Come on! Help me get 4 more mhz please!

Well i finally took some time to dig deeper, and deeper into overclocking this value ram. Its some Corsair Value Select PC 3200 - rated 3-3-3-8 @ 200fsb. Well, funny thing here is it wont even run those timings at 200fsb, it will run 2.5-3-3-7, SO IM NOT COMPLAINING =X.

I've been working on my OC and I just got 215x11 prime95 stable last night. I'm shooting for 219x11 to reach an almost even 2407mhz, just so i can say 2.4ghz Soo....i've been having trouble, it seems to be unstable at some points, then stable again.

jeez your vcore in your cpu is nuts almost every barton 2500+ ive ever installed instantly oced to 3200+ with a 400fsb.

if you wanted oc you should have gotten a mobile.

Err...well...it is a mobile barton, my sig is a bit out of date, sorry. Its accually only 1.825vcore right now, 215x11, currently 39C with medium load.

Edit: fixed siggy, alll better

Try upping the voltage on the vDimm, then push the memory a bit more.

I'd say you'll need to start upping your vdimm, it takes my ram about 2.8v to run 227 @ 2.5-3-3-7 but then again all value ram is like a crapshoot you may not find what you need.

Allot of reading if you're willing, but it should help.

Proc isn't taking a 12X multiplier? Weird. Wonder if the temps reported by the motherboard are correct. Try running that Volcano at max and pushing a box fan up to the side of the opened case. See if that'll let you run 12X. If it does cooling is the prob.
I sinked the crap outa the board to get the results I saw.

Some recommendations:

Do you have the stock chipset heatsink on the board? If so get that thing off the board and replace it with something functional. At the very least take it off and check the thermal compound under it. The little smear Abit gave me was justa little bigger then a pencil eraser. The stock heat sink isn't something I'd call high grade at all though. I think they figured if someone was going to get serious with overclocking they'd replace it anyways, so no reason to put anything expensive on it.

Buy a couple packs of RAM sinks. They don't have to be expensive, the aluminum ones will do and put them on the motherboard MOSFETs and whatever other chips are getting hot. The MOSFETS above 2.2 Ghz can get hot enough to make you pull your hand back for fear of being burned. When they get to a high enough temp their power regulation capabilities aren't reliable and will cause proc freezes, restarts and glitches.

Add a 60 mm fan to actively cool these as necessary. There is a "how to" from the Overclockers.com sight showing how to easily do this. (It was done to the board you're using.)

The southbridge on the board and a few other chips get excessively at and above 200 Mhz. Sink them.

I haven't proven this one to work or not, but I saw someone found that actively cooling that back of the board with a 60 mm fan took a small amount of heat from the proc and cooled the components back there offering help with stability.

Is the RAM getting hot? Actively cool it and pump more voltage into it. (Maybe, this is at your discretion..)

The setup you have may take on a second breath if watercooled. It'll need to be a higher end rig probably homemade to offer major performance over what you have. The standard off the shelf 200 watt setup will probably only get you the same results you have except quieter.

Insure you're not using too much thermal compound and upgrade to Artic Silver if you haven't already (this is big if you're using a thermal pad). Too much can hurt you alittle. Remember, thermal compound and other soft thermal interfaces are only there to fill the gaps between the surfaces of the proc and the HSF where air would normally add thermal resistance. Themal compound it's self can add to thermal resistance if it completely isolates the proc from the HSF. That proc can and will put out several times the wattage per square inch a clothes iron will, so efficiency is key.

If you do decide to take the plunge into watercooling to max the proc out consider what hit in air flow the board will take from this. Even hot air from the proc can still cool hotter surfaces like the MOSFETS and the RAM. If you watercool these need to be actively cooled in order to max the board and proc out.

Lastly, look for patterns. I found that in my setup my processor had a magic temperature (42°C) at which it would fail when above 2.8 Ghz. I'm positive my proc has more in it, but my water system couldn't move enough heat through the waterblock. The gold plating on my blocks is great for corrosion control, but adds thermal resistance. So, to go
higher then 2.8 I'd have to go peltier or compressor. My system was only an overclocking project though so I wasn't willing to spend the extra cash plus put 300-400 more watts of heat into my room (it's war with the A/C as it is now with 3 other PC's running) and I needed an new cool running server board and proc, so I dropped it and went with the server.

Hope this helps.

Good luck. Keep us posted.


-edited as needed to fix human brain/computer interface glitches, most notably spelling and grammer.

