OC Help on i7 920 Air

D

davewolfs

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 7, 2006
Messages
338
Hey everyone,

Been running my system @ 3.8 on air but for some reason as of late I've had a little bit of stability issues. Looking back I don't think I ever ran the system through a torture test and just assumed that it worked well if I could run it @ 100% for 10-20 minutes.

Anyhow this clearly was not a good test so I've moved onto using OCCT and ensuring that my system can do a 3 hour 100% load without issues.

I am using 12GB of memory and have an Asus WS Revolution.

So far, the most stable OC seems to be a BCLK of 200 with a 17 multiplier. My voltage is set to 1.25 and my QPI is set to 1.35 (anything less has not been stable). With these settings my temps don't go above 71.

Now I have tried going up to 3.8 (even 3.6) using a slower BCLK but it seems that I require a significant jump in voltage i.e. going from 1.25 to say 1.35. Clearly for an air setup this causes a significant jump in heat.

With that said, is this to be expected? Could this simply be a limitation of my chip? Right now I am looking for decent speeds but without a doubt I need my system to be up 100% 24/7 and be rock stable.

I appreciate any input.
 
have you increased your memory voltage any? if you're running 6x2gb ram you'll probably need to raise it a bit for stability, esp. if you're overclocking.

edit: also what do your load temps on your cores look like?
 
Memory is 1.65 volts for DDR3 1600 use - using corsair dominators. Temp's are 40 Idle 69-72 full load.
 
I don't have all my voltage details handy but I can tell you those temps are just fine for full load. I can't remember what my volts are (I think my vcore was 1.305) but 1.25 is pretty good so bumping it up a tad might not be such a bad thing if your temps stay where they are.

Another thing to keep in mind is filling all your RAM slots can make overclocking a little more tricky, stability wise.
Are you BSODing when you crash, and if so, whats the error message? This can actually help us track down what component needs a voltage bump.
 
Hrm, I don't recall the BSOD details. I'll take note next time.

Part of the reason why I'd prefer not to get past 1.325 is that it seems to get my cpu temps going from say 70 @ max to 80+.

Could any of you who are running at 3.8 share what settings allowed you to achieve the highest OC with the minimum amount of voltage. Again my 100% priority is stability, so given that I might just end up staying at 3.4 since this is easily achieved with low voltages.
 
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