ep45t-extreme owns e8500 @4.675

stable so fair! this mobo freaken kicks ***!

lets see 575

are you ocing in windows?

thats cheating

NICE overclock !

Solid! Keep going! BIOS o/c or it never happened!!!

its all bios. windows clocking is crap

Out of curiosity, what are you using to test stability?

hank, great work, keep frying those eggs.

Thanks Chawks anyone know the best bios for this *****? I think I want to get some different ram to really clock this hussy!

hmm playing around the ram seems to like slot 1 and 3 much more then 2 and 4

i will say that i have the ram running at 2000mhz right now 9-9-9-24 @2.05 per windows reading. F4 bios is so much better then F3!

my granny e6400 against your Usain Bolt e8500...hmm...i'm not far off

nice oc man

now Im just working on getting 2000Mhz stable ram. I have to say that D9JNM chips kick ***. Best chip out there. and they are cheap! I can NOT for the life of me get my OCZ 1800MHZ ram to run stable at 1800MHZ heck I got this cheap 1333 ram running at 1980 stable right now.

STABLE!!!! Dude i really think this is the most over looked board.

Help with EP45T-Extreme

Hank123,

1st - Congratulations on pushing your ep45t-extreme to the extremes.. at least of someone who actually could!

2nd - Due to all your persistent work with this board... I'm asking you for big time help plz!
It's a long story... but I hope you will take the time to read it entirely...

I bought this EP45T-Extreme motherboard not to do any overclocking,
but because I found it a good deal at this Canadian Branch: Canada
Computers (Yeap I'm Canadian, hope u don't mind) over a year ago (July 09, 2009). It came with a 30 $ rebate and then I paid for it $186. It was also showing a 3 years warranty.

As I said I don't do any overclocking, but I picked the motherboard
due to it's cooling power, and "silent" design which were very
attractive. I never set anything out of the specifications and always
left the settings to Auto. Never did anything strange with it, I did
not increase any settings, I wanted an stable system and I thought if
this system was designed for overclockers for a regular user like me
it would be the perfect, reliable and stable motherboard I could ever
get.

Unfortunately, that's not the case, otherwise I wouldn't be writing
this request. My configuration is very simple, 1 intel dual core processor e8400, 2 corsair dimms ddriii 533mhz totaling 4gb, 1 hitachi hard drive, 1 ati
pci express video card and 1/ 650w cooler master power supply.
Never tried anything out of the "auto" and standard settings.
Actually I bought the motherboard in July 2009 but never assembled it
until December 2009 since I did not have the processor or the memory.

A week ago I noticed the MCH Temperature to be unexpectedly high for
some reason. My Cpu and system temperatures were ok, but the MCH was way very high in comparison.
System Temperature = 45 Celsius
CPU Temperature = 41 Celsius
MCH Temperature = 91 Celsius
CPU FAN = 1151 rpm
System Fan 2 = 971 rpm

So I open the case, and starting by touching the "hybrid-silent-pipe"
orange cooper radiator and heat-sink.
They weren't not even warm... not even as hot as they should if the NB
chip would be boiling at 90 Celsius degrees.
So I thought may be a bios bug. I proceed to use the "clear cmos push
button" on the back of the motherboard, but first I removed
the power as recommended in the motherboard manual. I try again - same
issue. Clear cmos did not seem to fix the issue.
So I downloaded and using qflash update the bios to the latest one -
5si. Try again and the same problem again.
So I downloaded and using qflash update the bios to the one before
that one - 4.0. Try again and the same results.
MCH Temperature still was showing 90 degrees right after turning on
the computer.
I was just turning on the computer and going into the setup right
away. I had disconnected my hd to prevent windows from loading.

So reading the forums, I got some info that may be the "silent-hybrid
pipe" was not properly sitting on top of the NB chip.
So I remove the radiator of the hybrid pipe (the part that sits on top
of the heatsink) to get a good look at the 2 screws
attaching the heatsink to the chip. I noticed one of the screws that
was there to supposedly attach the heatsink against the chip
wasn't tight entirely, and the bridge that join both screws together
on the back of the motherboard was loose at exactly the same point.
I could notice that the heatsink was not properly sitting on top of
the chip but it was actually slanted since one of
the screws was properly in and the other was 1/2 way in and it had not
been screwed properly but at an angle.
Here I tried to unscrew it to screwed it back properly in the right
angle (straigth in) but it broke when I tried to unscrewed it.

Since, one broke off, I remove the whole cooper radiator, and clean
the NB chip top and the heatsink where there were a lot
of hard and dried up thermal paste... and replace it with new one.
However now the heatsink is sitting on just one screw
and even though I don't see any problem with it, may be it's not
enough to proper put enough pressure on the NB chip therefore
the MCH Temperature still reads 90 degrees.

I contact Wonderful Canada Computers who basically told me.. get lost.
Don't worry Canada Computers I'll tell the same to everyone I know.
And, I wrote to Gigabyte but ... no answers. And since 1 screw is broken
I'm sure they won't honored their warranty either.

So I was wondering, have u ever removed, replace or simply lift the monster cooper sitting on top of the NB chip? I'm still convinced that the top part of the chip and the actual bottom of the cooper heatsink aren't doing a proper contact.. could that be? any recommendations, idea would be greatly appreciated Hank123

Have a good one, and hope u never run on the problems I'm running..
Andy.

I found that the pipe can push up the heatsink on the NB so be careful this could be your issue with the high MCH temps. I got real high temps on mine and found this to be the issue. try running it with out it. also what bios ver do you have? this board is a ***** to clock. the ref voltages are key.

Hey man, you are the best!
Quicker than flash u are!

The motherboard was shipped with the f2 bios version, I flashed it to the latest one f5i and then flashed to one below cause f5i is a beta, so right now it's flashed with the version 4.0. I believe the same one u are running...

When u say trying running without it meaning? the big radiator on top?
Yea I removed it to see what the problem was, but still shows mch 90 celsius.. without the radiator... or with it. Actually the cooper heatsink it's 2 parts. the big radiator that covers the pci slot and the part that runs cooper pipes from the SB chip to the voltage regulators... I've removed the first one but no luck yet.

Thanks again for answering... how did u fix the hight NB temperatures in your case?

Andy.

well it sounds like its not touching much at all. can u remove it and take a pic of the bottom and a pic of the nb? you may have to bend the heat pipe a little to get it to fit tight.
Or you could do a bolt mod. Look up IP35 pro heat pipe mod or something along those lines. With that NB nice in cool it will clock better

Hey thanks again Hank123

I guess I'll stop by home depot and try to find those kind of screws...
I'm at work right now, but I'll send you some pics once I get home, but
since everything is on auto settings, shouldn't the MCH temperature not be so high? I mean, it's just after I turn the computer on... 90 celsius.. it's kind of crazy... don't u think?

In any case, since the reseller does not care, and most likely I won't heard from Gigabyte either, I'll try to get those screws and see if I can put some pressure on that nb chip...

I'll send u the pics tonight.
Thank you very much again.
Andy.

You can look in the bios and see what the voltage is set at. with a e8400 it should not push the NB that hard. that is way out. Make sure you do it with the parts in the link below. Be careful!
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2330347&postcount=751

Good Morning Hank123

I'm sorry I did not send you the pictures of the board yesterday night,
I got complicated with something else, but I got through with gigabyte tech support and they said I could ship them the motherboard to check it up and
see if they will replace it or not... I think I'll follow that path.. at least once.. to see... after all I never tried to overclock the motherboard, I always used the "auto" settings... I'll let you know what happens after Hank123
Thanks for all ur help.
Have a good one.
Andy