Help me OC my abit AN-7 board if you can.

[DFI Daishi]

those temps are fine, and as you said, likely to get better once you have the SI-97 on there.

i typed that thinking that you were running something like a stock cooler on there.

i know that running where i am at 1.95 really heats up my mosfets, though. you might want to stick some BGA ramsinks on you 'fets with some thermal epoxy - thermal paste blend. it can help somooth out voltages and reduce voltage sag when you are running for long periods of time. they look pretty cool as well.

 

[fenderltd]

can you show me some of these products and what they look like installed so I can get a better idea? Thanks!
and for stability, I will let you know, I just achieved the clock this morning before work!

 

[DFI Daishi]

http://www.tweakmonster.com/products/ramsinkpage.htm
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_thermal_adhesive.htm
http://www.arcticsilver.com/as5.htm

i used 6 BGA sinks, but 3 standard/REV. 4 sinks would fit a little bit better.

first, clean everything up nicely with iso alchohol. then, you blend the expoxy about 50-50 with the normal thermal paste, and then put some on the tops of the mosfets, some on the bottoms of the ramsinks, and just press and hold the ramsinks in place until the epoxy starts to firm up. put the sinks on with the board flat to the ground (case on it's side works pretty well) and leave it in that oritentation for at least a few hours (preferably over night) so the epoxy can harden. if you do it this way, you can then take the ramsinks off again if you have to, contrary to the warnings about epoxy being permanent.

i can't do pics right now, because i don't have my camera handy, or my sister's premission to open up her case so i can take pics of ones that are actually on an AN7.

 

[fenderltd]

if you could pics of the an7 that would be sweet. so its basically like jb-weld? ok let me check it out

 

[feanor1024]

s939 a64 will most likely be my next upgrade, when i can afford it.

i think that throwing more money at socketA is pretty silly at this point.

And other than (actually working) DFI boards, you can't really expect much more than 200mhz FSB even on a multiplier unlocked CPU.

i will port my cooling solution over and OC my a64, when i can make the move up, but i expect my biggest performance gain will be the ability to drop something like a X800XL vid card in there.

Yeah, I saw a huge gain when I went from my 8500LE to a 6800GT (as in I could actually play games).

ram is from 2.6 to 2.8V

If your RAM is the kind that likes high voltage, you could try upping it to lower the timings.

i hope that you realize that your are drastically shortening the life of your proc if you're running such high voltages, and you're shortening it even more if you are letting your temps go above 60.

My first mobile only lasted 3-4 months at 1.8v (under an SP-97 and a Vantec Tornado 92mm), but I've heard some ppl claim to have run them at 2.1v for a year on just air cooling. On the upside, if your CPU dies, that's an excuse to get one of
these.

i used 6 BGA sinks, but 3 standard/REV. 4 sinks would fit a little bit better.

I sinked the MOSFETs on my NF7-S, but BGA sinks wouldn't fit so I had to pull out the dremel. If I had to do it again (which I might since I haven't sinked my AN7), I'd go w/ ones specifically for MOSFETs and PLLs such as
these.

first, clean everything up nicely with iso alchohol. then, you blend the expoxy about 50-50 with the normal thermal paste, and then put some on the tops of the mosfets, some on the bottoms of the ramsinks, and just press and hold the ramsinks in place until the epoxy starts to firm up. put the sinks on with the board flat to the ground (case on it's side works pretty well) and leave it in that oritentation for at least a few hours (preferably over night) so the epoxy can harden. if you do it this way, you can then take the ramsinks off again if you have to, contrary to the warnings about epoxy being permanent.

