Overclocking on Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe

[Tech Tweaker]

The bios settings seem terribly limiting (even to me coming from an entry-level/mid-range DFI board), vCore maxes out at 1.55V on most recent bios (1805) and on bios revision 1013 (as well as 1010-001 and 1016 IIRC), I had to downgrade to 1003 before I saw an option for 1.6V+ (but that went so far back that it didn't have support for most of my CPU's). It's not unusual for me to need to pump 1.6V+ through a CPU to get it to the desktop and snag that screen capture for a CPU frequency submission, so this is really unacceptable. Sure the average user won't likely need much over 1.55V, but then again most of us around here don't qualify as being average users. Sure I'm not a hardcore sub-zero bencher that needs 1.8V+ to reach some crazy-high clock speeds, but it'd be nice to get at least 1.65V as an option without having to downgrade to an older bios, or worse yet having to switch back and forth between bios versions for benching one age of CPU's versus another.

To make matters worse I cannot find any settings for chipset voltage, and I believe memory voltage maxes out at 2.8 or 2.9V (though that's less of a problem for me since I rarely go past 2.8V being that I use TCCD memory most of the time when I'm overclocking or benching).

Is there some tweak I'm missing that makes overclocking on the Asus nF4 SLI boards easier?

Then there's the layout, if one wishes to use an aftermarket heatsink for the chipset they will be very limited in what will fit. I used a Thermalright HR-05-SLI because it was the best of what I had on hand that actually fit, but the problem is that with this board no matter how I mount it I will be unable to use one of my PCIe x16 slots, so no SLI. I thought about using a SilenX IXN-40C cooler, but that one prevented insertion of video cards in both of the PCIe x16 slots. *sigh* On the bright side though the aftermarket Thermalright cooling solution does work much better than the stock HSF, idling in the low to mid thirties as opposed to the high-thirties to low-forties with the stock HSF.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

On the bright side though, the HTT/HT Link does overclock very nicely.

I got mine up to 350MHz from the stock 200 with an aftermarket heat sink on the chipset, and it seemed to run fine at that speed (sure I had to lower the CPU multi, DRAM divider, and HT Link multi way down, but that's to be expected).

Still can't find any area in the bios for chipset voltage control though, if I could manipulate that I bet I could get it a little higher. I'm assuming Asus doesn't want people to mess with that?

Anyone else around here done any overclocking on an A8N-SLI deluxe?

 

[Woomack]

Even when you set 1.6V+ then in real you will get lower values. With Clawhammers voltage is up to 1.65V ( in bios ) but with San Diego/Venice it will be 1.55V max ( without mods ). In real in both cases voltage will be about 0.05-0.10V lower.
To make it run with higher vcore you need some mods but I don't remember how to make it. There was one simple mod. 1 wire between resistor and ground for which I even made cable with fan connector to enable and disable mod. Effect was no vdroop and +0.02V max so from 1.55V max voltage it was going up to ~1.62V. Not much but +200-300MHz on good cooling. I think you can still find it somewhere in the web.
Personally I would look for some other board for overclocking. This Asus has lot of stability issues on higher clocks. It also doesn't like higher memory speed so hard to max out TCCD.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Even when you set 1.6V+ then in real you will get lower values. With Clawhammers voltage is up to 1.65V ( in bios ) but with San Diego/Venice it will be 1.55V max ( without mods ). In real in both cases voltage will be about 0.05-0.10V lower.

Personally I would look for some other board for overclocking. This Asus has lot of stability issues on higher clocks. It also doesn't like higher memory speed so hard to max out TCCD.

Hmm, thanks for that info, I didn't know the board/OS limited the voltage options based upon the VID of the CPU.

I've actually found that my board does the opposite. If I set the vCore to 1.4V in bios it shows 1.42-1.44V in monitoring programs in the BIOS and OS, if I set to 1.475V I get 1.5-1.53V, and at 1.4875V I get 1.52-1.54V.

Well, I should say though that this isn't the board I plan to use as my full-time 939 benching rig/backup rig in case my main computer goes down. I'm planning to go with either a DFI SLI-DR or SLI-DR Expert for that. I was just using this one to get some points for the Reference Clock score and seeing if it would overclock any better than my DFI nF4 SLI Infinity.

Hadn't actually tried for any high memory clocks with this one yet, so thanks for the heads up on that.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Well I will say one thing for the A8N-SLI Deluxe, if nothing else it is consistent.

My first one went to 350.2MHz FSB, and the second came in at 349.83. Not too shabby for a board with no voltage adjustment for the chipset.

 

[ssjwizard]

The A8N is a hell of a benching board BUT you have to vMod it. There are very easy and well documented vMods for the CPU-vCore, NB chip, and VDIMM. The CPU one I have documented over in a thread under the benching section. You basically need a 10k-0 Ohm trimmer pot and about 18" of fine wire, do one tiny solder point and your done. Once modded you can get the vCore well above 2v and Ive yet to meet an A64 thats willing to operate above 1.91v even on DICE cooling.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

The A8N is a hell of a benching board BUT you have to vMod it. There are very easy and well documented vMods for the CPU-vCore, NB chip, and VDIMM. The CPU one I have documented over in a thread under the benching section. You basically need a 10k-0 Ohm trimmer pot and about 18" of fine wire, do one tiny solder point and your done. Once modded you can get the vCore well above 2v and Ive yet to meet an A64 thats willing to operate above 1.91v even on DICE cooling.

Well, that may limit what I can do then as my soldering abilities aren't exactly great. I'm an amateur solderer at best.

Oh, and on another note I got my second board up to 355MHz today. Unfortunately CPU-Z wasn't cooperating though, so I couldn't get a validation.