A64 3500+ Winchester OC Results

U

unixadm

Gawd
Joined
Jun 13, 2002
Messages
560
Well I'm having mixxed feelings. I went ahead and bought the 3500+ from Monarch for $299 and a K8N Neo2 Platinum from Newegg. I'm using a Zalman 7000A-cu cooler right now, as my XP-120 needs to be lapped badly! It's horrible. However the XP-120 does fit the K8N Neo2 Platinum with no problems.

The processor is a Week 37.

Right now, I'm 24 hour Prime 95 stable at 260x10 for 2.6ghz. Voltage as indicated is 1.57 under load. Below that and it will error in Prime. I can't really get any stability past 2.6, no matter what voltage I throw at the CPU. Whether it's 11x238 or 10x261.. it will error. It will boot into Windows at 2.75 with no problems, but it's not stable. I'm doing all of my testing on my desk, with a spare 300 watt power supply (don't laugh, it's better than the 500 watt Allied I had on it earlier). Man it's nice not working inside of a case! The 12v rail drops to 11.82 as indicated by my Fluke DVOM under load. Not sure if if my main systems PC Power and Cooling 510 Deluxe will help in terms of pushing the CPU a bit further. I'm just running it with a single stick of Kingmax PC-2700, and a old 10gb Maxtor hard drive. 2.6ghz is nothing to complain about. Now that I kind of know the limit of the CPU, I'll be able to screw around with the memory this coming week when my second gig of PCZ 3200 EL Rev.2 shows up.

I was hoping for 2.66 ghz, as that would give me DDR533 with my OCZ 3200 EL Rev.2. I'll have to play around with the memory some, because at some points I'll be running 2gb for some of the stuff that I'm working on. If I can't get 100% stability in Prime95, then I'll have to fall back to slower speeds.

So far, this board has given me no problems at all. Easy to set up, runs good. No blue screens or anything like that. I had some lockups, but that I believe was attributed to my Allied 500 watt test power supply dropping the 12v rail under load to 11.49 volts. So far with this 300 watt Enhance power supply, I've had no lockups. Temps are decent, about 54C under full load, 40C idle.

Not sure it was worth the extra $80 or so over a 3200+ since most of those are hitting the same speeds.
 
For the most part, just because it's a 3500 doesn't gaurantee an OC like other people's 3500s. I'm sure you know that. YMMV is the best answer for that. Yes, you'd be better off switching out the ram with that new ram you are getting. But aside from that it looks like you've hit a pretty decent stopping point. I'm just wondering how you like your board? And how the performance is in general. I'm still debating on the motherboard I want so it's sort of giving me a hard time.
 
This is the first MSI board I've ever owned. I honestly never thought I'd buy a MSI because I've never read all that many good things about them. But I said the same about DFI too.. and times change. So far, it's given me no problems at all. I have sitting here a Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, a DFI Lanparty UT 250gb and now this MSI K9N Neo2. I think the DFI board is really nice and it has been rock solid. It's what I'm using today, but I got the itch to go to S939 when the new 90nm chips came out. The nice thing is that when you overclock too far or make a mistake, it will boot you back into the bios. On the DFI, I gotta clear the CMOS to get back in no matter what button (insert, etc) I press while booting.

I have not used the MSI day in and day out like the DFI as it's just in testing right now. I took advantage of having all of this hardware to know the limits of the setup before I drop it into my case. That way I'm not screwing up the OS and stuff. I can just set it and go.

With bios 1.3, beta 6 again - no serious problems to speak of. The only things I've noticed are:

1. The voltage reporting isn't very accurate (no shock there)
2. The temperature reporting seems to be off, at leeast for the system temperature
3. The voltage adjustment isn't as fine tuned as I would have liked. I would prefer more VDIMM and a more variable setting on the vcore without having to use the Windows CORE utility.

My DFI reports incorrect temps and voltages too, so again I'm not shocked by this. Considering I'm just using left over parts for the most part here, it's been running rock solid. Once my other gig of memory shows up, I'll drop it in and start testing that aspect of the system. Once I get to that point, I'll drop in my old Ti4600 and loop 3dmark for 24 hours with Prime running to make sure it's stable. If it passes that, it will pass anything. Then I'll pull the DFI and swap this board in it's place and call it a day for the next 6-8 months until I get an itch for SLI. :)
 
Hey, unixadm-

Make sure you aren't using SATA ports 1-2. Using 3-4 will give a better OC in many cases with that board.

B
 
i have a 130nm CG stepping s939 3500+ (CG is 130nm right?) running at standard 2.2ghz on the same board as yours, with 2x512 corsair pc3200 value ram with a 2.5 CAS. So far im really loving it, having come up from a 1.5ghz intel system. Im just curious, what performance gaming wise have you seen with your overclock?
 
brentsg said:
Hey, unixadm-

Make sure you aren't using SATA ports 1-2. Using 3-4 will give a better OC in many cases with that board.

B
Click to expand...

I doubt he'd be able to get past 230-240 HTT in the first place on SATA 1-2. unless he's got some kind of super hdd :p
 
ReNeGaDe* said:
I doubt he'd be able to get past 230-240 HTT in the first place on SATA 1-2. unless he's got some kind of super hdd :p
Click to expand...

Good point! Forget I said anything!!!

Today's not my day. I was going to order the 3500+ 90mn and the MSI board last week but I didn't and now Newegg is out of stock. Had to pay an extra $14 on the MB b/c I'm impatient.

