcore again? Oh and a 3rd worker just stopped.
 
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well, do you actually need hyperthreading? you doing any encoding or lots of work in photoshop? if you're not going to really put the HT to use, i would just leave it off if that's what's going to give you a stable OC.

just my humble opinion, of course.
 
No I do not need hyperthreading, though obviously I would like to get my system stable with it enabled if for no other reason than it should work. Once again I'm thinking that there might be a problem with my memory. If I run prime95 and select the test that says it will test lots of RAM, the workers start failing within a couple of minutes. However, if I run the test that says little RAM is tested, it is stable indefinitely.

So basically, how can I go about figuring out of there is an issue with my ram. My only thought so far is that with the 2:8 divider, it isn't running at the default 1600MHz, but would be if I took my CPU to 4.2GHz, though I don't really see how that would help with stability.
 
Try running 19 x 200 with the 8 divider? Also the only voltages I had to mess with was vcore and vdimm, I never messed with anything else despite what all the overclocking guides said.

 
Try reducing the memory divider to 2:6 and see if that helps. Why is everyones QPI Very low?
 
OpStar said:
Try running 19 x 200 with the 8 divider? Also the only voltages I had to mess with was vcore and vdimm, I never messed with anything else despite what all the overclocking guides said.
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I gave it a shot, it resulted in absolutely no stability. WIth prime95, all 8 workers stopped within 3 seconds.
 
Well, I'm about ready to give up and just disable hyperthreading. I don't really need it. Then again, I haven't had any instability except in prime95. I've gamed for hours with no problem. I lowered my vcore to 1.25 without any changes (other than temperature which is 63C or lower at load), the lots of a ram test is unstable, the little ram test is perfectly stable.
 
Maybe set the trfc setting from 88 closer to the 40 your ram is rated for? Mine is currently 59.
 
I gave it a try, but the lowest that I could get it to was 65 before it would refuse to POST. Still no luck at that setting.
 
Well, kind of frustrating, I disabled hyperthreading, set the cpu vcore to 1.3, dimm voltage to 1.5, and gave it a try, but no stability. It's strange because it worked just fine like this yesterday (or was it the day before). In fact, previously it ran just fine with an even lower vcore (1.275 I think). Temperatures with hyperthreading are awesome, hitting 54C at the hottest, but I just can't get the Prime95 Blend test to work. The other two tests seem to work just fine. Actually, only the first test works fine, the second one will run for around 20 minutes before I start to get failures.

Update:
Interesting stuff. I just reset the memory times to allow the motherboard to auto set the timings. It set them to 11-11-11-29. Prime95 isn't perfectly stable, but it ran the cursed blend test for a good ten minutes before I had a worker failure. I wish that I had another set of RAM to pop in there and see if I could get better results. Memtest says that my ram is fine, but I'm skeptical.
 
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Well, I'm still frustrated as heck with this stupid thing. I just got a new set of RAM back from Newegg, which was a great as ever (got my RMA done in 7 days exactly).

So here I go. The new set works better than the old set did. However, it doesn't run at the correct timings. If I let it set the timings on its own (it sets them to 11-11-11-29-88 with a 1t command rate) prime95 will run that cursed blend test without a problem. However, if I mess with the timings my computer won't start. It won't post or anything. No beeps, nothing. I wish that G.Skill was of more help. Some people are having the the same problem in their forum but the only rep who responded told the guy to post all of his settings without reading to see that the guy had posted them.

Well, I'm off to mess with the settings again, and to see if EVGA has anything to say.
 
In your first post you say you set vtt to 1.4v. That's way too high. My vtt is 1.21 (intel specified maximum). I've got g.skill ripjaw at vdim of 1.64. vcore at 1.36 (llc off) was all I needed for a stable 3.78ghz. I did up the vpll to 1.86 from 1.80.

Perhaps that will help. Its always possible that your proc is not going to be a great overclocker, but the systems are complex, and there will likely be a set of settings that will work.

Good luck,
Bob
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I honestly have no idea what the vtt actually does. I set it to 1.4 because that is what a mod at the EVGA forum posted in his overclocking guide for the i7 860.

Actually, I think that I've almost got things stable. I've found that this new set of ram actually will run pretty close to the correct timings. It just freaks out if I try to set the tRFC anywhere close to the setting the cpuz lists. When I say that it freaks out, I mean that I have to reset the bios before I can get back into it. When I have let it do what it wants with the tRFC setting, Prime95 has run the blend test without problems for 45 minutes before I stopped it so that I could change some settings. I guess that after all of this, it really was just a bad set of RAM.

My cpu actually seems to be an excellent overclocker. In fact, I just lowered the cpu vcore from 1.3 to 1.25 and everything seems to be perfectly stable under prime95, and temperatures are great at 49C or below according to realtemp. Apparently it was just the stupid ram that was causing all of my problems, though I had long suspected that.

Update: So when I previously reported stability, I had set the cpu vtt to 1.2, and things ran just fine. I just tried setting the VTT to auto, and my motherboard set the VTT to 1.39. Hmm, I guess I'll just turn it back down to 1.2 since things seemed to run just fine and I'm more worried about having too high of a voltage than too low of one.

Additionally, I was able to lower the cpu vcore even lower. It is now at 1.235 and things are running great, and temps are fantastic.

Oh and I'm not sure why, but if I drop the ram tRFC timing too low I either can't get my system to POST or I get a watchdog error.
 
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I don't know if this will help since we have different cpus but here is what it takes for my similar system to be at 4ghz.

1.3125 or the one below it in bios (without vdroop) stable with 1-2hr prime, 2x 32m superpi, 15min OCCT/linx (max temp 72c with a quiet 1400rpm noctua fan), 2x vantage, 2x crysis warhead Enthus.1080p benchmark, GTA IV for 30-1hr (if the system can run all of this I consider it stable)

Here's a pic of some settings, I would imagine your chip would need LESS volts, etc.

 
Doubl3KiLL said:
Another for pushing the Vcore up a bit more. Your RAM should be at 1.65v anyway, but pushing the 4ghz mark on the Lynnfield usually requires a bit more voltage from what Ive seen.
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not always unless i got a golden chip im at 4 wall 3.96 with 1.26 vcore
 
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