Some newbie questions for i7 950

Hi all,

I think I read all the tutorials I've found on the net to OC my rig but I need some dialogue and hope you can help me. First my specs:

Sabertooth X58 mobo
i7 950 (Zalman 9900 Cu cooler)
3x2 Gb Kingston HyperX 1600 Mhz 7-8-7
ENGTX 460 factory OC 1 Gb

So far so good, I was able to push my system a little up from the stock 3.06. I'm not looking for an extreme OC, just a little bit higher, say 3.8-4 GHz. Temperatures are good, under prime95 I can stay below 80° on the hottest core. Now here's what I did:

BCLCK 200 (I tried also 160) x 19
Vcore 1.256
Vtt 1.4 (it's applied by default when I use XMP, so I kept it)
Dram Voltage 1.65 (Kingston specs)
LLC enabled

Everything else on AUTO. There are so many settings I'm afraid to screw something Now my questions:
- Is there a real difference between the BCLCK at 160 or 200? I'm more concerned of CPU life than perfomance. Given that the voltage I use is the same under both conditions, there shouldn't be any difference, right? The only reason I chose 200 is because of QPI speed, that at 160 was lower than stock

-Is it true that these kind of chips don't like the even multipliers?!

-If I increase the multi, with a same BCLCK, should I give it more vcore too..?

Other advices are well accepted and welcome

Thank you very very much

Cheers
Fede

That cpu likes the 21 multiplier. Higher multi, higher temps but the 21 multi on that cpu is most stable. Also the higher the pll generally less the cpu voltage you need. Try this and adjust + or - as needed.

191x21
cpu voltage-1.32
cpu pll 1.86
qpi-1.35
IOH voltage-1.2
Dram bus voltage-1.6
rest auto. Also disable all power saving features c1e,tm,etc..
Should get you close but ultimately you are going to have to dial it in yourself.

hope that helps my friend!

EDIT: also manually set your ram to as close to 1600 as you can get. Make sure the Uncore is twice the dram speed.

Thanks Rain, I'm tweaking a bit and I'll report later

Cheers

Ok, it seems I did it (passed a 3 hours test with OCCT). My final specs are as follows:
BCLCK 188 @ 3.94 GHz
VCore 1.29v
VTT 1.3v
VDram 1.65v
IOH 1.3v

Ram is now running at 1507 MHz with 7-8-7-20, tested with Memtest

Can I renable the TM in the BIOS now? Or would that mean troubles..?

Thanks for your help

Cheers
Fede

I keep TM off all the time. You can enable it and see the difference and it won't hurt anything just may BSOD. I will go check a few things out and get back to you with more exact numbers and settings, just give me some time but tonight I should have all info for you to play with! Great job man, you will hear from me soon.

What are you using for your CPU cooler? The Core i7 950 should hit around 4Ghz with good air cooling. I used Evga's OC guide. You Bios setting will look a bit different, but it should work for you.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=20028&mpage=1


This voltage guide really helped when when I overclocked my 920 then my 950.

http://www.evga.com/forumsarchive/tm.asp?m=100494809

good luck!

I have a Zalman 9900 Cu cooler, not the best around but it does its job quite good. With these settings the CPU temp never went above 71°, while the hottest core (0 I think) was around 76/77°.

Thanks for those links, they explain quite a few things. Fact is, when I don't know what a thing is, I don't touch it..so I left some settings at "auto" and played only with those I wrote. There are some more items on my board (like CPU Clock Skew, CPU Spread spectrum, CPU differential amplitude..) that I didn't dare touching. I just noticed that there were some Vcores which tended to oscillate when under load, and others were a flat line. I looked for the right one around 1.29v and voilet! 3 hours test and not a single spike

I don't know if it was the case, but at first I left the IOH on auto and had some BSOD when approaching the 3.9/4.0 freq. Then I set it at 1.3, as per the guide, and it became much more stable. I noticed the NB temp went up of 10° or so too after that, but it's stable at 65° under load, so I still have a good margin on the 105° limit

Thanks for your inputs guys, much appreciated.

Cheers

P.S. Do any of you know what the VIN6 controls/is?

Just to add, about the TM, I turned it off because I had some strange BSOD with OCCT:Linpack, and that was supposed to be a sort of thermal stress...but the temps were fine. Disabled and the test ran fine. Just like you said Rain. Must be the sensors spiking sometimes, don't know..

Ok, Disable cpu spread spectrum and PCI-E spread spectrum. In your CPU configuration section disable C-state and speedstep as well if you have not already. Clock skew and all that just hang on until you understand a bit better as they are fine for now. Unless you plan to benchmark most other settings will not get you much more than you have now, noticeably. Remember, Don't raise your IOH to high as it is on a passive heatsink with only the warm air from your cpu cooler, "cooling" it depending on which way the cooler is mounted.Any other cooling to the passive heatsinks like southbridge and mosfets as well as QPI A.K.A.N/B are cooled by air flow through the case.

I believe VIN6 is the qpi "northbridge" voltage and VIN1 is RAM (not 100% sure but I think I am right) but it should never fluctuate. Ignore it as I don't believe it will effect anything you do. You can raise the qpi or ioh voltage and see if it changes in cpu-z but I highly doubt it.

TIM- Thermal interface material I reccomend is Phobya he extreme. It will help keep temps down. Here is a link to TIM testing and results to maybe help you drop 1 or 2 c.--- http://skinneelabs.com/2011-thermal-paste-review-comparison/2/

Yeah, all those settings are on auto, which I think it's disabled by default. IOH is set at 1.3v which is the first amber setting. For cooling, in fact, I mounted an old cpu fan just in front of it above the Graphic card, and the temps are safe Unfortunately the 9900 is a front-rear fan system, so the MB won't get any air from it...VIN1 and 6 were just a curiosity as I have no way to modify them but I see them in the OCCT interface, that's all.

Cool man! Enjoy!

I'm glad the guides helped. It has been so long since I Oc'd my 950 that I couldn't remember the exact steps, but I remember those 2 guides giving me most of the info I needed. The Zalman is a good cooler. I used it until I bought the Prolimatech Megahalems. The Megahalems is a beast, but it cools nicely!

You could not have posted this at a better time because I just purchased an i7-950 myself. I've been scouring the internet for tips, tricks, and guides, but this thread was right up my alley. I even have the same mobo.

My only concern is that I have 1333Mhz RAM when I should have gone 1600 instead. Anyway, I'm not here to hijack the thread, just wanted to say thanks for posting your questions.

I'am also in the same boat and have a i7-950 for almost 3 years (Dec '09) and same MB (Saber X58). My ram was the HyperX 1600 but started getting BSODs and did memtest and found some errors so I went with my backup sticks 1333 Corsair XMS sticks. I have been in the watercooling section from this forum most of my time and decided to sneak a peak in the intel department . I did have my chip at 3.6 mhz once but when I started gaming for a few hours I started getting BSODs so I stopped and put it back to stock. I used a H50 cooler and my temps ran pretty high (75-85c). Sorry to almost jack this thread but should be making one soon as I have the cooling capabilities (full custom liquid cooling rig) to finally hit 4.0+ghz and be "officially" in the 4.0 club lol If you guys can help me on that I would really, and I mean REALLY appreciate it. If you have any questions on liquid cooling I can also help in that also. Thanks.