Core i7 920 C0 overclocking help getting to 3.8ghz

[BradleyKZN]

Hey everyone. So i just managed to get my cpu to 3.6ghz and i want to take it to 3.8 and then 4ghz. I would like to know if anybody could tell me what voltages i need set for my qpi and vcore and things. Any input whatsoever would be useful. I had my vcore at 1.29 for 3.6ghz which i thought was quite high, whats the highest these things can go? If it helps, my pc wont post at 3.8. Thanks!

[DanishDevil]

Read through this thread and keep an eye out for C0's.

[BradleyKZN]

Well, i looked at it, thanks danish. If anybody has anything else it would help too

[shevanel]

to maintain 4gz on mine I had to use +.20 on both qpi/vcore whilst lowering my ram speed too.

But my board is being sent to RMA tomorrow bec. of the memory dimm

[Tatty_One]

Originally Posted by BradleyKZN

Hey everyone. So i just managed to get my cpu to 3.6ghz and i want to take it to 3.8 and then 4ghz. I would like to know if anybody could tell me what voltages i need set for my qpi and vcore and things. Any input whatsoever would be useful. I had my vcore at 1.29 for 3.6ghz which i thought was quite high, whats the highest these things can go? If it helps, my pc wont post at 3.8. Thanks!

Firstly, the highest i can go with some degree of stability is 4.2gig but more so than C2Q's, these chips even from the same batches can be very different and of course, even with voltages the motherboard will have a large say in things so really there is no definitive answer, I have a very good C0 and I have attached a screenie which shows QPI/uncore speeds and that was with a VCore of 1.31V in the BIOS, I am currently running 3.8gig (normally i run 4gig 24/7 but am doing a lot of encoding at the moment so she gets warm), at 3.8gig I am running Turbo mode so base is roughley 3.6gig, the 2nd screenie shows you some settings at this speed also (ignore the speedstep so go by FSB, ohhhh and I am actually running with HT on, just my Bus aint showing it)........ at this 3.8gig my QPI volts are at 1.225v, apart from memory and VCore, everything else is on auto, you will see the vcore in the screenie, hope this helps.

[BradleyKZN]

This is bs! I can get to 3.4 by changing only vcore and 3.6 i have changed vcore, vdimm, qpi voltage, cpu pll voltage, nb voltage, and ich voltage and still nothing. Vcore was at 1.44, pll was at 1.85, qpi was at +0.200, dram at 1.60, nb was at 1.15, and ich was at 1.55. Everything on auto works for 3.4 but no matter what i change, 3.6 will not boot. I only managed to get it to boot once ever at 3.6. So what am i doing wrong?

[BradleyKZN]

Bump

[BradleyKZN]

Bump please

[twicksisted]

what cooling you on? (says stock in your specs)... i7's are very hot but you already know that im sure

[BradleyKZN]

Cooling isnt my problem here. It wont even boot, and my bios cpu temps are only 26degrees

[grunt_408]

Keep trying you will get there. I see you have stock cooling, why would you want to try and OC higher on stock cooling?

[Asylum]

What memory setting are you useing?
Post some screenshots of cpu-z with cpu-memory and spd tab.

[twicksisted]

Originally Posted by BradleyKZN

Cooling isnt my problem here. It wont even boot, and my bios cpu temps are only 26degrees

well somethings not right there... 26c on a i7 with stock cooling at 3.8ghz! id say thats the root of your problem... perhaps in bios its not hot but try loading the cores and youll get a nasty heat spike unless you dont have enough volts going through which is why the temps are so low and it wont boot windows without crashing... either way youre mad going that high on stock cooling... i can only imagine what an i7 chip costs in SA!

[BradleyKZN]

Originally Posted by Craigleberry

Keep trying you will get there. I see you have stock cooling, why would you want to try and OC higher on stock cooling?

so that i know what to use when i get my cooler next week

[BradleyKZN]

Originally Posted by Asylum

What memory setting are you useing?
Post some screenshots of cpu-z with cpu-memory and spd tab.

cant get to windows at that speed, but its only 1026 mhz at 3.6, and 9-9-9-24

[BradleyKZN]

Originally Posted by twicksisted

well somethings not right there... 26c on a i7 with stock cooling at 3.8ghz! id say thats the root of your problem... perhaps in bios its not hot but try loading the cores and youll get a nasty heat spike unless you dont have enough volts going through which is why the temps are so low and it wont boot windows without crashing... either way youre mad going that high on stock cooling... i can only imagine what an i7 chip costs in SA!

lol its a cold day and i had a large fan blowing on the mobo but it was trying to get to 3.6, it wasnt at 3.8 yet even. I think this is a mobo issue. At 3.4 with that fan and a 3dmark06 run, max temp was 57 so i should be able to get to 3.6. Edit: the chip only cost me 1.8k, board 2k and ram R700

[Lazzer408]

Don't forget to lower the uncore multiplier to 2x your memory multiplier. If your cpu is at 3400 that means your fsb is up to 170. 170*20=3400. For your ram to run at 1026 on 170fsb that means your ram multiplier is 6x so set your uncore multi to 12. Raise your QPI +100mv and then try raising your fsb again for higher overclocks. We hit 4ghz with 1.4v to the CPU with only the changes I mentioned.

