Need Help On OC'ing E2140

I'm in the middle of testing my system with Prime 95 to see if my E2140 can hold up to 1.98ghz. However, I could see in core temp that my temp are ranging from 68c to 75c. I know it sounds dumb that I'm running on stock cooling. But I am just wondering if there is anything else I am doing wrong. So far on the test the system is still stable, except for the core temps.

Any suggestions other than buy better cooling???

Too much Vcore!

You shouldn't need near that much Vcore to get to 2ghz stable... most people are getting to 3ghz with less. If you need that much Vcore you got a serious dog of a chip

But yeah, stock cooling can't handle that much voltage.

Lower the vcore to just a step over stock and you should be able to hit 3GHz with that. That is all I needed.

yup....wayyyy to much vcore on that.

what chipset does your board have?

Hmmm... That's why... I'll try putting the vcore back on stock and see how far I can go with it. Then I'll just add voltage 1 step till its stable on a good speed.

The board has the NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI for NB shipset and NVIDIA® nForce 430i for the SB.

What do you guys would suggest for good quality and cheap CPU cooling. Cause I'm kinda on a tight buget... maybe around 40$-60$....

For CPU cooling you can get an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro pretty cheap for the lowend or you can go for a better Zalman 9700 or Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme for the higher end ones

Indeed you vcore is very high, I have my E2160 at 3.0ghz and my vcore is only 1.36

I am tinking of getting the ZALMAN CNPS9500 or Gigabyte G-Power Pro. However, in the long run I want to go for the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, but if I do that my son won't any diapers for 3 weeks... ***sigh***

Why not just hold out til you have the money for the Thermalright? I wish I did, now I have to spend the money on it and still have my AC7 which I spent money on just a few weeks ago.

Ok. So I pulled the vcore and memory voltage back to stock. I stopped the stress test at around 35 minutes cause the core temps are still capping at 70c+/-. I was afraid that I might fry the sucker.

BTW, at what temp do you think the E2140 fry???

Guess i'm gonna go with the Gigabyte G-Power Pro. What do you think???
Then I''ll just save up for bad boys and buy it next month.

my e2140 does 3ghz with 1.3375v, so like everyone said you got too much v-core. temps... depends on your stepping, L2 = > 62+ is dangerous. M0 => 72+ is dangerous.

well some say to have at least a 20c buffer to Tjunction on the cpu. that would then mean your cpu could safly run at 80c max. though i wouldnt go that high i would do maybe 70-74c. even though im more old school and still stick with 60c on my chips at the house.

White_Pawn said:

my e2140 does 3ghz with 1.3375v, so like everyone said you got too much v-core. temps... depends on your stepping, L2 = > 62+ is dangerous. M0 => 72+ is dangerous.

Click to expand...

The weird thing now is that i have set the vcore back to stock (1.296v) and still I'm capping upto 70c.

sounds like some bad IHS connection. =T

you can try reseating the HSF first to see if that works, if not, then...

...its time to delid the cpu! (don't actually do this unless you feel like trying a 50/50 lottery.)

Delid?

First of all, you may want to double check your HSF and eventually reseat it.

Next, you may try undervolting your CPU. Right now I'm testing my E2160 at 1.168 vCore (1.2v in BIOS), and it looks to be stable for more than 1 hour in ORTHOS so far. It helped me to fight the temps down about 10 degrees without any improvement in case or cpu cooling (54 Tcase & 70 Tjunction with 2.4 GHz at 1.300v earlier, 45 Tcase & 60 Tjunction with 2.4 GHz at 1.168v).

Better cooling is just to be the next step...

It is amazing, how much overpowered these chips are with a default VID...

mikaelc said:

First of all, you may want to double check your HSF and eventually reseat it.

Next, you may try undervolting your CPU. Right now I'm testing my E2160 at 1.168 vCore (1.2v in BIOS), and it looks to be stable for more than 1 hour in ORTHOS so far. It helped me to fight the temps down about 10 degrees without any improvement in case or cpu cooling (54 Tcase & 70 Tjunction with 2.4 GHz at 1.300v earlier, 45 Tcase & 60 Tjunction with 2.4 GHz at 1.168v).

Better cooling is just to be the next step...

It is amazing, how much overpowered these chips are with a default VID...

Click to expand...

Ok... So, I already pushed the vcore back to 1 step from stock (1.32V) and Reseated my stock HSF. Now, I just installed a new Gigabyte g-power pro and I'm capping 60c-65c at 2.13Ghz full load. I am still on bad temps or should I still push it further??? It was stable for on hour on Orthos' blend test.

I assume the second screen depictures your CPU on a VCore brought one notch down? Because the first one shows 1.328v which doesn't look to be below default VID...

I cannot guarantee your chip will remain stable undervolted, but have heard about a lot of people running slightly (more or less) OCed E21x0 stable below default voltage. That looks similar to overvolting and overclocking. Some will, some won't go within (in this case - below) the same limits.

And I have proven it myself (and on my own risk). Untill some point you may choose just between stock voltage or decreasing it. Mine 2.40 should be similar to your 2.13 (9x266 FSB vs 8x266) and it is stable at 1.186v (1.2 in BIOS). It seemed to be stable even one more notch below (1.168), but finally ORTHOS crashed after ~7 hours. 1.186v was stable for 12+ and I accepted thas settings.

As already said, I've fought the temps by 10* down and the only factor, which I could consider to have an extra influence on these results, is a break-in period for my thermal compound (Zalman STG-1). No other improvements done.

I find my case cooling rather mediocre and certainly need to improve it if I want to push that chip further and stay within safe limits. I don't know a thing about yours and it might be the next factor to consider (besides voltage and new cooler).

And - of course - if you plan on pushing your CPU further and further, you surely will not be able to stick with low voltage forever. Just balance between reasonable power and reasonable voltage... I feel happy with my 2.4g and don't need any extra seconds in SuperPI. More MHz will be wasted by my gfx card for sure

I JUST CAPPED 3.0GHZ BELOW 65c!!!


Now pushing to 4.0ghz....

So I clocked to 3.0mhz... stable for an hour on orthos good temps... but after 2-3 restarts, the system hangs in the middle of boot or even when I am already in windows... I tried upping the NB voltage 4 notches from stock, so that's about 1.375v and still the same thing.

My RAM is clocked to 680ghz, timings are set auto (don't know much about the timing. I have 2sticks of Corsair 512GB DDR2 533mhz (VS512MB667D2). Any suggestions guys???

Thanks.