-edited for extra reading and random info. Here is a link to Corsair's house of help forums where "TheCleaner" and I first got our XP-M 2500's and NF7-S motherboards. Theres some random chatter in it, but allot of good info too. You can seach their sight with key word NF7-S and/or XP-M to see what others did. Yeah, I was a part of probably half of it, but I was having fun and others msg'd me requesting responses to a few of them.
Again, good luck, hope it helps.

Thanks for the great reply!

Proc isn't taking a 12X multiplier? Weird.

Oddly it will not, at all. Anything that hits exactly 2.6 (2600mhz) or higher makes my mother board just simply beep after saving the bios settings. Even at stock (and/or loose) memory timings & speed, it still will not post above 2600mhz. Even though 200x12 is 2400mhz, it does work but with a huge voltage jump im not about to commit to, 200x11.5 = 2300mhz is stable with 1.725volts, i have to jump to almost 1.85vore to get that stable, at least I think. I havent prime tested it but Windows feels a bit weezy. Its like the force, you can feel unstablity.

Do you have the stock chipset heatsink on the board?

Accually Yes, I do. One day i was workin around inside my tower, making sure all 11 of my beautfiul fans were spinning and pushing air, just to notice the little ******* sitting on my NB wasnt spinning. That didnt really concern me because i touched it and it started back up again, odd i thought to my self. Ever since then it has been spinning. I will take this recommendation under way and replace it once i stumble upon some money. I will probaly (for now) take it off, put some new thermal paste up under it and resit the heatsink.

Buy a couple packs of RAM sinks. They don't have to be expensive, the aluminum ones will do and put them on the motherboard MOSFETs and whatever other chips are getting hot. The MOSFETS above 2.2 Ghz can get hot enough to make you pull your hand back for fear of being burned. When they get to a high enough temp their power regulation capabilities aren't reliable and will cause proc freezes, restarts and glitches.

I'm pretty sure I can feel what you mean by freezes, restarts and glitches, i've gotten all of those and yes, they are very very 'warm' - i've been burnt plenty of times by my computer and I know those things are hot as hell. Ill be sure to activly cool those. I normally run my computer 200x11.5 for 2.3ghz, so that is over the 2.2ghz you mentioned.

The southbridge on the board and a few other chips get excessively at and above 200 Mhz. Sink them.

I got that done, i put an old NB cooler from an ECS K7S5A on their, just a small ram sink. It used to get also but now it stays pretty cool. The fan on my side panel hits that heatsink pretty good.

Is the RAM getting hot?

Accually no, its not. In my sig, of course, my lazyness comes out and i forgot to update the voltage. I normally run 2.7v just to keep the ram in line, even if it isnt out of line. I usually move it up to 2.8v just to play it safe when overclocking my fsb, which i dont normally do until now because of my need for speed and the 6800GT @ U that is poppin up tomorrow

As well for thermal compound...im using a custom mixture. It is mostly AS5 but has a few other's mixed around in there to increase life so i do not have to replace it as often.

Water cooling...man id love to do that, but im just trying to get the most out of this box before I upgrade to a value Athlon 64 system. The cooling I got now is accually quite nice. The volcano 11 does wonders for my box @ 200x11.5 - 1.725vcore, its currently at 33C. I guess ill have to consider that afterwards.

Now, i've managed to get 215x11 - 1.825vcore stable. It primed for 6.47hours last night, that is enough to convince me until i get a day or so to prime....BUT! - my sound card freaks out at that speed. Lets say, 3 - 5 minutes of listening to music in Winamp, all the sound just cuts out, completely. Codec error? Nope...Driver error? I dout it...newest from nVidia. 215x11 = soundcard freaks out, even in games or other what not, just 3 - 5 minutes. 200x11.5 = soundcard works great. Im using the onboard SoundStorm 5.1 - in 5.1.

Id really like that 215x11 to work...the adventures of overclocking

Thanks again for your help & suggestions.

YouEatLard said:

-edited for extra reading and random info. Here is a link to Corsair's house of help forums where "TheCleaner" and I first got our XP-M 2500's and NF7-S motherboards. Theres some random chatter in it, but allot of good info too. You can seach their sight with key word NF7-S and/or XP-M to see what others did. Yeah, I was a part of probably half of it, but I was having fun and others msg'd me requesting responses to a few of them.
Again, good luck, hope it helps.

Click to expand...

I looked for my other threads on this to give more info and by the time I hit submit you had added your reply.

ziggo0 said:

Thanks for the great reply!

Click to expand...