B
 
Well I got my XP-120 lapped (It needs a little more work, but damn after 2-3 hours working on the thing... it was good enough to do some testing). One thing I've noticed is I dislike AS5. To me, it's just a bit too thick. So I went with some AS2 that I found recently. I even found a tube of AS3!

With the XP-120 and a Sanyo Denki 120/38mm fan at 1/2 speed, my load temperature is 56C and the heatsink is cool to the touch. I'm wondering if my lapping job is good or if the heatpipes are working correctly because you would think it would be a little bit warm. But it's running cooler than the Zalman 7000A-Cu so the heat is going somewhere. With the Zalman I was seeing about 61C under load at 2.61ghz. I also have moved up to 2.62ghz (262x10) and it's been Prime95 stable for 13 hours so far at 1.63v indicated. I'll push up to 1.7v into this chip.

Still running the 300 watt PSU. :)

For those asking about the SATA ports and such, I'm not using SATA on this system yet. It will eventually be combined with the parts listed in my sig and replace my DFI Lanparty UT 250gb. I did my homework before buying and doing OS installs and overclocking and have never had any corruption problems since I started out with ports 3 and 4 on that board as well.
 
I ran into a problem with this system. A couple of days ago, while I was at work the board and chip were sitting on my desk, running Prime95. When I came home, I noticed it had failed after 14 hours or so. I didn't know what to think, so I restarted Prime and it failed within like 5 minutes. I shut down, unplugged everything and plugged it back in. After doing that, it still was failing Prime95 - usually not completing more than 2-3 tests. Mind you, everything had ran Prime95 for over 24 hours without an issue at the exact same settings.

I got my OCZ 3200EL Rev.2 and dropped it in replacing the single 256mb stick of Kingmax DDR333 I had been testing with. Same deal, it failed Prime. I screwed around with the votlages, even upping them to 1.67 and it still failed. One thing I did notice was the power supply was making a bit of an odd noise, like a crackling noise. It would crackle with the hard drive was accessed, and would make odd noises while the CPU was under load. Being that I work on this stuff everday for a living, that's NEVER a good sign. However, I swapped power supplies and while it didn't make any noises, I had the same problem. So I put the 300 watt enhance back on the board this morning, swapped the heatsink with a SLK-900U and had the same problem. Shut down and went to work.

Pissed - I was getting ready to toss the board and chip into the street and go do a burnout on it! All I thought is possibly, either the motherboard was beginning to fail or the CPU was degrading. But while I was at work today, I decided to grab an old Geforce 2 GTS 32mb card (Dell pull) to replace the TNT M64 I was testing with. I also decided to reinstall the XP-120 again.

When I had the heatsink off, I decided to pull the CPU from the board. What I found that potentially was the problem is that a little of that Arctic Silver 2 I had been using, ran down the side of the CPU and somehow contacted one of the pins. Now this could have happened when I removed the CPU.. but I dunno. I cleaned up the CPU, reseated it, put on a thin layer of Arctic Silver 5 and reinstalled the XP-120.

Booted up with the new video card and reseated CPU and had no odd noises from the PSU. Cool - start running Prime. So far, it's been running for over 90 minutes. Load temp is about 57C.

Hopefully she keeps on running Prime95 again and it was just a stupid problem with a bad CPU connection or a little Arctic Silver where it should not have been - or perhaps that video card is dying as I had jacked the passive heatsink from it a couple of years ago - lol.

Tomorrow I'll start testing with the second gig of 3200 EL Rev.2.
 
So you were getting up to 61C w/zalman 7000alcu @2.6? Thats a little hotter than I had hoped, I am planning on basically the same setup, cept 3000+, so might run even a little hotter.... With the zalman was your fan speed all the way up?

Edit: also, do you have high ambient temps?
 
I can't believe you had to lap your XP-120. Mine was perfect from the factory, if anything my proc was a little in need of a lap dance.Also I found AS Ceramique alot better than AS-5, I tried both I didn't like the thickness of AS-5 either. With the Ceramique, my temps were exactly the same as the AS-5 without the mess or the sticky thickness of the latter.With a modest overclock my temps run 45deg idle to 53deg load.
 
Excellent work on the overclocking. I have these parts on order currently and have a question about the bad temp readings.

How much are they off by? It seems that running anything over 50C is just way too warm.
 
haroldmeyer said:
I can't believe you had to lap your XP-120. Mine was perfect from the factory, if anything my proc was a little in need of a lap dance.Also I found AS Ceramique alot better than AS-5, I tried both I didn't like the thickness of AS-5 either. With the Ceramique, my temps were exactly the same as the AS-5 without the mess or the sticky thickness of the latter.With a modest overclock my temps run 45deg idle to 53deg load.
Click to expand...


agree with you on that, i too prefer AS Ceramique over AS5.....AS 5 was so thick on my A64 that it pulled the CPU off with the HS, witch isnt cool at all..
 
haroldmeyer said:
I can't believe you had to lap your XP-120. Mine was perfect from the factory, if anything my proc was a little in need of a lap dance.Also I found AS Ceramique alot better than AS-5, I tried both I didn't like the thickness of AS-5 either. With the Ceramique, my temps were exactly the same as the AS-5 without the mess or the sticky thickness of the latter.With a modest overclock my temps run 45deg idle to 53deg load.
Click to expand...

Believe it. :) The bottom was extremely concaved on my XP-120, however I did get one of the first ones released. I checked it using a razor blade and it was very easy to see. I'm going to try an XP-90 and if that does not cool good enough, I'll go water.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top