Very strange problems with Xeon E5440

parsa_strife

Commendable
Sep 21, 2016
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0
1,630
Hello! I'm sorry but you're about to read a big block of text but it's all needed information...
I would really apperciate it if someone could help me out because I'm really confused...

Okay so I have a very old PC from 2008-2009 with a Pentium Dual E2200, XFX 9400 GT, Asus P5KPL-C/1600 and a non-branded 220W PSU.

Note: The PSU is really light weight and you can tell how shitty it is.. but it's been running with no problems for about 4 years now somehow lol

I recently upgraded my CPU to a Xeon E5440 (it's modded to fit in LGA 775 without any need of extra modding on the motherboard) and updated my bios with the needed microcodes with the help of this article:
http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/

At first everything was fine other than the stock E2200 cooler couldn't keep the CPU cool enough so I decided to downclock it to 2GHz from 2.83GHz untill I get a better cooler and it didn't get past 83°C (TJMax of that CPU is 85°C) after that. Everything was still running fine.
Then after 2 days I got a new cooler, installed it and temps never went above 50°C at stock. So I decided to overclock it but then everything went wrong.
Firstly my motherboard seems to be shitty and doesn't let you choose the exact voltages. Like you can only choose "Auto", "1.2V" or "1.3V" and no matter what I choose the voltage never went above 1.192V (not 1.192V stable, that was just the peak) in CPU-Z and under stress it even went a little down. Oh and I had to disable both Intel SpeedStep Tech and CPU TM Function if I didn't want it to throttle down the multiplier to 6 (min.).
3.4GHz wasn't stable at all and would crash under stress test. However 3.2GHz wouldn't and "seemed" stable. But it actually wasn't smooth and was kind of clunky and edgy if you get it... And in games.. when I played Dota 2 the GPU usage strangely would go up to %112 lol and the sound would keep cutting out (both mic and headphones) and when I downlcocked it again to 3GHz again the sound cutting out happened less and GPU usage would go up to %106 now but it still wasn't as smooth as before.. so I downclocked to stock again and it was still the same sound would still cut out just happened a bit less and GPU usage would go up to %99 so that was normal at least.. but I still felt it wasn't good enough so I downclocked to 2GHz again like before the new CPU cooler. The sound cutting out was very rare now and everything felt smoother again but GPU usage would only go to like %94 I think lol..
A day passed by and I noticed that the sound cutting out was gone but instead something really strange happened. When playing Dota 2 everything in offline matches was happening at like %60-70 of the normal speed and in multiplayer server-based matches everything was slow but every server tick would update the positions so it felt like lag and delay... I found out getting the CPU back to stock clocks fixed the issue and for some reason I didn't have any sounds cutting out anymore at all and everything feels smooth now!
I've been through so much and all of that was just so confusing I seriously don't know wth was wrong but I'm scared of changing any settings now...
I would really appreciate it if you guys could tell me what went wrong that all those stuff happened and can I overclock safely again? Was it because of my PSU, motherboard or both? And why the hell would Dota 2 run at %60-70 speed when CPU was downclocked? That just doesn't make any sense! Oh and all along I also played Aura Kingdom in all those settings but that game was always smooth and fine other than sound cutting out (both games are running on DX9)

Oh and also I forgot to mention, the more I overclocked the less stable my GPU overclock became so the more I overclocked the more I had to downlock the GPU

And also CPU temps never went above 60-65 even when overclocked so that couldn't be the reason.

Full specs:
Xeon E5440
Asus P5KPL-C/1600
XFX 9400 GT 1GB DDR2
2*2GB 800MHz DDR2
 
PSU could explain the overclocking issues but the downclocking issues can't be because of that I think...

I have actually read that guide long ago when I first wanted to overclock my E2200, and I got to 3GHz stable with 1.36V I know how to overclock with this motherboard and I never had these issues with overclocking/downclocking the E2200 so this is kinda weird...

And yeah I didn't find anyone else using this exact mobo, I've seen the "P5KPL/1600" but not "P5KPL-C/1600" and this mobo is supposed to support even Core 2 Quad Extreme Editions so it'd be weird if this wouldn't work since most other mobos with the same chipset work.
 
Yes but a Q9650 costed exactly twice this CPU (25$ vs $50) and I honestly couldn't justify getting it for that price...
Also Xeons need less voltage hence the higher overclocks! So it seemed like a no brainer.

I'll be getting a new PSU soon to see if that could fix the issue. It doesn't seem like a wise choice to keep this PSU after all these years...
But I'm still really curious to know how a non-branded 220W PSU could handle such a system that used around 180W+ under load...
 


Sounds like your graphics card is smoking crack.... 112% usage? that's new lmao