Np, glad you're willing to read it. Nice thing about what you're doing is that it's traveled ground like the 302 engine in a Ford Ranger. You'll be able to find a mass amount of info on this if you search and the best place I've found to look are forums populated by overclockers.

ziggo0 said:

Water cooling...man id love to do that, but.....

Click to expand...

Yeah, I could see that. There is a massive plus to watercooling that many don't think about though. The hardware you buy wont go obsolete like your ciruitry will. Atleast most of it wont. Many of the waterblocks out aren't going anywhere anytime soon. The manufacturers will just come out with new mounting brackets to support the newer hardware, that or you can rig it. Even if the waterblocks you buy stop being produced along with new mounting hardware needed you'll still have the basics. Pump, radiator, pipe, and newly gained knowledge. Not trying to push you but, rather possibly opening a side though process up. The exact same water cooling system I used to psuh my XP-M system to overclocking happiness at this moment has my AMD 64 3200 at 26°C and my Asus 9950 Geforce 5950 at an unheard of 29°C.

I'll leave it at that.

By the way, your .5 multipliers actually hurt performance significantly. Basically 11.5 will probably yield benchmarks lower then 11 and possibly lower then 10.

Does your 12X multiplier work at all? Just as a test use lets say 166X12. The overall output of this will be less then you're currently seeing ofcourse but it'll work just to test.

Do you know what the L12 mod is? Have you tried it? I believe this one is geared toward the NF7-S motherboard. I have heard the DFI Lanparty-B didn't need it as much.

How long has that proc been running? Have you given it any time to burn in?
Everything electrical will "burn in" to some degree. In fact your PSU was pre-burnt in by the factory before you got it.
Basically, whenever electrical current is run through an object for a period of time the properties of that object will change. If you look this up you'll understand what I'm getting at. If you will picture a pipe filled with mud, leaving only a small passage for water. You put a hose in it. At first there is considerable resistance but overtime the water changes the shape of the mud inside the pipe making a smooth path and lowering resistance. Electronics have a "similar" reaction to electricity.
Set the proc to 2.2 Ghz±50 Mhz in a configuration that isn't really stressing to the proc or the motherboard but still giving good performance and leave it run like this for the next two weeks or so. Perhaps longer if waiting on new cooling hardware. You may find that the proc then requires less voltage to run that setting and possibly that it clocks higher then previously found. This is inadvertently done by many people who buy systems. They buy a new system and after a couple years or so after the system starts to show it's age in performance then they decide it's expendable and are willing to overclock it with fair results. Although I'm not saying you should wait that long a couple weeks to a month definitely wont hurt.

The sound card thing. Assuming you're doing FSB modification for atleast some of the overclocking this could be at fault. I don't remember if that board or the BIOS you're using has a PCI lock or not. My setup is currently calculating parity for the RAID or I'd check. (It started Saturday night and still is only at 86% completion.) If it does, or you can set the frequency you want the PCI bus to run set it at 66 Mhz. Otherwise any and all FSB modification may be hitting your sound device

Oh, yeah, and insure everything in BOIS not currently being used is disabled, From SATA, to IEEE 1394, to serial ports. Their controllers may cause probs.

Incase you're wondering the char "°" is made by holding "ALT" typing "0176" and then releasing "ALT". This is the most worthless thing I've added to this post. LOL.

Aight, good luck man. Keep us posted.

-edited as needed to fix human brain/computer interface glitches, most notably spelling and grammer.

Sound card freeaking out issue is related to an overclocked PCI bus. However, all nforce2 mobos lock the PCI bus so something is definately wrong. Also, being prime stable for 6hrs can mean that your system would have been stable if you can cool the proc better. That volcano 11 is pretty crappy...have you considered upgrading your cooling something a bit more robust?

By the way, your .5 multipliers actually hurt performance significantly.

Really?! I didnt even know that...I thought the extra .5 & extra 100mhz with no real jump on the vcore would give me a slightly faster computer. So setting it to say 200x11 should give me better results than 200x11.5? Wow...that is sure interesting

Does your 12X multiplier work at all?

Accually yes it does, i got confused with the 13x multi. 13x doesnt like to work unless my fsb is 199 or below. Anything that reaches 2600mhz makes my computer not even post, this is probaly due to bad cooling on the mosfets, NB & or SB.

Do you know what the L12 mod is?

Yes I know what it is. Have I done it? No...Sentential has been helping me, he convinced me to flash my bios but he also mentioned 'he thinks' it has a L12 softmod...im willing to believe that it doesnt.

