Voltage drop killing me, help!

[n64man120]

On stock cooling, my P4 2.8C is stable @ 230fsb and 1.5625Vcore in BIOS. If I bump it up to 233 fsb however I cant get prime to last more than 10 minutes. When I lift my Vcore to 1.7, it droops hardcore under load back to the 1.56V range. How can I get my system stable past 230FSB?

 

[cornelious0_0]

On stock cooling, my P4 2.8C is stable @ 230fsb and 1.5625Vcore in BIOS. If I bump it up to 233 fsb however I cant get prime to last more than 10 minutes. When I lift my Vcore to 1.7, it droops hardcore under load back to the 1.56V range. How can I get my system stable past 230FSB?

This is why I had to get rid of my P4C800-E DLX a good while ago, because the entire line seems to suffer from this voltage drop. There is a (soldering the motherboard required) mod called the "droop mod" to fix this voltage dropoff, but if you're not willing to risk killing your mobo to solder a wire and pot to a couple small points on the board then you're gonna be stuck with that severe votlage dropoff.

I'm sorry to but in here early and rain on your parade, but you dont need to bother looking into any other causes or solutions related to the voltage dip...as it's a well known issue with basically the entire P4C and P4P line of boards.

 

[n64man120]

Thanks for the good explanation, I might try the mod. I've soldered a modchip into an xbox before so this shouldnt be much more difficult or risky (probably less ) ... anyways I'll look into that, gettin my XP-120 for xmas

 

[cornelious0_0]

Thanks for the good explanation, I might try the mod. I've soldered a modchip into an xbox before so this shouldnt be much more difficult or risky (probably less ) ... anyways I'll look into that, gettin my XP-120 for xmas

I gotta run so I don't have time to go digging for a link....but run over to www.xtremesystems.org and do a search for "droop mod" and you should come across enough information to get you on your way, or at least help you decide if you wanna do it or not.

Good luck to ya, I'm out.

 

[n64man120]

I read into it but theres no clear cut guides. I suppose I could figure out where the points are soldered, theres pics. But idk how changing the resistance of the vr effects drooop and whatnot.

Also, how would I go about checking the core voltage with a multimeter rather than the damn software?

 

[cornelious0_0]

I read into it but theres no clear cut guides. I suppose I could figure out where the points are soldered, theres pics. But idk how changing the resistance of the vr effects drooop and whatnot.

Also, how would I go about checking the core voltage with a multimeter rather than the damn software?

Hmm, I honestly can't remember where the readpoint is on the mobo for your CPU voltage. Hmmm.....

 

[Rix2357]

doing the droop mod will make the p4c and p4p motherboards really shine on overclocking prescotts. I didn't do it before and I could only overclock a 3.0ghz prescott to about 220mhz, which is really shitty. Afterwards, I was able to do 255fsb, and would have been able to keep on doing it if I hadn't put too much voltage through my chip. It still runs now, but only at 245mhz fsb stable.

As far as the mod goes, it's much harder that soldering on a PS mod chip. I don't know if you've ever looked at the board itself, but you basically have to solder a VR onto one of the tiny little "nubs" on the board (it's actually a capacitor). Depending on whether you have a revision 1 or revision 2, the resistance you have to use might be different, so a VR is a better option, since you can adjust it in windows and tweak it the best, but even if you get it wrong, the voltage still won't drop as much as before. I believe the guide said 28k ohms resistanc was the best, but I found from my own testing that 8k ohms was better. I'm sure the windows program isn't the best way to test for the actual voltage, but I think that it will test for variations in voltage well enough.

 

[n64man120]

One question, did you mean its much harder than soldering on a modchip? And sidenote it was an xbox with like 10 points to solder, most are standard but one is called D0 and its about the size of a grain of sand... so theres no way its easier than soldering to a capacitor. Anyways thanks for the information...

I'd still like to know where to read the voltages if anyone knows, google betrayed me

 

[cornelious0_0]

One question, did you mean its much harder than soldering on a modchip? And sidenote it was an xbox with like 10 points to solder, most are standard but one is called D0 and its about the size of a grain of sand... so theres no way its easier than soldering to a capacitor. Anyways thanks for the information...

I'd still like to know where to read the voltages if anyone knows, google betrayed me

Here's some decent pics with explanations of what to solder where, but I could have sworn there was something SOMEwhere on XS about where to read the voltage if you go digging.

 

[n64man120]

ok thanks

Edit: I have a p4p800 rather than a p4c800, is the basic circuit layout the same?

 

[cornelious0_0]

ok thanks

Edit: I have a p4p800 rather than a p4c800, is the basic circuit layout the same?

Opps, sry...here's the main page, didn't know you couldnt back up from that link.....the P4P seems to be slightly different, but not really that much more difficult.