(Beginner) OC'ing Q9400 problem

[Toadus]

Hi there. My first post! : )

I recently purchased a Commodore gaming PC with the following spec:

- ASUS P5N-D / nForce 750i SLI
- Q9400
- 4gb Corsair Dominator 8500C5D
- nVidia GTX 280

Obviously not top of the range, but good enough (just about) for me...

I've been reading up on all the overclocking gubbins, trying to get my head around the subject, but i don't think I have a very good understanding of it all. I was hoping some folks here wouldn't mind helping me out a bit?

Reading though forums, it seemed that taking the Q9400 from its stock 2.66ghz to 3.2ghz should be a breeze, but not for me! The BIOS shows the current FSB at 1333. I can't take it to 1600, effectively making a speed of 3.2ghz, as the PC doesn't POST. I have to re-boot, then I get a message saying there was a problem in POST, please enter the BIOS to set the default settings, or F1 to continue. Every time I hit this point, I go back to BIOS and start again... I've tried upping the Vcore from 1.28v standard, to 1.3v, but it doesn't seem to make a blind bit of difference.

The BIOS also shows the speed of the RAM, this being 800mhz. When upping the FSB, tried unlinking the RAM, leaving it at 800mhz, but this made no difference. The BIOS gives me ratios to choose from, but I don't understand the relevance. If i choose 1:1, then that puts my RAM up far too high than it can cope, right? I found out that the RAM I have can be set to 1066mhz by altering the voltage and the timings. I set the timings to 5-5-5-12 and set the voltage to 2.11 (it was that or 2.09) and i've unlinked it, so I have chosen to run it at 1066mhz instead of 800mhz - Doesn't seem to be a problem at all. I've tried running memtest, but that's something i'll come back to!!

I opened up the PC today, as I was looking to find a way to connect my old media HDD, which I managed to do! : ) but i was suprised to see that there seems to be some aftermarket cooling going on, so perhaps I can give this CPU a decent kick up the arse!? Here's a couple of pics:







I've been checking up CPU-Z, and i've noticed that my multiplier (on idle) drops to 6 from 8. Reading through the forums, people say that with Intel chips, this is due to SpeedStep being enabled. Well, I've disabled this in the BIOS, and also other bits that seem related, yet it still persists. Is this OK to have on when OC'ing? If so, I can just forget about it?

I mentioned memtest earlier... Rubbish! I downloaded the latest version, 3.5 IIRC, and it doesn't seem to do much but re-boot my PC. It loads up OK, start to go though a percentage task bar very quickly, gets about half way, then the PC re-boots, and it does the same thing, over and over again. Useless...

So, if anyone could lend a hand on how I can get more out of this PC, I would REALLY appreciate it. I'm keen to learn too!

P.s. I've put everything back to normal for the time being, as I don't really know what i'm doing in all honesty. Ha ha.

 

[Toadus]

Anyone?

By setting the following voltages, I manged to get past POST, but Windows does the 'blue screen of death' :

Vcore: 1.35
HT: 1.3
NB: 1.3
SB: 1.5

 

[retrogreq]

if im reading this right, and you are actualy setting your FSB to 1333, even at 6x multi, that would put you over 7 ghz...that could be your MAIN problem

try 400 FSB, with 8x multi, leave the volts at 1.29v, see if it boots

OH, and to OCforums

 

[Toadus]

Hehe, no. I guess it's just the way the BIOS likes to display the settings. It shows them already quad'd, and you have to enter the info quad'd too. So standard, it actually shows the FSB at 1333, and the RAM at 800.

I've got away with upping the FSB from 1333 to 1550, but that magical 1600 number seems too much for it. Surely this is all down to the voltages, as 2.66ghz to 3.2ghz isn't that much of a push for this CPU?

 

[retrogreq]

ahh, i see...hmm..try using http://processorfinder.intel.com/ to see what you can safely put the volts at

 

[Toadus]

The link didn't seem too happy - Gives me an error with the request. Anyway, I found a manual on the page you linked too, and it's WAY over my head!!

 

[Toadus]

I was hoping someone could help me with a little more info please?

Should I be setting the ram to 1066? Does it make any difference to 800? Is there another app I can use to test the ram, as memtest just crashes...

I'm still not sure what to do about OC'ing the CPU either.