I7-860 overclock problems

[medoomi]

SYSTEM:
CPU: Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
RAM: OCZ Platinum 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
GPU: EVGA 01G-P3-N964-LR GeForce 9600 GSO 1GB 128-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP
PSU: SeaSonic X750 Gold 750W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V V2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS
OS: Windows 7 64 Bit
(Here's the link to the thread for the machine build: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/275415-31-advice-photoshop-system)

OVERCLOCKING:
At the moment I'm on the following settings:
CPU @ 180Mhz, 20x multiplier = 3600Mhz
Vcore @ 1.2, Vtt/QPI @ 1.190
RAM @ 8x = 1440, timings, 7-7-7-24 (at 1.64V)
CPU temp sits around 70C running Prime95

The system seems stable on Prime95 running small FFT's, however, when I switch over to the Blended test, it shuts down totally after about 5 minutes. Last time it shut down on Prime, I could smell a burnt smell which freaked me out (CPU cores were only around 70C). Once it had crashed, I had to hold down the power button for 5 seconds before it would boot (does that point to a circuit breaker tripping?). I have no BSOD's, no minidumps, and just a generic "Kernel-power" in event viewer as the "critical error" to go on.

Any clues on what I should change first?

 

[RJR]

OK, where to start:

First, remove your HSF and CPU and look at both to make sure there wasn't any damage (burnt smell=NG).

While you have your HSF off take a look at the MOSFET's since on the "budget" boards they don't supply any cooling (=not good for OCing).

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If everything looks good and nothing is burned, Try to up your vtt (8 GB's of ram populating all slots is a lot harder to stabilize).

Good luck.

 

[notty22]

I would say that you errors in prime 95 are from you memory timings.
Change them to 9-9-9-30
Yes you can probably get them a little tighter, maybe 8-8-8 but your running what would be good timings for 1333 and your at 1440 testing out a o/c. you want to be able to know where your weak point is. At 3800 at that voltage that could be your problem to. So you need to start somewhere and eliminate blue screen errors from ram.

 

[medoomi]

If everything looks good and nothing is burned, Try to up your vtt (8 GB's of ram populating all slots is a lot harder to stabilize).

OK, checked out the MOSFET's, and three of them have small bumps on the surface... & one larger IC (TSB43AB23) closer to the second PCIx16 slot has what seems like a small burn.

What's with that!

Highest Vcore I ever hit was 1.25, I kept VTT under 1.21, and CPU temps were always below 75C.

I haven't checked out the CPU yet. What's the chance that it could have a burn on it... Or are we just talking about a board that's incapable of overclocking?

the bumps on the MOSFET's are small, but they sure look like they don't belong there.

 

[RJR]

Sounds like RMA time, see if you can get them to upgrade you (probably require a little cash on your end) to a little better board with heat sinks on the MOSFET's. When you have the CPU out you can check that also, but I don't think you did any damage to it, they are pretty tough.

 

[medoomi]

Thanks again.

Any suggestions on which board would be a good one to go with? I'm using the computer for my business (photography), so I really need something that's not going to burn out (I'm half tempted now just to keep it at stock speeds).

 

[RJR]

Can't really blame you there, all I can tell you is that I have the UD4P and have had my 860 up to 4.6 GHz without a problem (just a little over recommended voltages). If I was going to buy a new one right now it would be an ASUS P7P55D-E pro (but that's just a personal choice, Lotes socket & clamp, sata6, usb3) but any $150 and up you shouldn't have any problems with.

 

[medoomi]

I noticed that even with the GA-P55-USB3 (going for $119 at newegg), it has heatsinks over the MOSFET's.

Is that a good indicator that the board will take more punishment?

 

[RJR]

It would definitely be better than what you had.

Also, you are using a Nvidia Gfx card, if there are any thoughts of maybe going SLI anytime in the future the usb3 won't work, it only seems to support CF.

 

[antiloop]

Can't really blame you there, all I can tell you is that I have the UD4P and have had my 860 up to 4.6 GHz without a problem (just a little over recommended voltages). If I was going to buy a new one right now it would be an ASUS P7P55D-E pro (but that's just a personal choice, Lotes socket & clamp, sata6, usb3) but any $150 and up you shouldn't have any problems with.

your config appears to me almost the same as mine and here is my system config.

