NF7-S limitations, newbie

Okay, just got my first OC system together. (soon enough i'll put it in my sig so i wont have to keep posting it every time i post...lol)

NF7-S
1700+ DLT3C
1X512 Mushkin Black LVL2 PC3500
no vid card yet (using test bed PCI card)

Anyways, i got my OC to 225X10 in the bios,(shows up as 224X10, though...) running...stable as i can tell. cant really install anything till i get my hard drive hooked up, i havnt felt like it yet...

Anyways, this is on Stock voltage ofr everything.
i was wondering what the max safe volatges for hte board were?
i know the VDimm will onlygo to 2.9, and i know my ram will take it, and i know the processor voltage can go up to something like 2.1 or 2.2, (althoguh i dont know how much the chip will take)

but there are other settings. setings i believe will effect my FSB OC, for board voltage. like NB voltage i believe is in there...how high can i put that safely? (i dont want to kill the board, cant afford a new one)

and the AGP should only effect the vid card i dont have yet..are there any others? what are their max's?

Also, for humour, How far have you guys gotten your NF7-S's FSB, with the voltages and ram included

another thing: how cool is the power function where i can turn the computer on via keybaord? i set that up so i type "power" and it turns on...i've freaked out at least 10 people with it, noone up here has ever seen anything like that before....its sweet!

Oh, and are there any...things i should know? new board, are there updates i should get? awesome mods? sweet bios mods? generic must-know tips? thanks!

...bump? dont make me cry, here...

As for NB voltage (vdd), just try all of 'em (1.5, 1.6 1.7) to see which allows you the highest FSB. CPU interface should be enabled (might get higher FSB w/ it disabled, but the performance hit will make it NOT worth the extra FSB). BIOS 10 is the best for getting the max FSB. One mod to try is the L12 mod. Which consists of putting a very small wire in the socket to bridge two pins (causing you chip to be defaulted at 166mhz x whatever multiplier will give you the stock speed (instead of 133mhz x the multipier to get stock speed). This site should help you out. It include how to do the L12 mod.

My old board did 219mhz out of the box... my new one only does 205mhz... but I'm working on that... W/ the L12 mod done I think I can get 215mhz but haven't finished prime95 testing it.

okay, whats CPU interface, why does it matter if its enabeled or not?

and is my NB safe at the max voltage the board gives (1.7 i assume from your post)


and i thought the l12 mod was for bartons? i beleive the 1700 DLT3c is a TB "B" ...but i'll try it if you think i'd get a bumb from it...

will SATA raid 0 work with this bios 10? if so, where can i get it?

okay, whats CPU interface, why does it matter if its enabeled or not?

Click to expand...

Como, check out this site. It will tell you everything you'll ever want to know about BIOS settings. It's a must read for overclockers! Good luck! BTW....nice rig!

Yes, your board is more than safe at 1.7v. As for SATA w/ BIOS 10... not from the version you download from Abit's web site. But I do believe that there is a hacked version of BIOS 10 w/ the new SATA stuff added to them. I'm trying to find the link for myself at the moment.

There are two different L12 mods. One for Bartons and one for tbred Bs. The difference is which pins you joing with the wire.

oh, alright. if you get that bios, linkey me please! sata raid is my next chunk of $ after my video card...

ducker...thanks. thats the first complement on my rig ever.
couldnt have done it without htis place, when i got here i was looking at no OC, a 2500 barton, a7n8x dlx, and some crucial ram. kingston if i coudl scrape some cash.


now i will read the bios site!
now with my rin i should be abel to get east 3200+ speeds, i've heard of up to 3600+ possible (2.4G) and i'd love that...but as for now i just hafta get a video card in this and get my temps into spec.

These BIOS will ONLY WORK FOR REVISION 2.0 BOARDS! There is a sticker next to your PCI slots which will say "Rev2.0" on it if yours is a 2.0er.

