OC'ing my E4300 to 3Ghz - the process.

I've seen that many of you guys have Oc'ed your E4300's to 3Ghz and beyond, using air cooling. So I'm aiming for 3Ghz.

The FSB I currently was at was 266 with a multiplier of 9x giving a clock speed of 2.4Ghz.

I started by increasing the FSB. From 266 to 270, to 275 and finally to 280 to reach a clock speed of 2520Mhz at vcore 1.213

Running Orthos, coretemp read 58 degrees.

I upped the FSB to 289 but windows didn't load.
So I increased the Vcore to 1.30V and decreased the FSB to 283 and windows loaded.
Idle coretemp read 38 degrees, running orthos 58 degrees.

I maintained the 1.30 Vcore and attempted 289 once again but I got the post message that the overclock hadn't worked.
So I decreased the FSB to 285 and although it seemed to work at first (windows loaded) when I navigated to load cpuz I got the BSOD.

So I re-adjusted to 283 FSB on 1.3 Vcore.

CPUz gave me these readings: 2546 Mhz CPU, RAM at 424.3Mhz and FSBram Ratio at 2.3.

I ran orthos for 1 hour and the temperature didn't go above 58 degrees.

I adjusted Vcore to 1.3375 and tried an FSB of 289 but still it didn't work

Then I put Vcore at 1.25 but made a mistake even though I had been writing everything down and put the FSB at 285 rather than 283 and I got the message "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \windows\system32\config\system"

By then I realised my FSB mistake and adjusted it once again to 283 on 1.3Vcore but I still got the windows error message.
So I reloaded using my windows xp cd and did a repair.

After repairing, Windows loaded.
Currently running 283 FSB multiplier x9 on 1.3 Vcore.

I'd appreciate any advice you can give me to get over this 'wall'.
Btw: I was working on the pc in my signature.
Thanks, and here's a screenshot of how things are now:

Edit: this is waaaaaaay too low a wall for an e4300... I must be overlooking something really stupid...

Set your RAM to 1:1 and make sure they still are getting the required voltage (not auto). This way you don't need to worry for now whether your RAM is holding you back or not.

Also try probing around at different FSB range. Try 9x333 with something like 1.35V at 1:1 RAM ratio. There is a very good chance you can do 3GHz within 1.3X volts range.

GTengineer said:

Set your RAM to 1:1 and make sure they still are getting the required voltage (not auto). This way you don't need to worry for now whether your RAM is holding you back or not.

Also try probing around at different FSB range. Try 9x333 with something like 1.35V at 1:1 RAM ratio. There is a very good chance you can do 3GHz within 1.3X volts range.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

What memory voltage would you suggest I start with?
At the bios it's set at auto...

Sorry for the questions but I'm a noob...

E4300 said:

Thanks.

What memory voltage would you suggest I start with?
At the bios it's set at auto...

Sorry for the questions but I'm a noob...

Click to expand...

If you are going for a 1:1 FSB:RAM and you have DDR2 800 the stock voltage will work, as you will be running it under-spec while you find your CPU's max.

Depending on which RAM you have it'll be somewhere between 1.8-2.2v most likely, which ram kit do you have?

So far so good..

FSB at 300
Lowered RAM...
Vcore 1.3
Memory voltage 2.00

I'm confident guys haven't increased vcore to more than 1.45 or 1.5 but I'm terribly unsure about memory voltage.....

Help?

satandole666 said:

If you are going for a 1:1 FSB:RAM and you have DDR2 800 the stock voltage will work, as you will be running it under-spec while you find your CPU's max.

Depending on which RAM you have it'll be somewhere between 1.8-2.2v most likely, which ram kit do you have?

Click to expand...

I saw your post after I posted mine.

My RAM is DDR2-800 Elixir CL5 1024MB.

However Everest says: DIMM1: Nanya M2Y1G64TU8HB0B-25C 1 GB DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM (5-5-5-18 @ 400 MHz) (4-4-4-12 @ 266 MHz) (3-3-3-9 @ 200 MHz)

Maybe I'm missing out something but can I get to know the stock voltage if in the bios it's Auto? Do you mean I can leave it at Auto or would it lower itself if I do that?

Thanks.

Got to:

FSB 310
DDR2-775
Ram Voltage 2.00
Vcore 1.3

Clock is 2.79Ghz

FSB:Ram ratio down from 2:3 to 4:5..... can't seem to get it 1:1

your ram voltage is probably 1.8 stock.
right now i believe you are undervolting your cpu as 1.325 is stock voltage on e4300.

I havent heard of that ram. Anyway, it's rated at ddr2 800 so you should be fine with 333 FSB as long as you keep it at 1:1 ratio. Also set your ram on stock voltage and stay with cas5 for now. because you're still in spec.

Then like he said, set your FSB to 333 your vc at around 1.35v. Watch your temps too, 58 orthos load is high already, that will limit your oc.

