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i7-930 OC: Where Do I Go From Here?

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OLDflyboy

Registered
Joined
Aug 17, 2010
Location
Southeast USA
As a complete newbie to both this forum and overclocking I will probably ask some less than bright questions. But I will search for the answers first....that's a promise.
So here goes:After reading lots of guides and lots of very informative threads, especially MIAHALLEN's tutorials I got up the courage and went into the BIOS of my month-old rig.

ASUS P6X58d MB, i7 [email protected], Akasa NERO V2 - Premium ,CPU cooling 6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3, Intel X25 160GB SSD, Sapphire 5870, Corsair 750W Power in a Coolermaster Stacker case, Win 7 Ultimate OS

Here are the new Bios Settings:
CPU- 22x159 = 3498 MHz
UNCORE - 3187 MHz
DDR3 - 1594 MHz
CPU Core - 1.3 v
QPI/DRAM - 1.35 v
IOH - Auto
DRAM Bus - 1.5 v

Idle temps for all cores: 41-43 C and running Prime with 8 workers for one hour resulted in 29 completed tests with no errors, no warnings. However, the cores temps were 83,88,86,85 C. Isn't this a bit high?
I also ran the OCCT test but it took only 1 min and 30 secs for temp to force a shutdown at 100C, just a few seconds after putting max load on the CPU.

Just getting to 3.5 GHz (almost) and greatly improving Flight Simulator X performance is a treat for me. But I surely would like to get closer to 3.8 or 3.9 GHz.

Are my present settings ok considering test results? My feeling is that I need some help adjusting them, especially in moving the speed up to 3.8 or 3.9 GHz
My thanks for any wisdom you wish to share with an OLD flyboy.
 
I was going to mention your cooler being the issue at first, but it seems to perform decent in the reviews. It might not be seated correctly... Its hard to tell with those coolers that do not require thermal paste.
 
turn off turbo/hyperthreading and your temps should drop to closer to 80 at max load..

also your ram is probably rated for 1.65v.. so id also adjust mem to manufacturer settings, not use XMP profiles

also.. not sure what tokae is saying about not needing thermal paste.. ALL coolers require paste.. even direct contacts.. if you do not have any paste in there.. get some as5 or something and get it on there now :p
 
The coolers with direct contact still use thermal paste-I used Arctic Silver. Contact is good but I wish the mount provided a bit more pressure on the CPU.

The Dominator RAM is rated 8-8-8-24 and up to 1.65v. I really don't know exactly what to do regarding memory settings. I will disable Turbo on the next bootup.
 
You don't need that much voltage for 3.4!

I ran 2.8 @ 1.24 under load 1.29 idle. Some of the heat is coming from your voltage.

Agreed - I run 3.8 at 1.24. I did have to go to 1.3 for >4 GHz, and then started getting temperatures similar to yours (which led to my decision to back off.)

I do run with HT enabled. I also run with speedstep turned on, so typically I'm idleing with about 1.04V, and even lower temps.

eric
 
turn off turbo/hyperthreading and your temps should drop to closer to 80 at max load..

also your ram is probably rated for 1.65v.. so id also adjust mem to manufacturer settings, not use XMP profiles

also.. not sure what tokae is saying about not needing thermal paste.. ALL coolers require paste.. even direct contacts.. if you do not have any paste in there.. get some as5 or something and get it on there now :p

:eek:

Sorry I have never used one before and when reading up on his cooler I didn't see any mention of thermal paste used!

*UPDATED*

Yea I went back through my history and tried to find the review site but I can't seem to dig up the page. I think what it said actually was something like 'heatpipes directly touch the cpu, 1 less heat transfer surface to pass through' or something... Anyway in my moment of brain fartedness I really didn't think about it. I will be quiet now! :p
 
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Thanks for the advice all. I lowered the CPU voltage to 1.23_ _ (cant remember the rest) And bumped the settings up for 3.9GHz. The temps are still around 42-43 degrees even with that increase so at this point I am very happy with it.
Tomorrow I will run Prime95 and see what happens.
The only thing I had time for today after reboot was to run Flight Sim X for about 20 minutes with lots of add-ons. The frame rates were up about 75% over the original 2.8GHz.
Will report back after some testing.
Any more suggestions, particularly about RAM settings, will be appreciated.

Btw....Would the addition of another 6 gigs of RAM make enough improvement to be worth the cost?
 
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