X79 and/or rampage IV OC'ing thread for those of us still left....

[dalekdukesboy]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon....TRC2.A0.H0.Xe5+1680+v2.TRS1&LH_TitleDesc=0|0 This one is about the best you can get.

 

[phill]

Thanks I'll keep an eye out.. I guess it's like the 5960X?

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Thanks I'll keep an eye out.. I guess it's like the 5960X?

Pretty much but for X79, if you go back in thread it's what I have had since April and extensively benchmarked/posted screenies of and a couple other people also have along with more typical 3930k's etc.

 

[phill]

Pretty much but for X79, if you go back in thread it's what I have had since April and extensively benchmarked/posted screenies of and a couple other people also have along with more typical 3930k's etc.

When I'm a little less busy at work I'll try and take a look!!

 

[dalekdukesboy]

When I'm a little less busy at work I'll try and take a look!!

Did you get a chance to check out the Xeon yet? I'm assuming prices will continue to go down as AMD ramps up Threadripper etc and core counts in every mainstream/enthusiast category skyrocket and performance boundaries are pushed.

However having said that I went back and looked at prices, I was a Nostradamus when it came to my timing on buying my E5 1680 v2, I got it for $379.00 in mid April....best price on Ebay as of today 379 dollars lol.

 

[phill]

Prices where rather high from what I remember looking at the CPU.. I might consider just hanging on as I'm not using the X79 but my X99 rig at the moment.. I know my 8 core Xeon I had from work, works fine in the PC so I can't complain at all there I've not tried it crunching yet, as I'm hoping for another so I'd have them both working away at it.. Time then for testing and all my usual OCD stuff

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Also off topic but does anyone get how the ranking service for points on here works? I get I got the "long service" for being here forever but I also got CPU Overclocking Expert for getting 7th most points on site for the CPU OC category but....how do you get points? I admit not sure how it works, I think they're all if not mostly from this thread.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Bump...lol.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

I literally over last month thought I had borked my MOBO or CPU on 2 different occasions, both couple weeks apart, both times had all sorts of issues and appears the X79 platform is very quirky and will flake out on occasion...but seems almost impossible to break! First time was me experimenting with AIO watercooler and err almost blowing things up with fire or faucets, then 2nd time appeared Windows 7 was so broken/corrupted I'd never get it started again and I'd lose my files/games/pictures forever! I have to admit both times I was ready to dump PC out of 2nd story window...but I persevered and minus time/aggravation everything works as good now as ever! Lesson learned with PC and in life.....never give up!

 

[agent_x007]

Lesson learned with PC and in life.....never give up!

...and always have backups

 

[dalekdukesboy]

That's too easy...my only excuse for not backing stuff up.

...and always have backups

However ironically after this last windows borking which I just did over last couple days and fixed yesterday I was about to clone hard drive to new SSD I have and just haven't bothered to hook up/deal with yet....so needless to say I'll be doing that ASAP.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

My X79 system is moving with the times (minus itself of course) I have an SSD 500 gb WD harddrive AND windows 10! So far so good, lot of files I didn't get back from Win 7 it was so busted but I have the original installation on my 10k Raptor HDD drive and it did boot last I used it last week so I may have to dig around and get a few things manually but overall Win 10 is stable and I also flashed my bios and it should allow me to upgrade to NMM drive later on.

 

[Caring1]

My X79 system is moving with the times (minus itself of course) I have an SSD 500 gb WD harddrive AND windows 10! So far so good, lot of files I didn't get back from Win 7 it was so busted but I have the original installation on my 10k Raptor HDD drive and it did boot last I used it last week so I may have to dig around and get a few things manually but overall Win 10 is stable and I also flashed my bios and it should allow me to upgrade to NMM drive later on.

Let us know if you get a NVME drive to work as a boot drive, I know they can be used for storage, i'm interested in doing the same.

 

[backwoods]

I have read NVME drive will work as a boot drive, need to flash "BOLTS4BREKFAST Asus BIOS mod" they were posted back in 2016 on one of his sites he had put up, but never bought a NVME SSD drive to give it a try, but instead went with the PCIE 1 TB SSD card as a boot drive. I have all of his BIOS for many different boards, if you can't find and want to try for yourself.
P.S. tried to attach his RAR file but it's to large here, let me know if you would like and i will split the RAR file in half and try to re-post them here again.

 

[agent_x007]

Rampage IV Extreme + Boot NVMe mod BIOS : LINK.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah I've got as far as the bios recognizes the drive but it won't boot from it, however I cloned my win 10 installation and with free clone version I'm not sure it is cloning windows to boot etc when I look at drives in windows my ssd shows up with boot and several other labels in partition, the cloned drive just says "healthy" so it may have just copied files and some of windows but not allowing it to boot. I didn't try it but I'm pretty sure before I flashed my modded bios the NVME drive wouldn't even show up or be recognized at all in bios.

Rampage IV Extreme + Boot NVMe mod BIOS : LINK.

This link Agent posted is actually where I got the bios but guy who posted it has pretty mangled English so his explanation of what to do after you flash bios is somewhat understandable, but not easily.

Bottom drive is the SSD SATA, top drive is NVME drive I cloned SATA SSD to.

 

[agent_x007]

But how can you boot NVMe drive from cloned SATA flash type ?
Can Windows "on the fly" change required NVMe driver, from AHCI driver used previously (isn't basic NVMe disabled by default) ?
Also, NVMe can only be booted from EFI boot option (since nvm.dxe in UEFI needs it to work, and is the reason why 950 Pro is so awesome for legacy hardware [Legacy ROM for BIOS]).
Because of this - NVMe drive has to be formated as GPT for it to be bootable for Windows (or you need to have GPT-type partitions with appropriate files inside them).
You also have to set active partition for boot sector (which is different between GPT and MBR).