Oh don't forget turn off turbo mode and anything to do with speed step. Also don't use any dynamic adjustments if your bios has that.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mot...8-pro-review/9

[Binge]

Originally Posted by BradleyKZN

This is bs! I can get to 3.4 by changing only vcore and 3.6 i have changed vcore, vdimm, qpi voltage, cpu pll voltage, nb voltage, and ich voltage and still nothing. Vcore was at 1.44, pll was at 1.85, qpi was at +0.200, dram at 1.60, nb was at 1.15, and ich was at 1.55. Everything on auto works for 3.4 but no matter what i change, 3.6 will not boot. I only managed to get it to boot once ever at 3.6. So what am i doing wrong?

Steps to success...
#1) Get yourself together man!

#2) Give people the screenshots they need or take a camera and shoot some pics of your bios settings.

#3) You'll GET more if you GIVE more. Even if you can't give people a photo of your bios, then you can at least make a bios template with all of the overclocking settings and fill in the values you're using. If you leave information out of this template it only hurts our ability to help you.

#4) Don't assume we know what you're talking about. This isn't some place where you saying 3.8GHz vcore and qpi are going to make some sort of lightbulb shine and give you some answer to your OP. You need to give us more information than you think is comfortable, or you're just giving us the equivalent of a math problem without enough variables. I know I'm not a help desk, and I don't get paid so what makes you think the rest of TPU's members enjoy being given very little information and expected to give you a good answer.

By no means am I mad, but you gotta understand where I'm coming from. You're asking a good starting question. We're expecting some useful information. There are 18 things off the top of my head which could be your issue, and without seeing your template I could end up doing you more harm even suggesting them.

[BradleyKZN]

Originally Posted by Lazzer408

Don't forget to lower the uncore multiplier to 2x your memory multiplier. If your cpu is at 3400 that means your fsb is up to 170. 170*20=3400. For your ram to run at 1026 on 170fsb that means your ram multiplier is 6x so set your uncore multi to 12. Raise your QPI +100mv and then try raising your fsb again for higher overclocks. We hit 4ghz with 1.4v to the CPU with only the changes I mentioned.

Oh don't forget turn off turbo mode and anything to do with speed step. Also don't use any dynamic adjustments if your bios has that.

where do i find turbo mode? I have the option for 21 multi but dont use it. What dynamic adjustments you talking about?

[Lazzer408]

I don't know that specific board so I couldn't say where some settings may or may not be. Dynamic adjustment is a feature some boards have that makes adjustments to the voltages as needed. Turbo mode is that 21x multiplier. Default for 2.66 is 20x.

Did you find the uncore multiplier?

[BradleyKZN]

Originally Posted by Binge

Steps to success...
#1) Get yourself together man!

#2) Give people the screenshots they need or take a camera and shoot some pics of your bios settings.

#3) You'll GET more if you GIVE more. Even if you can't give people a photo of your bios, then you can at least make a bios template with all of the overclocking settings and fill in the values you're using. If you leave information out of this template it only hurts our ability to help you.

#4) Don't assume we know what you're talking about. This isn't some place where you saying 3.8GHz vcore and qpi are going to make some sort of lightbulb shine and give you some answer to your OP. You need to give us more information than you think is comfortable, or you're just giving us the equivalent of a math problem without enough variables. I know I'm not a help desk, and I don't get paid so what makes you think the rest of TPU's members enjoy being given very little information and expected to give you a good answer.

By no means am I mad, but you gotta understand where I'm coming from. You're asking a good starting question. We're expecting some useful information. There are 18 things off the top of my head which could be your issue, and without seeing your template I could end up doing you more harm even suggesting them.

you are right, thanks for this post mate now, me being on my phone is nobody elses problem, but it seriously hampers my ability to post things. Im going to try some of the things suggested here and i will return with my findings

[BradleyKZN]

Originally Posted by Lazzer408

Don't forget to lower the uncore multiplier to 2x your memory multiplier. If your cpu is at 3400 that means your fsb is up to 170. 170*20=3400. For your ram to run at 1026 on 170fsb that means your ram multiplier is 6x so set your uncore multi to 12. Raise your QPI +100mv and then try raising your fsb again for higher overclocks. We hit 4ghz with 1.4v to the CPU with only the changes I mentioned.

Oh don't forget turn off turbo mode and anything to do with speed step. Also don't use any dynamic adjustments if your bios has that.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mot...8-pro-review/9

thanks for the review! Now, where did you get those figures for uncore and ram because uncore is 6 and mem is 3 , im guessing i missed something? What should my qpi frequency be at? What does overspeed protection do? And what is Hpet?

[BradleyKZN]

Wait now. What on earth is 'auto disable dram/pci frequency'?

[BradleyKZN]

After an overclock fails, and i go into cell menu, my current dram frequency is at 800mhz!

[Lazzer408]

Originally Posted by BradleyKZN

thanks for the review! Now, where did you get those figures for uncore and ram because uncore is 6 and mem is 3 , im guessing i missed something? What should my qpi frequency be at? What does overspeed protection do? And what is Hpet?

I'm guessing if 3x=1026mhz then it's actually 6x170 to get 1026. If 3=6 then uncore of 6=12? Every boards display things differently sometimes. I wish they would all just stick with actual numbers rather then trying to account for things like ddr. If we are in the BIOS messing around with clocks in the first place then we better be well aware of how clocks and multipliers are used throughout the system.

QPI can be thought of as the 'hub' for data between the cores. The QPI is prone to instability when forced to higher clocks just like ram or a cpu. Lucky for us it has a seperate multiplier for it. Set this multiplier to 2x the memory multiplier.

HPET is High Precision Event Timer. For most of us we don't need it. It's more accurate then the RTC (real time clock) and is used to more accuratly measure time. Did something happen at 12:00:00pm? Or did it happen at 12:00:00:0000000001pm?