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Better PSU, worse overclock?

V

verylostindeed

Gawd
Joined
Dec 27, 2004
Messages
660
I just swapped my Bluestorm 500w PSU for a new BFG Tech ES-800, which I got a pretty nice deal on. Prior to installing the new PSU, I had my Q6600 running prime stable at 3.34ghz (9x370). Motherboard is an ASUS p5k vanilla, vcore set at 1.415 in the bios (substantially lower in windows -- I think the p5k undervoltes). Anyway, vdroop was pretty bad beyond that speed with the Bluestorm, and I thought maybe the ES-800 would help to improve things a bit.

After playing around with the ES-800, I just couldn't quite get it to be stable with a voltage I was comfortable with above 3.34ghz. Low and behold, however, going back to my original stable settings with the Bluestorm, Core #3 now craps out on prime95. Indeed, even upping the voltage significantly doesn't not appear to help the situation with that core.

Any thoughts on what might be going on here?
 
Have you done the pencil mod on your board yet? I have a vanilla P5k and before the pencil mod the vdroop on it was horrible. Before the mod, it dropped close to .1 volts in CPU-z from bios. After mod it was closer to .01 drop. Huge improvement. If you haven't done it yet, I highly recommend that you do, I will really help with your stability issues. Just go to Staples, buy a 2B pencil for a few bucks and then shade this resistor.


http://img527.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p5kvmrq0.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/070913/100_0392.jpg
 
Johnny78 said:
Have you done the pencil mod on your board yet? I have a vanilla P5k and before the pencil mod the vdroop on it was horrible. Before the mod, it dropped close to .1 volts in CPU-z from bios. After mod it was closer to .01 drop. Huge improvement. If you haven't done it yet, I highly recommend that you do, I will really help with your stability issues. Just go to Staples, buy a 2B pencil for a few bucks and then shade this resistor.


http://img527.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p5kvmrq0.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/070913/100_0392.jpg
Click to expand...

Hmm. No, I haven't done the pencil mod. I might give that a try, thanks for the recommendation. Still not sure why it'd get any worse by upgrading to a superior PSU, though.
 
You older power supply might have been supplying cleaner voltage than the new power supply.

Voltage ripple/noise can affect stability quite a bit.
 
verylostindeed said:
After playing around with the ES-800, I just couldn't quite get it to be stable with a voltage I was comfortable with above 3.34ghz. Low and behold, however, going back to my original stable settings with the Bluestorm, Core #3 now craps out on prime95. Indeed, even upping the voltage significantly doesn't not appear to help the situation with that core.

Any thoughts on what might be going on here?
Click to expand...

Well its not like the BFG would have damaged your hardware in any manner. Since you went back to the original PSU still results in a failure, I would not blame the PSU. Sounds like you OC just was not as stable as you thought to begin with, or you were pushing the absolute limit and the voltage is degrading you CPU now. It is rare but it happens, sometimes when you push things as hard as they can go, you get premature wear which kills your OC.
 
verylostindeed said:
Motherboard is an ASUS p5k vanilla, vcore set at 1.415 in the bios (substantially lower in windows -- I think the p5k undervoltes).
Click to expand...

I got that happening to me also. I think the problem is either the software doesnt pick up the higher voltage and tops out at a number even if you set a higher one in the bios. What I found out was if you look in ur asus bios, there is a place where it reports the vcore at any given time. I think its under system information. It is also where it reports 5V, 12V, and cpu temperature there too. If that matches up with what you set it at, I think you're good to go. Unless im mistaken, please correct me.
 
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I have not gone back to the Bluestorm; I am simply using the BFG with the same settings I had running stable with the Bluestorm.

I too doubt that the BFG damages my chip. It could be that my trying to push it too hard degraded the chip a bit. It may also be that my initial overclock was not as stable as I thought, but I'd be surprised if that is the case.

I'll drop the vdroop mod tonight. It looks like a lot of people have had success with that.

ocellaris said:
Well its not like the BFG would have damaged your hardware in any manner. Since you went back to the original PSU still results in a failure, I would not blame the PSU. Sounds like you OC just was not as stable as you thought to begin with, or you were pushing the absolute limit and the voltage is degrading you CPU now. It is rare but it happens, sometimes when you push things as hard as they can go, you get premature wear which kills your OC.
Click to expand...
 
Just an update: doing the pencil mod produced tremendous results. First, it eliminated undervolting at idle. Second, it all but did away with vdroop. That has led to a great increase in stability overall, and I can now push this chip a bit more.

Thanks for the tip; great mod.
 
Glad to hear that worked for you. Doing that simple mod worked wonders for me as well. In the overclocking game, it's all about getting that power to the CPU.
 
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