Oh, yeah, and insure everything in BOIS not currently being used is disabled, From SATA, to IEEE 1394, to serial ports. Their controllers may cause probs.

lol...just so happens you magicly say that. I do have IEEE 1394, Parrallel & Serial ports, disabled lol. I never, ever use them so i figgured disabling them would release a little bit of resources, ill try this one first.

The sound card thing.

Yep...the sound card thing. Im almost 100% positive it has a PCI Lock, it also for sure does have an AGP Lock. Although ever since I flashed my bios, i dont seem to get the PCI Lock option anymore...as well as a few other things. Although...I dont even remember if i seen it before. I noticed I get a better overclock with a different bios than the stock Abit one, ill try the latest stock and see if i can achive the same OC as well as stablity & my sound card working.

Incase you're wondering the char "°" is made by holding "ALT" typing "0176" and then releasing "ALT". This is the most worthless thing I've added to this post. LOL.

I only sat there in notepad trying to figure that one out for half an hour...I couldnt remember, thanks - I usually just use 33C.

Again, thanks for your help YouEatLard

...However, all nforce2 mobos lock the PCI bus so something is definately wrong.

Yep, the definatly wrong thing i think is due to using a hacked bios. Probaly should stick with stock...

That volcano 11 is pretty crappy...have you considered upgrading your cooling something a bit more robust?

Well...I havent thought about upgrading my cooling solution on my CPU due to the volcano performing quite well. I havent had much problems with it...It idles nearly 29C w/ 2,500rpm @ 200x11.5 - 1.725 - then loads around 40C, thats alot better compared to my old Volcano 8 lol. Although...I was looking at an XP-90, possibly. Any recommendations? I cant garuntee the newer coolling would show up anytime soon but it will if deemed nessary, i was looking into new ram first.

YouEatLard said:

The southbridge on the board and a few other chips get excessively at and above 200 Mhz. Sink them.

Click to expand...

I've never seen a hot southbridge...! But then, I've never seen 200Mhz FSB
I was thinking about this chip-sinking thing... My mosfets are sinked and all that, but what are those round "things" with a copper wire coiled around them? They sure get very hot on my board... and I dont's see much hope of sinking them...
Don't mean to highjack this thread, I believe this is relevant...

mirko_3 said:

My mosfets are sinked and all that, but what are those round "things" with a copper wire coiled around them?

Click to expand...

I can't stress enough not to mess with the "Copper wire coiled things". These are inductors, and these inductors are pre-spaced coils made to limit current by generating a magnetic field. Alter the spacing in anyway and it'll change the shape of the magnetic field and change the device's current limiting properties.... more then likely for the worse. They're mainly coiled around that ring to one, keep people from accidentally bumping them and messing the spacing up and two, to spread their heat alittle. These can get hot and thats cool. Yes it will marginally change the resistance of the copper when it gets hot but not enough to matter. The main thing that matters is the magnetic field generated by the device and I've never heard of a physically "hot" magnetic field. Basically, as long as these devices don't get hot enough to melt (and they wont unless you run a higher voltage then they were designed for or put a torch on them) you're good.

The BIOS thing.

The hacked BIOS is out there for a reason I guess. Some one found it helped them, but I got my results from stock BIOS. I never tested the waters with other BIOS's so I can't say if it's better or not. I'd experiment. Maybe the AGP lock in the new BIOS does both, but I really can't say

OMG I forgot that you're using onboard sound. You should sink your south bridge...many have reported that the MCP-T overheats when you're pushing your fsb over 200mhz. That should solve your audio issues.

Some links if you haven't already found them:

enduro wrote quite the thread on volt moding. While I don't recommend doing this myself as XP-M's will scream without these mods being done he did throw out a couple links.

The first from what I've seen so far seems to be pretty good and full of modding info. He also did a a review of the NF7-S which includes cooling observations and solutions. It turns out that many did the same as he did, and actually I did the same too for the most part. I found the same amount of thermal compound (I'm sure you will/did too) under the NB sink. I used a much higher end NB cooler. I could probably cool the proc with my Swiftech MCX159-A. Yeah, it was a hatchet when a scalpel would've done fine but it was one of those "Oooooooh... shiny" things and yeah, the card was there so it came in the mail later that week. I did the same with the RAM and the MOSFETS. You could just use thermal epoxy to attach the NF7-S's current stock sink on the southbridge if you don't have anything else laying around. Ofcourse, you'll want to power the fan and that'll require either a 20 min solder job or a 20 second wire twist if it wont reach the original power connector.

The second site you may have already been to, TicTac's site.