Here's the link for BIOS D10 (D I guess denotes the hack SATA stuff). Some people might say D10 dosn't fix everything for SATA and RAID, others would say it's fine. I have yet to use them (will this week). So if you don't wanna take the chance of having to reinstall everything you might wanna try BIOS D20 (can be found on the same linky).

EDIT: And you do have a great rig. I guess people around here are just use to them . Add your overclockage to your sig when you get done also!

the "D" means its for version 2.0 boards

Lvcoyote

i do have a rev2, i made sure of that when i got it...guess i forgot to say it in my sig. I've got nothing of value on my hdd, so i dont care about a reinstall...

and i'll add my OC as soon as i'm not embarrased by it. its pathetic, i'm too scared to upp the vcore because for somereason i'm getting high temps, even with my sp-97...

thanks for the linkey, i'll dl it and get ready, soon as i read it works i'll install it, i just need a small verification cuz i cant test it myself yet...still need 1 or 2 more ata-sata converters.

As for your temps, doublecheck to make sure you mounted everything properly, and that you're making good contact. Feel free to run your vcore as high as you want, provided you can stay below ~50C at load. Your chip (if it's a DLT3C JIUHB with a decent week) should be able to get around 2.4GHz with some tweaking. Mine does 2.6GHz...YAY!

I had problems with my Mushkin BH-5 and BIOS 10. You might want to try BIOS D20, it's not too bad.

Oh, and you might want to try Flash Menu, which allows you to flash from windows. It's suppose to work pretty good. I guess there's an option to flash from a file that your in the process of downloading... which of course is probably NOT a good idea. Download it then flash.

Right, download the BIOS file independently, then click "Flash from file" and point it to the new BIOS file.

Without installing your harddrive and running tests, there's no way of telling if your overclock is stable. (Unless I read your post incorrectly). Just becuase it boots doesn't mean it's stable

at first i hadnt tested it, nw i can run prime95 on torture, stable at 2.2...so far. TOAST gets me a 45C, as far as i'd like to go...

what kind of problems iwht bios 10 and BH-5? i havnt flashed yet, but if i had the awdflash.exe i would have...(i figured it was built in cuz it said alt+f2 to flash ot something...
flashing from inside windows sounds dangerous, but then again so did OCing about 6 months ago...so i'll try it. and have the latest bios on hand just in case...

is there a way to kill a board with flashing? if i fail a flash somehow and my board wont post...how to i fix it? i dont have an extra bios or board laying around...

after doing some "got bored and read bout my board" readong, i'm considering getting an old 486 heatsink for my southbridge, and maybe chop up another for MOFSET coolers...

How much does thermal epoxy cost? (is it under 5$?)
and howabout 1000/1500 grit sandpaper?

can i get both at home depot? (i have to go there to price out CAT5 anyway)

I don't think you can get the thermal epoxy from home depot, but the sandpaper will obviously be there. Both price together for less than $10.

hm, thats 10 less for my vid card, but oh well....where CAN i get the thermal epoxy?

I got my epoxy from http://www.bestbyte.net. They have good prices on cooling stuff and shipping is cheap. As for what can go wrong with a BIOS flash... if the PC shuts off when loading the BIOS, that can cause problems. You would then need to get another BIOS chip. I loaded BIOS 10 w/ flashmenu and it worked well. I read somewhere that you should load the BIOS TWICE and then reboot, and to have the BIOS file in the Flashmenu folder (or one of it's subfolders, the one that flasmenu points to by default when your looking for a file. I also have BH-5 and I'm running at 230mhz 11-2-2-2, haven't prime tested yet though.

You could also lap your NB (easy... just abit time consuming). Info for that is at http://www.motherboardfaqs.com/news.php.

yeah, i was considering a NB lapp, maybe i will when i have my HS lapped first ...then the SB would be in need of attention dues to boredom on my part. but yeah, thanks. i'll work on saving enouh for some eoxy/sandpaper somewhere between my video card, my ata/sata converter, and my 5.1 speakers.