overclocking bclck for ram, change voltages for cpu or anything else?

I have:
Intel Core i5 750
Gigabyte Ga-p55-UD3R
Corsair Dominator 4x1 gb
Corsair H50 enclosed water cooling solution (2 fans , push/pull)

K the problem i have is my ram is not 100 percent compatible with my mobo.

stickers on the ram show they are rated for timigs of 7 7 7 20
and they are rated at 1800mhz
-yeah they are bad a$$

the problem i have is my base clock on my mobo is 133
so my cpu is 133x20 or something giving the stock speed

I know i need to make the base clock 180 to let my ram perform to its specs

I dont really want to overclock my cpu to 3.6 to i will probably simply tune down the multiplier so i would get something like 17 to have just 3.0

My only worry is whether or not to change the voltages on anything. I dont know much about the voltages.

last time i tried doing this it was not stable. however i think that was because i was using the stock cpu cooler and even worse, the stock cpu thermal compound (not nearly enough, not full contact with cpu) and my temps reached 80

So basically my question is "should i adjust any other settings than just baseclock and cpu multiplier? Should i disable turbo mode/speedstep/etc?"

thanks.

With a BCLK Frequency of 180MHz and a System Memory Multiplier (SPD) of 10x = 1800MHz DRAM frequency, you may need to increase the QPI/VTT Voltage to ~1.35V or higher.

DEFINITELY turn hyperthreading off. It can increase your temps by as much as 10-15c, even with a stock cooler. Go in and clean all the dust out of your system, tuck cables away, make sure the fan airflow is in a good direction. Just turning an exhaust fan into an intake by flipping it over can drop your temps too.

Why wouldn't you want to OC your comp to 3.6? the core i7s are beasts, that is a very low OC for a 950, and 80c, if that's your peak temp under load for over 20 minutes, is just fine. you have at least 20c room to work with, i7s can take a LOT of heat. Why spend such a ridiculous amount of money on RAM you won't even properly use? what a waste. I say you buy a $50 aftermarket cpu cooler, push it to at least 4.0 ghz and use that computer to its true potential. I have a 940 running perfectly stable at 4.1 ghz, and I've pushed it as far as 4.5

update

First of all thanks redduc900 for the tip.

Here is what i have running stable.

Base clock at 160
cpu freq =3.2 (160x20)
Dram freq =1600mhz
qpi/vtt= 1.35V
cpu Vcore=[email protected]
I turned load line calibration on. it says it improves VDroop directly.
not too sure what that does but it sounds beneficial.

dont remember if i turned off turbo mode.



I don NOT have a core i7, i have core i5. No hyperthreading sadly.

I did have temps in the 80s when i used my stock cooler. I now have the corsiar H50 which is an all in one watercooler. Stock timings and frequencies idled at 20-23C... Now with this overclock my idle temps are ~30C

I still want my ram to perform at its best which is 1800MHZ.

My last attempt to overclock was:
setting bclck to 180
cpu freq = 3.06 (180x17)
dram freq=1800mhz
qpi/vtt =1.35V
everything else was set as defaults. Including load line calibration.

I got BSOD.

I know there must be some voltage setting or misc setting holding me back. I did not change the cpu vcore at all that could be it. It might have been load line calibration disabled or turbo mode enabled... heck it could have been setting the cpu multiplier to 17 instead of the stock 20 maybe.

any suggestions?
thanks again in advance


ps, i payed 150 for my ram since it was used but its still awesome. Comes with its own cooler... worth it running at 1600mhz just cuz of its timings @7-7-7-20

What's the default voltage for that RAM? Also fill out this BIOS template for the P55-UD3R w/ all of your current settings at 160MHz x 20. If the RAM is rated at 2.0V, then you'll need to bump the QPI/VTT Voltage to at least 1.5V at 1800MHz. Try bumping the BCLK to 180MHz w/ a 10x DRAM Multiplier = 1800MHZ DRAM frequency, w/ vQPI at 1.5V and vDIMM at 2.0V (assuming 2.0V is default); 7-7-7-20-1T

wow thank you so much for that information. I do not have the c7 state option disabled and a few other settings like yours are different. I will try that out as soon as i get home tonight.

You are right my DRAM stock voltage is set at 2.00V but my qpi/vtt is set at 1.35 right now.
I will bump that up to 1.5 and try to get the 180 bclck to boot again with that.
Is there any other voltage settings i should be worried about?

Thanks again...

btw how do i get a read out like you have from my bios? did you type that out yourself?
Is there a 3rd party software to do this?

anyways thanks again that seems like it would do the trick. I will try to replicate your settings as much as possible. (i dont have xmp option to change)

If I can't find a BIOS template specific to a particular MB to copy from online, then I'll download the MB manual and type out each of the overclocking related BIOS options manually. And no, there isn't any software available that can extract every one of the BIOS settings, other than possibly a program like Easy Tune6 for example which shows a number of current voltage and frequency settings.

works stable Thanks again so much... I basically have all the same settings you do in your template. Everything is working fine and stable. Base clock is 180 and multiplier is 19 giving me 3.4 ghz and ram is 1800mhz. qpi/vtt is @1.51V

Idle temps are around 35C. I dont feel like doing any prime95 or anything to see the load temps... this seems good enough for me.