Intel Core™i7 Lynnfield @ 3.8Ghz (BIOS 1.3V) - Its an 860
Gigabyte® GA-P55A-UD3P - Bios F6a
Sapphire Vapor-X™ HD5770 - Stock Running on CCC 10.1
Corsair DDR3|XMP|8GB - 4 x 2 GB (1600 XMP , Stock 1333 )
C.M® Silent Pro M700 - 700watts 80 plus
Win7 Ultimate x64

In order to get all stable in Prime running 12 hours , i had to set the following:

Speed @ 3.8 ghz
PLL - 1.9v
QPI/Vtt - 1.29v
CPU - 1.3v
RAM - Currently at 1448 mhz as the ratio set is limitting me from going higher, 1.6 V at 9-9-9-24

I tried to ramp my settings up to 4Ghz but it kept BSODing on me or 1 - 3 threads in prime would fail.
Voltages were set to auto with no joy. I increased the vtt to 1.31 and no luck on that too. Would you know what could be holding me back ?

cheers

 

[medoomi]

OK, I woke up today, and the computer won't boot POST. It powers on for half a second & repeatedly cycles in attempts to boot.

So, I'm off to buy a new motherboard. As I'm in Canada at the moment, the only one immediately available (that I trust) is the GA-P55-UD5, so it should prove a fair bit more sturdy than the UD2.

Here's a question for those who have done this:
Can I just swap the motherboards & update the Audio/INF/LAN drivers? (I've previously kept the SATA controller on the windows driver as this supports TRIM on my Intel G25-M SSD, so I don't think this will need updating)

 

[RJR]

Here's a question for those who have done this:
Can I just swap the motherboards & update the Audio/INF/LAN drivers? (I've previously kept the SATA controller on the windows driver as this supports TRIM on my Intel G25-M SSD, so I don't think this will need updating)

Yes, you can do it, BUT, IMHO you would be better off just doing a clean install. I always either partition my HDD or have at least 2 HDD's available so the OS can be by it's lonesome. This way if there is any reason I have to reinstall the OS it's not a problem at all, and I just do it about every year anyways just to clean things out.

 

[medoomi]

OK, here's an update:

I've installed the new Motherboard (I have stacks of programs on the OS, so I just kept with the old install)

using the following settings, it BSOD's after 20 minutes on Prime95 (Blend)
Vcore: 1.225
Vtt: 1.2
bclk: 185 x19 = 3515Mhz
RAM: x8 =1480Mhz

So, I changed to the following for the moment:

Vcore: 1.2375
Vtt: 1.22 (Only b/c I have 8GB RAM, otherwise, I'd prefer to stay in Lynnfield specs)
PLL: 1.86
Frequency: 185Mhz @ 19x (CPU: 3515), 8x (RAM: 1480)
For RAM timings, I'm sitting on 7-7-7-24, and tRC of 40, and tRFC of 88.

Any other suggestions for stability?
the last BSOD said something about a memory failure, so I'm guessing it's the RAM that's not quite stable.

Thanks

 

[notty22]

My i5 750 needs more voltage than any of you are using. I can run windows fine with less but it won't complete a REAL stressful load like prime 95/intel burn test /and a video benchmark. If prime 95 or IBT spit out a error here , its a blue screen in the wings waiting to happen, my logic. Same with the memory timing. I have ocz obsidian 1600. I run that at 1600 8 8 8 30 88. I could run it a little faster but in the above tests sooner or later it will show a error. The voltage I need really increases at 3.8, 4.0 is reasonable. 4.2 stable takes 1.48. So I settled on 3960 1.39
Very similar to what was reported here :
Overclocked On Air: Intel's Core i5-750
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-750-overclock,2438-4.html

 

[RJR]

So, I changed to the following for the moment:

Vcore: 1.2375
Vtt: 1.22 (Only b/c I have 8GB RAM, otherwise, I'd prefer to stay in Lynnfield specs)
PLL: 1.86
Frequency: 185Mhz @ 19x (CPU: 3515), 8x (RAM: 1480)
For RAM timings, I'm sitting on 7-7-7-24, and tRC of 40, and tRFC of 88.

Any other suggestions for stability?
the last BSOD said something about a memory failure, so I'm guessing it's the RAM that's not quite stable.

Thanks

Well, normally I would just point you to the OCing guide, but you seem to be doing a good job and not getting carried away at all.

OK, first, lower your cpu multiplier so your cpu is running much slower, say 14 or something just to take the cpu out of the equation and work will only your ram until it is stable and you know at what voltages it needs for what speeds. You may even need to loosen up the timings a bit to reach your goals.