I wish I had thought of that. Do you think it would work mixing these two in case you're a klutz like me and likely to get some on the board? How hard is it to get them off and clean it if you do that?

if you could pics of the an7 that would be sweet. so its basically like jb-weld? ok let me check it out

Here's my NF7-S sinked:

 

[DFI Daishi]

i have not tried the alumina adhesive, but i know that arctic silver adhesive and ceramic or AS5 or AS3 work that way.

i actually put a gob of regular epoxy on each mosfet pin bank to insulate the pins, and then did not worry about having a little of the marginally conductive thermal stuff smear here or there.

alternately you could take some stiff plastic of the sort used in food packages and make six little shields that are big enough to cover mosfet and pins, with cutouts for the chip package to poke through, and put one on each mosfet before going in with the epoxy. you'd need a good hand with an exacto knife but.......

the tweakmonster rev4s should fit nicely, if you put them on a diagonal such that each one rev4 covers two mosfets. they are something like 3mm shorter than a pair of BGA sinks, and the two BGAs in that orientation were about 2mm longer than ideal.

you do nice work, feanor. my stuff is typically culdged together and looks like it. it is only after the fact that i wise up and think of a nice, clean way of doing things.

 

[mavalpha]

This is gonna be fun. I just tried out the TicTac BIOS you suggested, and it actually does worse than the stock DFI BIOS I had before (the most recent, I don't know the date- 11/04?). Before, I had 2435MHz (11x221). Now anything about 2365 fails MemTest, I haven't even tried Prime-ing yet. I've even flashed back to the DFI BIOS and I can't get it back up where it was! At least it wasn't a total loss, my CPU runs the same speeds as before with voltages dropped .25-.5V!

Oh boy, another long weekend in front of the blue screen for me...

 

[DFI Daishi]

This is gonna be fun. I just tried out the TicTac BIOS you suggested, and it actually does worse than the stock DFI BIOS I had before (the most recent, I don't know the date- 11/04?). Before, I had 2435MHz (11x221). Now anything about 2365 fails MemTest, I haven't even tried Prime-ing yet. I've even flashed back to the DFI BIOS and I can't get it back up where it was! At least it wasn't a total loss, my CPU runs the same speeds as before with voltages dropped .25-.5V!

Oh boy, another long weekend in front of the blue screen for me...

what you need first is a tinfoil hat.
once you have that, the rest isn't too bad.
clear CMOS, load optimized, boot it to floppy, restart, set everything where it should be, boot to floppy, double flash it (there is a command line switch for that) with the /CC command switch as well.
do a dance and offer a sacrifice while the flash is underway (a few drops of you blood is a good start)
restart, load optimized, boot to floppy, restart, set everything where it should be, normal boot, another dance while windows trys to load, and then try to OC again.

don't you just love owning a DFI board?

 

[mavalpha]

what you need first is a tinfoil hat.
once you have that, the rest isn't too bad.
clear CMOS, load optimized, boot it to floppy, restart, set everything where it should be, boot to floppy, double flash it (there is a command line switch for that) with the /CC command switch as well.
do a dance and offer a sacrifice while the flash is underway (a few drops of you blood is a good start)
restart, load optimized, boot to floppy, restart, set everything where it should be, normal boot, another dance while windows trys to load, and then try to OC again.

don't you just love owning a DFI board?

ROTFLMAO!!

...Wait a second...

...You are kidding, aren't you? (And I don't just mean about the sacrifice or hat parts, which are obvious)

 

[DFI Daishi]

ROTFLMAO!!

...Wait a second...

...You are kidding, aren't you? (And I don't just mean about the sacrifice or hat parts, which are obvious)

why would i joke about it when the truth is funny enough?

you're talking to someone who had the 4leds of death the very first time that he tried to power his lanparty.

it took over 8 hours of troubleshooting, a hotflash and a PCI videocard to make this beastie take it's very first breath.

tinfoil hats and blood sacrifices are the LEAST of what i have had to do to keep this thing alive for this long.

 

[mavalpha]

The more I hear about your board, the more I think it was put together by a gremlin with a grudge against you, the day after being run over by a parts cart or truck at the DFI factory. You should write them a letter suggesting that they do a facilities sweep for a furry little animal with a bad attitude, a penchant for mischief, and a semi-flattened tail.

