Overclocking Poject, E4300 craziness

K

kill4killin

Gawd
Joined
Jul 3, 2006
Messages
842
System specs as follows:
Intel E4300
Cooler Master GeminII w/ 2x Sunon 90CFM fans and Zalman ZM-MFC1
Asus P5B-Deluxe w/ vDroop mod (courtesy of Danny_Discuss)
A-Data 512MB DDR2-667 ($25 to hold me over until Team Xtreme Dark DDR2-1066 gets here)
500W Silverston PSU

Plans for things to come:
EVGA 8800GTS
SoundBlaster Audigy4-Pro
Custom made (by me) Plexiglass UFO style case (Danger Den airbox with different fan placement and 120mm fans rather then 80mm)

So, that's it for the specs, now for the interesting bit.

I started overclocking this thing yesterday and was immediately impressed with many things. First off, the size of the GeminII is just frightening, it holds 2x120mm fans next to each other horizontally, so it's 240mm wide, and it's just heavey and huge and it cools like nothing else I've ever had. The second thing I was when I booted it up, I had to use win2k because I only have a 5GB hard drive to hook up to it ATM so it gave me some extra room for overclocking programs and what have you. I was also extremely impressed by the sheer speed of this machine right from the start. I am upgrading from the machine in my sig so you can see why eh?

So on to the overclock, I started going up and I got it to 3.15GHz without having to change anything except the FSB (RAM changes automatically to stay proportional). This was a feat in itself in my own mind partly because of how fast it was and partly because my RAM was running WAY above stock, like almost DDR2-900 speeds...pretty good investment for $25, no?

The long and skinny of it though is that I am now at 1.45V and 3.33GHz. Idle temps are at 38C and the Load temps are creeping up to 65-68C on occasion, but usually between 63-65C. I'm going to the store in a minute to look to find a south bridge cooler with a fan because if anyone is familiar with the P5B, the southbridge gets VERY hot so I'm going to see if I can get that thing to chill out a bit.

Suggestions and Comments welcome, I'll post updates as they come.
 
Wow out of all that I am REALLY suprised about that ram. Post a screen of cpu-z I wanna see how fast you got that ram running. For some cheapo shit thats pretty good.
 
ok, well, right now it's not at that. It got to that level around I think it was like 2.6GHz or something, now it's only at 355MHz which is still pretty good for cheapo RAM, it's starting to get unstable around 360-370MHz, so something with the bigger divider it has to use is making it less stable with a higher FSB.

Right now I'm just trying to figure out why when I put the thing in an open side case that it idles at 55C and loads at 66C instead of how it was doing with no case at 38C Idle and 62C load. Anyone have any thoughts for why it's doing that? The only thing I can think of is that it's not getting as good of contact being put on it's side since it's a rather heavy heatsink...but that doesn't make that much sense since it's bolted in there tighter than any heatsink Iv'e used before.
 
silly me, I just realized I turned off SpeedStep and C1E which would explain why the temps have jumped up...ok, well I still want to know why they aren't more like other people's temps at these speeds that I have seen...not fair.
 
Just found that my board was running BIOS 1101 and the most current is like 12xx so I updated that and the voltage control must be better or something on it because I am able to put it up at 3GHz w/ 1.3Vcore so I'm pretty happy so far with the new BIOS.

The bottle neck of this computer now is the RAM. I'm only running DDR2-667 right now so the RAM runs face first into a brick wall at 370MHZ (can go to 455MHz when FSB is lower)

So for this update I have updated the BIOS, pushed it to 333 x 9 so it's stable at 3Ghz now and the Load temps are still sub 60C around 58C-59C usually, idle temps with speedstep and C1E turned off are around 38C-40C.

The GeminII really shines, like everyone has said, in cooling the motherboard and RAM. My RAM can handle the full available voltage my motherboard can provide and remain cool to the touch which is like 2.45V or something from it's stock 1.8V so that's amazing and the motherboard remains solid at 27C usually.

I'll try to get some pictures here in a minute.
 
check your application, is that cooler an good?

using a zalman my 1.8 is at 2.7 running around 53 on fullload.
 
Ok, with the new BIOS, 3050 is the highest on stock voltages it will go, but it's 12 hours orthos stable so that's pretty damn good, loading at 61C idle in the sub 50C range.

I bumped the Vcore to 1.3500V and I now have it at 3.15 and so far so good, I think if this keeps up I may see 3.2-3.3 on this voltage level and the temps are well within exceptable for me. 62C under load and 50C at idle.

anyone with any water cooling experience? I am going to get water for this thing eventually I just wanted to see what it could do on air, but it is obvious that two things are now getting in the way of this overclock. The first thing is my RAM. DDR2-667 is not enough when I can't set the RAM manually with an older chipset like this 965 on my board. The other thing is that the temps above 1.4V get a bit exciting, load temps approach 68C under load and I would rather it not go above 65C. I was thinking of getting a custom DangerDen kit with a TDX block, D5 pump and X-Flow Black Ice Xtreme II radiator. Anyone have any better suggestions than that? I don't really need it to cool more than the processor so that's why I'm just getting the TDX block and a not a northbridge or gpu block.
 
and now I just set my computer to 350MHz using ClockGen and when I did that the computer couldn't handle it and it shutdown...ok normal...well then I booted back up and it was saying it was set to 1.8GHz...odd...I didn't reset it...Check BIOS...set to 333MHz like I had it...but reading as if it has a 200MHz FSB...this is VERy weird...I just tried resetting the BIOS by taking out the battery and we will see if that worked.

::EDIT::
let it sit for a few hours while I ran some errands and when I came back it accepted the settings again...I think I actually remember hearing somewhere that the 965 was prone to that happening if pushed to far to fast...idk though.
 
Ok, I have hit the FSB hole now. The RAM may still be a factor in the limit of 3200mhz, but I'm thinking that if I try what others have said about lowering the multiplier and putting the FSB to 400mhzz may provide me with stability again. The only trick then is to make sure the RAM is happy at the new speed since it is already 100mhz over stock.

::EDIT::
Ok, yea that didn't work at all, the computer didn't even book. But I loosened some of the minor timings a bit and upped the VDIMM to 2.4V and it went to 275mhz this time, but I don't think it's going any further on this RAM, I tried taking out the slower of the two dimms but hopefully this will go further now, but DDR2-800 is the least I think I will need to finish this...
 
Yup, RAM was still a factor in the OC. I tried upping the VDIMM to it's max of 2.45 and loosened the timings as far it would go without crashing and it's still a no go past 370. The only thing I can think of now is to remove the slower of the two DIMMs and run it that way with just a single channel 512MB stick in there rather then the 2 sticks to have dual channel with. It will give me a slower SuperPi score but at least I can get the overclock going more since the slower stick is only 533 and my faster stick is 667...maybe I can do 400MHz now?
 
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