P5B Deluxe OCing

[StudioXcel]

I am overclocking my rig (see sig) and I seem to have hit a wall. I am stable at 410 FSB with RAM at 820, but if I push any further I am unstable.

I have recently found that one of my DIMMs is crap. It is what's holding me back. With the other DIMM, I can get up to 430-ish FSB stable. The problem lies with heat from the NB. It gets very hot when I start upping it's voltage, which, unfortunately, is also the way to make the memory more stable. As the temperature rises (to the point where I can't hold the heatsink), the memory errors repeatedly.

Is this a very common issue? What fixes do you recommend? I have tried hundreds of configurations in the BIOS, but nothing is helping. I am debating water cooling for the NB especially, in the hopes that it allows me to pass this bottleneck.

On another note... Since one of my DIMMs sucks so bad (can't exceed DDR2-820), I may be returning the pair and going with some higher quality stuff. I'll go for 2GB using Micron chips. Any suggestions for RAM choice? I am thinking Team Xtreem DDR2-667.

Thanks in advance,
- StudioXcel

 

[bail_w]

Adding a 40mm fan on the northbridge and southbridge or change them to aftermarket cooler.

 

[mindstormsguy]

I am having, essentially, the same issue with my rig. I also am seriously considering watercooling (with the northbridge in the loop). My only question is this: is the bottleneck really the northbridge (and its temperature)? So many other people seem to be getting much higher FSB on this board with stock NB cooling. Granted, the Scythe Infinity does pass very little air over the NB cooler compaired to many traditional styled CPU heatsinks.