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Motherboard or RAM - which one is blocking?

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gofra

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2005
Hi folks,

just recently I entered the world of overclocking and Im still trying to get to know how things work. I was wondering how do you guys know, when to raise the NB voltage? Also, how do you know when motherboard wont go any further?

The reason Im asking is that I never heard mobos being questioned when raising the FSB. Allways RAM. I just want to make sure I know.


Example:

I got Epox 8rda3i board with 2x512 400DDR Geil Value ram. It passes memtest on 220 FSB ok. But as soon as I go to 225 (up to 224 only return few errors in memtest but enough for me not to use those settings) it wont even boot. Monitor wont start, sometimes I even have to turn off the PSU to restart it. So which one should I blame here? Mobo or RAM?


And btw, Im running Vdimm 2.7V and NB @ 1.8V

Thank you for your answers!
 
Bah, just found out - silly me...So what the heck - I'll just put it down in case someone else needse it :D

MAX FSB your mobo can handle:

- lower your CPU multiplier below stock (if say, 1830 is your stock speed, make sure FSB X multi combo will allways be below that, but only achieve that lowering your multiplier!)
- lower your RAM/CPU (or CPU/RAM) ratio or/and relax your RAM timings. So if your stock settings are 2,5 - 3 - 3 - 6 @ 200 FSB, try with 3 - 4 - 4 - 7 nad/or use the divider so that your RAM speed will allways work below its stock speed.
- raise the mobo (NB) voltage (Vdd) up to what you safely can/want and make sure you took good care of cooling of the NB chipset. I wouldnt go further than 1.8 V on air here.
- raise the FSB in small increments and boot after every step. If you can enter Windows normaly, reboot and raise FSB just a bit more. Keep doing so until you cannot enter WIndows anymore or the system freezes, locks up...
- reboot, enter BIOS and go back to the settings that let you enter Windows normaly.
- reboot. In Windows run Prime or simmilar testing program and let it run for few hours. If it passes, you can increase the FSB a bit and try testing again. If it fails, go back to your last stable setting. That will also be your mobos highest FSB.

I hope my poor knowledge got it right. If anyone feels I forgot about something please correct me!

Thank you
 
np realy....;)
Im wondering if Primes blend test would do allright for the purposes of testing the mobo FSB?
 
Torture test I beleive :)

Although I've had my pc not working on prime but being stable everywhere else...
 
Yeah, torture test - I know that. But there are three types of it + a custom one that you can set yourself. First one stresses the CPU mainly, while the other two stress other stuff as well. Blend torture test stresses everything...

As an update: I passed the 222FSB 22 hours on Blend - so I can say that mobo handles that pretty well right?
 
Ah right, my bad. Forgot about that. Yeah I would say your board could handle that sweet if it survived 22hrs :)
 
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