Seriously, why'd you keep it after all that? I would definitely have demanded an exchange if half an hour of troubleshooting didn't fix it. (This is before even trying to heatsink or solder anything myself.)

 

[DFI Daishi]

i had to explicitly agree with the retailer before purchasing this board that i knew and understood that they would not deal with ANY RMA claims on DFI product, ever, under any circumstances. they have had a LOT of problems with DFI product and DFI staff.

they did not reccomend this product.
they would not exchange this product.
they wiped their hands of both the board and me.

to get a replacement from DFI, even if i overnight shipped the board to them, DFI only uses standard post on international claims, and that would have meant a wait of 6-8 weeks, in my experience.

just for a baseline: i can ship standard in canada within 3 days. i can get something to or from italy or finland within a week.

as soon as USPS and US customs are involved: over a month and a half shipping time, even without an ocean in between us.

 

[mavalpha]

just for a baseline: i can ship standard in canada within 3 days. i can get something to or from italy or finland within a week.

as soon as USPS and US customs are involved: over a month and a half shipping time, even without an ocean in between us.

Do you speak Taiwanese? Alternatively, speak to a US manager for the name/number of an English-speaking manager at the Taiwan office/HQ. I guess international calling rates would be a deterrent for that?

 

[DFI Daishi]

it might or might not work: the US office is supposed to deal with all north american claims (pretty sure central and south america as well), so if the manager felt like following the rules, then i would be SOL.

and no, i do not speak any languages other than english and french (of the basic-level customer service variety)

 

[fenderltd]

thanks for the pics!! and laughs today!!

 

[fenderltd]

Oh yeah.. So in those pics I posted of my bios screens, do you see anything I could change?

 

[mavalpha]

Try tightening the timings on your RAM, for starters. Remember that for nForce2, ideal timings are low-low-low-11 (as in, 2-2-2-11). You can even add a little voltage if you need to, up to 3V should be fine if your board lets you run 2.9V. You can drop your AGP back down to 1.5V (default), you don't gain anything by upping if your card has its own power connector. Also, a 200FSB is well within the chipsets specs, so you can drop your northbridge voltage back to 1.5V (again, default). Oh, and it doesn't hurt to make your BIOS and VBIOS cacheable- mine always are.

 

[fenderltd]

thanks a lot will make the changes!

ok...this is what I got now,
I tried 2 2 2 11 but no go...

2.5
3
3
11

2.9v

1:1 ratio

 

[feanor1024]

Oh, and it doesn't hurt to make your BIOS and VBIOS cacheable- mine always are.

You might want to check these out. It would probably be best to benchmark with them on and off to see what's best.

ok...this is what I got now,
I tried 2 2 2 11 but no go...

2.5
3
3
11

2.9v

You don't have to jump down to 2-2-2-11 all at once. You can try changing one timing at a time such as changing it to 2.5-3-2-11. If your RAM chips can handle it you can also up the voltage. Mine only do 2-3-3-6 at 2.9v but they do 2-2-2-6 at 3.0v.

 

[fenderltd]

thanks!

 

[mavalpha]

You don't have to jump down to 2-2-2-11 all at once. You can try changing one timing at a time such as changing it to 2.5-3-2-11. If your RAM chips can handle it you can also up the voltage. Mine only do 2-3-3-6 at 2.9v but they do 2-2-2-6 at 3.0v.

Right you are, I presumed he knew that.
O/T: If you can run them at 3.0V, why do you have 3.1V in your sig? (BTW, isn't Blue Line BH-x?)

 

[feanor1024]

Right you are, I presumed he knew that.
O/T: If you can run them at 3.0V, why do you have 3.1V in your sig? (BTW, isn't Blue Line BH-x?)

At 3.00v I can run them at 205mhz, at 3.05v 210mhz, and at 3.10v at least 220mhz. My motherboard won't do 225mhz at any chipset voltage. They're UTT, which I believe I've read are now assumed to be CH5. I didn't want to wait for the Twinmos Speed Premium DDR433 which is guaranteed BH5.