Overclocking Phenom 9950 BE on Crosshair II

Asus Crosshair II update with 8030 BIOS
8 GB OCZ Reaper PC2 8500
Phenom 9950 BE
1200 watt PC power and Cooling power supply

I must say this board has been extremely finiky. It took me several days to hand set the memory timings so that it would run without blue screening all the time. I have the system fully stable now running the ram at 1066.

So I decided to move on to trying to push the cpu, and it wont overclock a single bit. Cooling is absolutly not a problem here. Iv tried pumping up the voltage incrementaly to as high as 1.45, and it wont even overclock a mere 200mghz. It will POST, but the moment it tries to load Vista 64-bit, it blue screens.

I must say that as many options as the BIOS has for tweaking the ram and cpu, they are all in a cryptic abreviation or non descriptive name, with no explanation in the BIOS or the manual as to what they do.

Im guessing there is some other setting I need to play with besides the multiplyer for the cpu and the voltage. How far has other pushed their Phenom processors? What settings were used to get there? Are there any Deatailed explantions of the various settings in the BIOS, or of the overclocking settings others are using to get high overclocks?

Try overclocking by increasing your multpler first...

I am doing that by changing the CPU multiplier from 13 to 14, which adds just 200 mghz to the CPU. The system bluescreens everytime when I do this though.

Ive tried setting the memory back down to 800 mhz, and the system still wont hit 2.8 ghz without bluescreening. I left the timings ont he memory loose, and the volts at 1.9. Even with 1.4 volts on the cpu I cant get it to work with a x14 multiplier. How are all those review site out there getting theirs to over 3ghz on just air?

try northbridge voltage?
fsb voltage?
they may work.

I just noticed that CPU-Z states the voltage of my CPU at 1.232 volts, even though I had set the CPU in the BIOS to be at 1.4 volts.

I know this board has problems displaying the actual memory timings in the BIOS, any chance that the board is not actually increasing the voltage to the CPU, as CPU-Z reports? The voltage monitors in the BIOS shows the voltage I set for the CPU correctly. Yet non matter what voltage I set for the CPU in the BIOS, the CPU-Z voltage remains the same, only slightly fluctuating as the pc sits there.

The OCZ's Website says 2.1-2.3volts for the Reaper 8500, have you tried that? http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_ddr2_pc2_8500_reaper_hpc_edition
I'm not sure if your board undervolts vcore but my M2N-SLI certainly does, when I set 1.45vcore in bios
CPUZ reads 1.376 and that is considered accurate. At stock 1.3vcore CPUZ reads 1.22-1.24V and there is
always vdroop under load. Don't know if this helps but good luck.

Stebly said:

The OCZ's Website says 2.1-2.3volts for the Reaper 8500, have you tried that? http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_ddr2_pc2_8500_reaper_hpc_edition
I'm not sure if your board undervolts vcore but my M2N-SLI certainly does, when I set 1.45vcore in bios
CPUZ reads 1.376 and that is considered accurate. At stock 1.3vcore CPUZ reads 1.22-1.24V and there is
always vdroop under load. Don't know if this helps but good luck.

Click to expand...

Interesting. Thing is that when I upped the voltage from 1.4 to 1.45, CPU-Z hardly changed at all. It only moved upward from 1.232 to 1.248 volts. I'm nervous about increasing the voltage in the BIOS further to see if CPU-Z is telling the truth or whether I should go by the BIOS.

The Starfox said:

Interesting. Thing is that when I upped the voltage from 1.4 to 1.45, CPU-Z hardly changed at all. It only moved upward from 1.232 to 1.248 volts. I'm nervous about increasing the voltage in the BIOS further to see if CPU-Z is telling the truth or whether I should go by the BIOS.

Click to expand...

Do you have or use PC Probe, the Asus tool? I don't rely on mine because it
always reads high - 1.45vcore in bios reads 1.52v in Probe. Asus seems to
set voltage readout higher to discourage us from pushing it a bit.
Try it if you have it, you're cpuz readings are strange! See if Probe will at
least acknowledge vcore increase or try Everest, PC Wizard or others.
As long as your temps are good a short term voltage rise shouldn't hurt.
Oh, by the way, I've taken my 5600 to 1.6vcore to find max OC with no
harm but I was quick and I run 24/7 with 1.47vcore, my Firestix don't
play nice with my board and I could run 3.2Ghz with my defunct Team
Xtreem ram @ 1.45vcore but now can only run 3Ghz @1.47!

it's the vdroop that's present.
first, update to the latest CPU-Z version
if that doesn't do anything, enable Loadline Calibration to minimise this. 1.35v in BIOS is read as 1.34v in CPU-Z for me. load and idle is the same voltage as well. vdroop might be impeding your overclock, if it's a large vdroop. you could always find a pencil mod, but first try loadline calibration and CPU-Z update.

I dont see any option for load calibration in the BIOS. With reguards to voltages my options are:

Vcore
VDDNB
DDR2
SB
HT
VDDA
BR
DDR Ref

As far as these go, the only one I dont get what it does is VDDA. I know that VDDNB is the voltage for the north bridge in the CPU, but I cant specifically set its voltage, I can only choose something like +100mv.

When I set Vcore to auto, and the cpu multiplier to x14, the machine will boot to windows but its not stable. When I check CPU-Z in these circumstances it shows the Vcore to be 1.3, as opposed to the 1.232 that I was getting even if I set the Vcore manually to 1.45.

I feel like either there is something really wrong with this BIOS, or Im just missing something.