Lock PCIE to 100
Disable DRAM Static Control
Disable Spread Spectrum

If you could post your all your other jumperfree settings we could probably help you more.

EDIT: Man I'm slow 1:1 should be the first DRAM Frequency

satandole666 said:

If you are going for a 1:1 FSB:RAM and you have DDR2 800 the stock voltage will work, as you will be running it under-spec while you find your CPU's max.

Depending on which RAM you have it'll be somewhere between 1.8-2.2v most likely, which ram kit do you have?

Click to expand...

Right, that's why I prefer pushing the cpu first and then worrying about the RAM.

4300 ... I do not own your mobo and my 650i is a little different so maybe this makes no sense but do you have an option to set your ram to "synced"? In my board for 1:1 to work properly I need to set the RAM to synced. This may be why it is not working since at 1:1 you are running well below specs and it should not be a problem.

Managed to get 1:1 FSB:RAM ratio.

Right now I'm running on:
FSB 325
DDR2-650Mhz
Memory Voltage 2.00
Vcore 1.3125

That's 2925Mhz!

Orthos temperature is varying between 56 and 59. I've only run orthos for 15 minutes on this OC and once it reached 60. Now both cores seem to have stabilised at 57/58. My room temperature is 28 degrees though.

As soon as I post this I will try to decrease my memory voltage to 1.8.

I'm having an issue with my Vcore though. The max voltage option the bios is giving me is 1.3125

I'm sure I forgot to unlock something somewhere.... I'm off to take BLOOP'S advice and lock PCIE to 100, disable DRAM static control and disable spread spectrum...

I made it to 3Ghz but 20 seconds into Orthos and my system reboots...



Idle coretemp is 38 degrees. (Temperature IN the bios is shown as 27 degrees... hmph...)

Ummm, does this mean my RAM speed must remain that as shown in CPUz below now?

E4300 said:

I'm having an issue with my Vcore though. The max voltage option the bios is giving me is 1.3125

Click to expand...

Sorry to be pressing on this but this is crazy - at the beginning of my OC the bios showed the option to increase vcore to 1.4 and more... What happened now???

Eek this is scary. Is it a cause to worry?

Not sure what you mean by "
Ummm, does this mean my RAM speed must remain that as shown in CPUz below now?"

As far as why your unstable, I think with CPU-Z showing vcore at 1.213v and you had it set at 1.3v you probably forgot to turn off Intel SpeedStep and also disable C1E Support. CPU-Z usually shows an accurate reading until you pass 1.4x volts at which point it shows 1.213 falsely.

The max voltage option being at 1.3125 is probably due to a really old BIOS. I haven't played around with any vanilla P5B's but try flashing to the latest BIOS. Reset the overclock to factory speeds when you do so.

I'm assuming you've run memtest to make sure your ram isn't faulty?

What voltage are you running the NB on?

hmmm, try this.

Make a note of your current FSB and all the other settings.
Turn you BIOS back down to stock and set VCore to 'auto'.
Boot up to windows.
Restart and check if your Vcore options are back.

Suprchargd said:

As far as why your unstable, I think with CPU-Z showing vcore at 1.213v and you had it set at 1.3v you probably forgot to turn off Intel SpeedStep and also disable C1E Support. CPU-Z usually shows an accurate reading until you pass 1.4x volts at which point it shows 1.213 falsely.

Click to expand...

CPU-z reads my vcore at 1.55V as 1.2xx something so I wouldnt trust that reading

The following settings were the stablest so far. I've reverted back to them:

FSB - 325
DDR2-650Mhz
I decreased memory voltage to 1.9
Vcore in bios is 1.3125

That's 2.93 Ghz so far.

10 minutes running orthos, will be leaving it overnight tonight.

Suprchargd: what I meant now is that my memory must remain at 650Mhz rather than its original 800Mhz?

I'll be checking about Intel SpeedStep, but I surely disabled C1E support.

Thanks for your help so far.

EDIT: BTW I know that the vcore appears in CPUZ but what I'm quoting in my posts is the vcore as in the BIOS.

I'll take a couple of screenshots of the bios...

OK I don't know how to put this for the shame and embarrasment - forget about me not being able to increase the vcore - I pressed the 'up' arrow and there the voltages started appearing...

Pity there isn't a blushing emoticon here, I needed one very badly here.

So I increased vcore to 1.35, FSB 334, DDR2-668Mhz, memory voltage at 1.9

I finally got my 3Ghz OC, and orthos is ticking away with no errors so far.

The only issue now is that while running orthos sometimes the cpu temperature reaches 62/63 which isn't exactly cool. I'll be trying to decrease the vcore a little bit...

grats on the 3ghz.

While you have half the Cache memory, you now have a chip clocking faster than the X6800 which sells for $975 on Newegg.com