P5N-E SLi and E6600, Please Help!

Howdy,

I'm a noob, but I do know a bit about ocing, but not to much as I am still learning. I clocked my last PC (AMD X2 4400+ to 2.6ghz) without too many problems, but I am having problems clocking my E6600!

Firstly my spec (that matters) is:

ASUS p5n-E SLi
Intel Core2Duo E6600 w\ Artic Cooler Pro 7
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2

Now I managed earlier to get my clock to 3.3ghz and I ran Orthos for 2+ hours without fault, and my temps where maxing at 52c, so not to bad. So I exited and continued the ocing process but uping the FSB/Vcore and so on.

I couldn't get it any higher no matter how high I uped the vcore, and I stopped uping the vcore at 1.5v... as I did not want to go past that.

Well I put it back to how I had it and couldnt run orthos for more than 10 minutes this time, so it obviously wanst stable? So something is causing this unstability, cos seeing some people get their E6600 to 3.9, I'm sure I can get it to 3ghz at least!

I set all my ram timings to auto and the ram clock speed to 600 to be on the safe side, so Im sure it wasn't that. Besides I was running a CPU stress in Orthos so that wouldnt have cuased many probs with the RAM.

So I am really at a loose end here, cos I am back at stock now cos I don;t know what to do to get it stable?

Could anyone help out with this? And what I should set the values at at start in my BIOS? And then what I should up and by how much?

The only settings I think I am interested in in the BIOS are:

Vcore Voltage:
Memory Voltage:
NB Core Voltage:
FSB Memory Clock Mode:
FSB Memory Ratio:
FSB (QDR) Mhz:
Mem (DDR) Mhz:
CPU Multiplier:
LDT Frequency:

Anybody help me with these settings, cos I despretely want to get more from it? Its very different from my old mobo so its still a bit confusing?

Please help!

Thanks

Steve M

bump the NBV a little bit, i have a D920 and that same mobo i have to set the NB at the 1.7v setting to get 4Ghz outta my chip.

You got a fan on your northbridge by any chance? Or running it bare?

I've started the clock again, and so far its going ok (fiingers crossed). I have just got my rig to 3.3ghz and am 30mins thru Orthos, I usually run it for 50mins - 1hr before uping the FSB.

Its gone quite smoothly so far, so I am gonna keep going. At what point do you think I should up the Northbridge voltage? around 3.4/3.5 ghz?

ta

keogh said:

You got a fan on your northbridge by any chance? Or running it bare?

I've started the clock again, and so far its going ok (fiingers crossed). I have just got my rig to 3.3ghz and am 30mins thru Orthos, I usually run it for 50mins - 1hr before uping the FSB.

Its gone quite smoothly so far, so I am gonna keep going. At what point do you think I should up the Northbridge voltage? around 3.4/3.5 ghz?

ta

Click to expand...

crappy thing is no, the north bridge is stock i only pushed it for a few mins so i could get that screen shot... i have pretty good air flow in my case (antec 900) so i didnt think a few mins would hurt anything. i only run a 3.5GHz overclock 24/7 and i can run that at the lowest setting for the northbridge

In order for my p5n-e sli to be stable at 500mhz fsb and nb voltage at 1.7v I had to get a HR-05 SLI NB cooler. Another thing you need to know is that not all e6600's can get to 3.9ghz. Don't compare your OC to other's because you will be dissapointed. My first e6300 had an fsb wall at 400mhz. It would not go any higher no matter what settings I used. I got the e6300 I have now and it can go all the way up to 528fsb. From what I've read the earlier e6600's clocked better than current ones.

What memory timings and voltage are you using?

Yeah I got one of the later batch, my FPO tells me its one of the not so overclockable batch, so its quite frustrating. I don't want to take my NB voltage of auto cos I'm scared it will burn out, so I have been trying to get my best from it on auto and the stock asus heatsink.

I got to 3.5ghz on 1.525v vcore, and orthos ran for 3 hours, but I bottled out and went back to 3.4ghz. I was running 3.4ghz quite nicely for a while, but I keep getting random boot failures, when I reboot the system its goes black and my machine does not boot, so I have to force the machine to power down by holding the power buttons for 4 secs and it boots this time but I get a Boot Post failure, F1 to continue DEL to enter setup etc etc. So I have to go in here, F10 to save my BIOS again and reboot and it will work fine!

This only happens now and again though, sometimes I get in no probs?

So this has annoyed me, so I have pushed my clock back to 3ghz now (3ghz on a E6600.. madness!) and I am gonna see how this goes. Only just put i back though, so I don't know if it will stop these random boot failures, but I will see.

My ram timings are put to stock too, I've got those to 4-4-4-12 2T 800mhz as I don;t know if its that causing it... although Im sure its not cos I have that at 850mhz and run memtest for 9 hours with 12passes... but I just put it back to stock anyway.

Not having a good time with this clock, and I am sure its the crummy Asus P5N-E lump they call a motherboard! I tried flashing the new 0505 BIOS too, and my machine would not boot no matter what I did then, so I had to revert back via CMOS!