Then just reverse the process and take your ram to it's lowest multiplier and work on only the cpu.

Once you have both, then you can work on both together. You will probably still need to tweak it a bit for the OC but it will get you into the ballpark.

 

[medoomi]

Well, normally I would just point you to the OCing guide, but you seem to be doing a good job and not getting carried away at all.

OK, first, lower your cpu multiplier so your cpu is running much slower, say 14 or something just to take the cpu out of the equation and work will only your ram until it is stable and you know at what voltages it needs for what speeds. You may even need to loosen up the timings a bit to reach your goals.

Then just reverse the process and take your ram to it's lowest multiplier and work on only the cpu.

Once you have both, then you can work on both together. You will probably still need to tweak it a bit for the max but it will get you into the ballpark.

Thanks so much--I didn't think of separating them like that. Only additional question is that I think I had the RAM stable at 1600 (CPU at stock speeds). If so, would it be correct to think that it would be stable at slower speeds with the same settings, or is it going to still need extra vtt/qpi just because base clock goes up?

 

[RJR]

Thanks so much--I didn't think of separating them like that. Only additional question is that I think I had the RAM stable at 1600 (CPU at stock speeds). If so, would it be correct to think that it would be stable at slower speeds with the same settings, or is it going to still need extra vtt/qpi just because base clock goes up?

Once you get the cpu OCed and the ram is running at less than 1600 you should be good with the vtt voltage you set. BUT, only testing will tell for sure, stranger things have happened.

Glad to hear the ram is doing good!

 

[medoomi]

OK, this is kind of strange:

System seems stable when I decrease the RAM multiplier,
and it seems stable when I decrease the CPU multiplier.

However, it's highly unstable when I raise both to where I want them.

Any clues where to find the weak link?

 

[Niklas_13]

Hello medoomi, you might be passed all this info but this is a video i used to help me OC my i5 750 to 3.6, its a basic one but shows a few good things.

Hope you are doing well with it

 

[medoomi]

Hello medoomi, you might be passed all this info but this is a video i used to help me OC my i5 750 to 3.6, its a basic one but shows a few good things.

Nope--still going on it. It's stable @ 3.6 with the memory at 1140 (6x), but unstable with the memory at 1520 (8x). It's also stable with a lowered CPU multiplier and the memory at 1520 (8x), so I'm not sure what else to try.

Do you have the link to the video?

 

[Niklas_13]

I cant believe i didn't post the link, lol sorry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqAVIY_Urew&feature=related

there are 2 parts

 

[medoomi]

Thanks for the link niklas_13. I haven't had a chance to take a look yet, but I've noticed a pattern with the blue screens--they seem to occur when I initiate a transfer of data from one drive to the other.

Does anyone know how the I/O controller could get affected by an overclocked CPU?

 

[medoomi]

Finally! After taking out a bad piece of RAM, I am stable for 8 hours on Prime.

Talk about taking a long time to figure out where the problem was. Memtest 4.00 would only come up with problems occasionally. I would test it overnight, and 1 out of three nights, it would show no problems--which made me think the problem was with timing, rather than the module itself.

Anyways, the modules are RMA'd, and I'll see if it's still stable once I receive a new pair. I'm a little nervous that halving the RAM is confusing the issue.

Anyways, it's stable at the moment at
base clock of 185 x19 = 3500Mhz, RAM @ 8x = 1480Mhz
Vtt @ 1.22v, vCore 1.2625v, DRAM @ 1.64v

I'll fine tune it a bit more once I'm back up to 8GB RAM & give the final settings--but I'm hoping this is the home straight!

 

[Niklas_13]

Glad to hear its stable you should be able to run memtest for days on end without problem, so if its good one day and not the next its still bad.

Aside from the ram problem hows the rig treating you ?

 

[medoomi]

Hi niklas,
so far the rig's been awesome. I'm pretty obsessive compulsive, so it's been driving me up the wall not to be able to tweak the speed/voltage to optimum.
I recently installed Ubuntu 64-bit on a separate partition, but it seemed a little slower than Win 7 (surprisingly)--when running Audacity. So that might just be an Audacity core utilization problem.
Apart from that, I'm just waiting for the Intel drivers to be released for the X25-M SSD. At the moment, only the Microsoft drivers pass the TRIM command to the drive.
Overall though, I don't have any complaints--even with the instability of the RAM, I haven't seen any BSOD's anyway.