Overclocking 3770K at stock voltage

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by Xzibit

If i want to go x45 I have to drop the power saving features of the motherboard.

With PLL Overvolt enabled? Only thing you should lose is sleep getting near the max of the chip, anything else is related to BIOS programming problems.

[Xzibit]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

With PLL Overvolt enabled? Only thing you should lose is sleep getting near the max of the chip, anything else is related to BIOS programming problems.

Right now i've been OC with PLL Overvolt disable.

i can oc to 4.8ghz before I become afraid of the temps but its summer and 4.5ghz with power saving features makes me feel cooler.

I can hit 5ghz with a slight mem oc aswell but this is suppose to be a silent build. kind of goes out the window if the fans are above 60% but I think I gave up on that when I returned my low noise GPU for a better one aswell.

[cadaveca]

When you have issues booting with a multi, PLL Overvoltage is the setting you need.


Say when 45 boots OK, voltage OK too, and seems it will go for more, then 46 doesn't work...

[Octopuss]

I think I will rename this thread to something like "lamer's overclocking journey or something".

I had to give up on x40 multi and went to x39, testing again.
Even with the fan on max speed (which is about 1400 for the Noctua - still very quiet btw!) I was still hitting temps up to 89° with 1.100V vcore. This just won't do. Fucks sake...

Anyone wants to discourage me from buying Scythe Mugen 3 Rev.B? This is good time to do it, because I think I will hit the store right on monday.

[Octopuss]

This is ridiculous. I set turbo to x37, vcore to normal, DVID to zero (reported vcore is 1.150V btw), and Prime crashed after two hours again. I am tempted to throw that piece of crap out of the window.

edit: it failed even with vcore on AUTO!!!! Wtf do I do now? RMA the cpu?

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by Octopuss

This is ridiculous. I set turbo to x37, vcore to normal, DVID to zero (reported vcore is 1.150V btw), and Prime crashed after two hours again. I am tempted to throw that piece of crap out of the window.

edit: it failed even with vcore on AUTO!!!! Wtf do I do now? RMA the cpu?

Try clearing CMOS( pull battery, jump clear pins together), go in BIOS and choose option to "load CMOS Default", save and exit, then re-download prime95.

Prime95 can corrupt on crash at times. Reset CMOS just be sure. Could be an errant memory timing or whatever.

[Octopuss]

I don't know man. IBT loops indefinitely like a charm. I still believe IBT is more of a memory test though, as the temps are like 20° lower than Prime Small FFTs.

I already flashes new bios and loaded optimized defaults too.

Btw, I tried disabling turbo completely and set vcore to auto. Guess what, crashed after about 2,5 hours. It never passes 3 it seems. Something is wrong and I can't find the cause. It's getting annoying.
If it crashes again this time with turbo off and vcore at 1.200V (and that's 3.5GHz), I will probably either call it or RMA the cpu, or possibly contant George (Prime's author) to try to look for something wrong in the code.

[Octopuss]

I think I finally got it. What do you guys think?


Been stable for 16 hours now.
edit: Needs better cooling. Gonna get the Scythe.

[Crap Daddy]

Originally Posted by Octopuss

Been stable for 16 hours now.
edit: Needs better cooling. Gonna get the Scythe.

Out of curiosity, what was wrong? What are your settings now?

[Octopuss]

I was using a little older, bugged version of Prime95 (27.6), thinking I had the latest 27.7.


Temps are still hitting up to 93° with this voltage, and I even took PLL down to 1.600V - sadly nothing changed.

As for other settings, I got I believe -0.110V DVID, and several of the tweaks to extreme perf.
I'll see if I can squeeze 4.3GHz with the same vcore but I doubt it, because -0.005 difference in DVID crashed after one hour. This seems rock stable though.

[Crap Daddy]

The voltage seems good, Ivy Bridge do heat up far worse than SB but it's still too much for those kinds of voltages. Have you tried to reseat the cooler?

[Octopuss]

Not yet, I hate to disassemble the whole PC. I will buy the Scythe though, and put this cooler in my wife's PC. She only has the first gen Core i3, but the cooler is doing awful noise.


I still don't get it how people can cool 4.5GHz with this very same cooler though.

[cadaveca]

Good to hear you got it sorted. I thought Prime95 might be part of the problem!

[Octopuss]

I found out purely by accident. I was checking some documentation over at its forum, and came by changelogs. I just checked what I had again and was like fuck me...


Btw is it PLL that is supposed to theoretically help with lowering the temperatures?

[cadaveca]

Yes, and it does at times. However, it's really meant to be used in conjunction with PLL Overvolt option, so it's effects can be quite varied without PLL overvolt. enabled.

I like to try 1.65 V and 1.45 V, if the options are there. Usually 1.65 V will work fine, but the temperature drop is not very significant.

[Octopuss]

In my case nonexistant
Guess I can't do much more than buying a ne cooler. But the result is more or less what I wanted to achieve - some overclock at lowest possible voltage.

[cadaveca]

So, now what do you think of using the offset method with all options enabled?

[Octopuss]

it works :P

[Octopuss]

So I found out the Blend-like custom test fails. Damn. I didn't overclock memory at all, yet it fails after one hour. Which settings shall I check and adjust?

[Octopuss]

Oh I could provide some screens. That's nice feature of the new generation of bioses.

[cadaveca]

try IMC @ 1.05 V, matched with VTT.

Power options should be left on auto.

Set "Memory Performance Enhance" to Turbo, not extreme.

Those would be what I do.

[Octopuss]

Well, it turned out something really bad was going on.
I started to get BSODs out of the blue, first while running memory test in Prime95, later without any reason at all.
It only gets worse.
I went back to latest official stable bios version and started to test with pure default optimized settings. No way.

I can't even install Windows because the damn installer freezes on the first screen. I eventually found out I needed to disable xHCI in order to have functional keyboard and mouse (wtf, it's supposed to work, WinPE is not DOS at all, plus I had legacy USB enabled anyway).

I am going to RMA the whole shit package tomorrow.

People told me to try this and that, bump this or that voltage, try whatever voodoo.
I say stuff MUST work out of the box. If I can't get it to work with totally default settings, it's RMA time.

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by Octopuss

I say stuff MUST work out of the box. If I can't get it to work with totally default settings, it's RMA time.

I agree 100%. However, at stock, of course, and once you OC, you do take some chances.

If you had "Extreme" set in memory options instead of "Turbo"(default) or "Standard"(compatibility setting), then that would cause all the issues you describe, however.

Windows install should always be done at stock, too, IMHO.

Same thing with BETA BIOSes.. I am pretty familiar with all these things, and I still won't run a BETA BIOS. I always update to most recent full release, and use that.


Once you step out of the "safe zone", you so take a fair bit of risk, and I do realize your more than aware of this, just kinda posting this for the benefit of others.


Having to install @ IDE mode is weird, for sure. No reason for that to happen.

[Octopuss]

Well, I managed to install Windows somehow with some problems, and got some shit right after boot. Unrecoverable error, system will restart. Yay. Explorer stopped working. Yay.

The very last nail in the coffin are 29 WHEA errors in the EventLog.
A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Corrected Machine Check
Error Type: Internal parity error
Processor ID: 2


Do you think I should RMA just the CPU or everything?
Keep in mind I didn't get any BSODs or crashes until yesterday/today.

[Octopuss]

Ha! I think I got it.
After enabling just ONE core all the problems are gone. No errors, no BSODs, no crap in the log, Prime is happily grinding numbers with default voltages.
RMA time - I said it! But at least it's "just" the CPU.