Ok so i thought everything was fine and dandy. Until i started to really use the computer to its fullest. I played COD MW2 and started seeing objects be plain white instead of what they should. Even my character became plain white when close to such things. I was weird and the game crashed to desktop after playing for 20 minutes. After that i was loading speccy and the computer went to BSOD. Temps were ok but i can see the overclock was not stable.

Any suggestions? Below is the BIOS I was running. This should have worked just fine right? I dont think i had all my settings to this spec though... only later did i disable virtualization and a few other minor cpu settings.

On another note. I looked at the Gigabyte boards sold on newegg today... most say compatable ram was ddr3 1066,1333,2000... and some boards had all available ram speeds [ddr3 1066,1333,1600,1800,2200] but had a star next to it saying that if you have an HD video card the highest supported ram is limited to ddr3 1666. If you want higher you must install a discrete video card. FTW!?! Thankfully this is not the board i have but still...



Advanced Frequency Settings:

CPU Clock Ratio 19x
=3.42Ghz
Advanced Core Features [Press Enter]:

Intel(R) Turbo Boost Tech.................[Disabled]
CPU Cores Enabled...........................[All]
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)..................[Disabled]
C3/C6/C7 State Support...................[Disabled]
CPU Thermal Monitor........................[Auto]
CPU EIST Function...........................[Disabled]
Bi-Directional PROCHOT.....................[Auto]

QPI Clock Ratio..........................[Auto]
QPI Link Speed........................[5.76]
Uncore Clock Ratio....................[16x]
Uncore Frequency.....................2560MHz

>>>>> Standard Clock Control <<<<<

Base Clock (BCLK) Control................[Enabled]
BCLK Frequency ............................[180]
System Memory Multiplier (SPD).........[10]
Memory Frequency (MHz).................1600
PCI Express Frequency (MHz)............[100]
C.I.A.2..................................[Disabled]

>>>>> Advanced Clock Control <<<<<

CPU Clock Drive..........................[ 700mV] - stock should i change?
PCI Express Clock Drive................[ 700mV] - stock should i change?
CPU Clock Skew...........................[ 0ps]

Advanced Memory Settings:

System Memory Multiplier (SPD)...........[10.0]
Memory Frequency (MHz)...................1800
Performance Enhance (SPD)............. ..[Standard]
DRAM Timing Selectable (SPD)............ [Auto]
Profile DDR Voltage ..................
Profile QPI Voltage ..................
Channel Interleaving.....................[Auto]
Rank Interleaving........................[Auto]

>>>>> Channel A & B

Channel A Timing Settings [Press Enter]:
Cas Latency Time...................[7]
tRCD....................................[7]
tRP......................................[7]
tRAS...................................[20]

>>>>> Advanced Timing Control

tRC....................................[Auto]
tRRD...................................[Auto]
tWTR...................................[Auto]
tWR....................................[Auto]
tWTP...................................[Auto]
tWL....................................[Auto]
tRFC...................................[Auto]
tRTP...................................[Auto]
tFAW...................................[Auto]


>>>>> Misc Timing Control

B2B Cas Delay..........................[Auto]
Round Trip Latency.....................[Auto]

Channel A Turnaround Settings [Press Enter]:
Different DIMMs........................[Auto]
Different DIMMs........................[Auto]
On The Same Rank.......................[Auto]

>>>>> Channel A Writes Followed By Writes

Different DIMMs........................[Auto]
Different DIMMs........................[Auto]
On The Same Rank.......................[Auto]


Advanced Voltage Settings:

******Mother Board Voltage Control ******
Voltage Types............Normal......Current
--------------------------------------------

>>> CPU
Load Line Calibration...................[Enabled]
CPU Vcore..................1.275v..[Auto]
QPI/VTT Voltage..........1.100v.....[1.51v]

>>> MCH/ICH
PCH Core....................1.050v.....[Auto]
CPU PLL......................1.800v.....[Auto]

>>> DRAM
DRAM Voltage..............1.500v.....[2.00v]
DRAM Termination.........0.750v.....[Auto]
Ch-A Data VRef............0.750v.....[Auto]
Ch-A Data VRef............0.750v.....[Auto]
Ch-B Data VRef............0.750v.....[Auto]
Ch-B Data VRef............0.750v.....[Auto]


Miscellaneous Settings:[/SIZE]

Isochronous Support...................[Enabled] - not sure should i disable?
Virtualisation technology..............[Disabled]

I will also try easy tune 6 that came with the motherboard. I saw a slider to set the RAM speed earlier. Hope that will do the trick.

For the time being i tuned it back to have a bclck of 160 giving me ddr3 1600 and cpu@ 3.4
aaagain.