 

[dalekdukesboy]

But how can you boot NVMe drive from cloned SATA flash type ?
Can Windows "on the fly" change required NVMe driver, from AHCI driver used previously (isn't it disabled) ?
Also, NVMe can only be booted from EFI boot option (since nvm.dxe in UEFI needs it to work, and is the reason why 950 Pro is so awesome for legacy hardware), regardless because of this - NVMe has to be formated as GPT for it to be bootable for Windows.
You also have to set active partition for boot sector (which is different between GPT and MBR).

Exactly, all those details are things I'm figuring out as I go I'm not SDD expert I've had a HDD in every PC till about a month ago...so all those things including formatted as GPT etc are things I am only vaguely aware of or not at all and stumbling through. I knew about the AHCI/EFI but GPT vs MBR means jack to me, till now.

 

[agent_x007]

The most problem free way is to do clean nvme install, and let windows installer "do it's thing". Then copy old files we want/need from the old drive, and you are done.
On the other hand, you could reuse boot sector from that attempt (if it works), on your clone drive - and see how it goes from there.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

The most problem free way is to do clean nvme install, and let windows installer "do it's thing". Then copy old files we want/need from the old drive, and you are done.
On the other hand, you could reuse boot sector from that attempt (if it works), on your clone drive - and see how it goes from there.

OK I kinda get the gyst of it but details are throwing me off. I can do clean install I have all media on the other ssd so might be a pain but not a huge deal. So first time I tried after bios flash to just "boot" from usb drive that has windows 10 it wouldn't let me, that's part of reason I said OK I'll clone it and see what happens, and it did clone it as you can see and I even have opened pictures and few other things that were there but obviously wouldn't boot. Anyway I'll play around with it a bit more and probably end up asking you more questions when I know enough to even ask lol.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

I haven't yet gotten my NVME drive to play nice with Windows 10 but I believe I have modded bios flashed properly and drive is "seen" by bios and windows wants to try to install to it but gives me an error message so I think it isn't formatted properly etc as you mentioned and admittedly I don't know diddly about formatting drives other than what has been said here and I click "format" and windows does it. Anyway in meantime I picked up some nice 2800 mhz used memory on Ebay I couldn't pass up to test the true ability of this xeon ivy and hopefully nowhere near dialing in the ideal secondary/tertiary timings so bandwidth is only almost as good as my old slower but very tightly timed memory but here's a couple shots just showing stability at high mhz at least, enjoy.

2800 mhz with decent timings

3000 mhz with NOT so decent timings but just tried quickly to see if it could even do it stably and it did.

 

[agent_x007]

You need EFI bootable Windows installer, and GPT formatted drive (you can convert MBR into GPT under Windows).
Also, disable CSM (or use "prefer UEFI" for boot devices option if you want it enabled).

Here's my 4,3GHz (with Vcore dropping to 0.824V at idle 1,2GHz )

Air cooling : Thermalright Venomous-X
Going 4,4GHz LinX stable, requires 1,35V+ on Vcore, which makes CPU go to 90C+ on almost every core
Also, I'm using "High" LLC setting for Vcore and SA (not Very High/Ultra High) with 8 DIMMs in total (8x2GB)

 

[dalekdukesboy]

You need EFI bootable Windows installer, and GPT formatted drive (you can convert MBR into GPT under Windows).
Also, disable CSM (or use "prefer UEFI" for boot devices option if you want it enabled).

Here's my 4,3GHz (with Vcore dropping to 0.824V at idle 1,2GHz )
View attachment 109020
Air cooling : Thermalright Venomous-X
Going 4,4GHz LinX stable, requires 1,35V+ on Vcore, which makes CPU go to 90C+ on almost every core
Also, I'm using "High" LLC setting for Vcore and SA (not Very High/Ultra High) with 8 DIMMs in total (8x2GB)

Nice, yeah I've never seen a cpu with tjmax in triple digits that's a really high tjmax my 1680's 95 degrees was highest I had seen these definitely are highly binned chips that were probably most bullet proof of all the ivy's made. Yeah I don't mind a couple of hottest cores hitting 90 but not all of them particularly in summer talk about a hot room. Yeah I figured out to disable CSM and tell it to boot on UEFI or as you said prefer to etc but it either won't boot into windows installer at all or I get the error message when it tries to and says Windows can't install to that partition. So not sure how to convert MBR to GPT under windows but I can look that up, but what I am not so sure about is that I have an EFI bootable windows installer....I have Windows 10 on a flash drive.
Anyway yeah I got AIO water with couple few high CFM fans so that helps keep my temps reasonable up to 4.5 ghz or so but I need 1.4V especially pushing memory frequency. Speaking of I see you have 8 x 2GB Dimms what are your timings/settings on those?

 

[agent_x007]

@dalekdukesboy You can create EFI/GPT win installer USB, from ISO file using rufus (for example).

https://valid.x86.fr/csnuwp

 

[dalekdukesboy]

@dalekdukesboy You can create EFI/GPT win installer USB, from ISO file using rufus (for example).
View attachment 109037
https://valid.x86.fr/csnuwp

Rufus....huh OK I've heard of that before but like I said I've done a lot with computers but hard drives I've had minimal experience with other than real basic shit like format/install rinse repeat but never even thought about formatting differences and UEFI till recently so I appreciate the help when I give it a go I'll let you all know and I'll ask more stupid questions if I have any lol. Interesting memory settings, relatively slow but very tight timings so you're AIDA #'s aren't off the charts but pretty respectable for mhz you are at! Also very respectable for having to fill every DIMM slot that I've heard and just common sense tells me is much harder for mobo to do than 2 or 4 slots filled. How much voltage for memory at those settings?