Asus Maximus Extreme and Q9550 Overclock

Memory - Manually set to SPD settings (9-9-9-24)
Multiplier - 8.5 (default)
FSB - 400mhz (20% improvement 333mhz default)
VCore 2v *lower is unstable AUTO was higher and unstable
NB 1.25 *Auto was set to 1.4
Running Memory at 1600mhz

CPU Temps (Hardware Monitor) report mid 60's.

I was actually able to lower my voltages from AUTO.and still have a Perfect Prime95 result. This machine seems MORE stable then when everything was set to AUTO. One reason was the MB Auto setting would set memory voltages to 1.8 when the Memory is set to 1.2

Im going to stick with this overclock because of its low voltage settings! I actually got a huge increase in performance while lowering voltage settings, though it is running allot hotter. This seems to be the best overclock I have ever gotten as it is stable. In previous attempts I seemed to have been running too high of vcore settings, which made the system unstable. Lowering these settings seems to increase its stability! The radiator is blowing much hotter air, and C1E is disabled, which If I enable it I should get lower temp settings (If it remains stable).

Not sure what your question is....

My advice is leave C1E off and enable LLC.

Auto setting will always way over estimate voltages and make your system run hot.

The default memory voltage is 1.8V for most boards and typically manipulating the voltage is addition from there. So +0.3V is really 2.1V and so on. Make sure you manually set the timings and voltage here for stability reasons.

For a 3.4GHz overclock you will only need about 1.25V VID, this goes up quickly from that point though. I have my Q9550 at 3.825GHz at 1.35V (every board is different too).

You may have to give the VTT and MHC a bump but leave the VID at 1.25V for that mild OC. Test the CPU only with small FTT's on P95 and when that passes change it over the P95 blend. If it fails give the VTT a bump and try again. Make sure you have a solid 12hr+ run on Prime 95 blend before calling it stable. I also like playing Crysis for a while too which is also good at exposing instability.

Hmm... 2v would kill that chip. What is it really?!? And you *should* be able to lower volts from auto as auto tends to over volt in favor of stability in a lot of cases.

Thats what overclocking does, is give more performance!!

I also dont understand how you 'lower voltages' but its 'a lot hotter' as well as 'lowering vcore' and the 'rad is blowing much hotter air'. Its usually the other way around.

Im not sure what to say in response to this thread other than that... congrats? Do you have a question?

EDIT: Some mobos actually list the voltages, like my Asus did. Also VID = stock voltage and not anything more.

Ya, its obviously not 2.000V VID, or anything else for that matter other than the RAM.... it would freakin fry

VID = stock voltage and it can be found in Coretemp or Realtemp. King the term you are looking for is Vcore.

My mistake, I've seen it used interchangeably quite a bit, never knew there was a difference. All I knew for sure was that it is not VTT and not 2.0V

Vcore is 1.2v, sorry typo... will correct original...

The machine was fine on Prime95 both tests mentioned above until this morning (4 days), now it is unstable under Prime95... no blue screen, simple black screen... Will Post and Load windows, the LAN and HD access seems very slow (Checked SMART Data).. Prime now sends it to black screen

This has happened to Me multiple times. I get a stable OC, then a few days later the machine starts to fart, I go back to normal speeds, and all is well.

I bumped vcore and NB... the NB is 1.3 (its water cooled, and Asus sets it to 1.35), and I bumped vcore up one... Haven't tested prime (again)... yet...

Same Bull Different Time

Ive had this same issue over and over again (2 different CPU's)...

Ive run Mem Test and have no issue. The board fails, then it wont run Prime95 at all. I try a million settings and nothing works. Even setting Everything to auto except the Memory Voltage of 2.0! FAILS!

Then, after a period of time... MAGIC! It works! Prime runs stable, everything runs great!

I have found other reports of this with this board (check NewEgg's comments)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131235

My previous OC Attempt ended in the same way!
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=635626

Their are a few recommendations on NewEgg's Information (Like using the XMP data which has lower settings then mine), setting the PCIE to 101, etc...

When I reset the board to default and then checked the settings it set PCIE to 117mhz?

After the previous attempt I ran the same board for Months without any issues!

This time
I couldn't get the machine to run at the settings that ran for months without black screening on prime. Then I run Memtest, it reboots, and BLAME, it works! WTF?

It seems that too high of voltages causes issues, and too low voltages cause issues.

According to AI Suite, the CPU volts are 1.2, according to CPUID HW Monitor it is running 1.09v with a max of 1.10v? Temps are sub 60 with a variation of around 3c...

Im running BIOS version 1302. I started this discussion because of the issues I have had.

Ok, Ran Prime 95 Fine at default, Now back to earlier settings...

FSB 1.35
Vcore 1.125 (sorry earlier was a mistake)
Memory Timings Auto - 9, 9, 9, 24, 72, 2t
SB 1.075 (default 1.050)
CPU PPL 1.5v

BTW, BIOS Battery was replaced early this year...

I don't know what is going on... I think this is just another Asus POS...

I will NEVER buy another product from this company again. Their products have flaws, there customer service is S.... It took Me 2 MONTHS to get a replacement Audio Card from them.

Prime is running Fine, Will run it overnight, but I know it will run fine (History).

Their is a Modded Bios for this board, but all of the links are broken

Currently the machine runs fine, but when it goes to sleep the mouse and the keyboard wont wake up.

I read abit about the FSB Voltage Termination, and came up with a few things...
1) People are having problems with stable 1600mhz overclocks with quad cores and 4 sticks of ram
2) The motherboard does weird things too these voltages when they are set to auto (which is what im finding).

One thing is to definitely set the PLL voltage to the default 1.45v
The next thing I had done was to set the FSB Termination voltage. I started with NB Voltage 1.37v... and I increased the FSB voltage to 1.37... I find many people have to pump the value up the NB Voltage above 1.5. I have not had that issue.

I want to know, when do you increase/decrease NB Voltage, and likewise when do you increase/decrease the FSB Termination Voltage?

Thanks!
GJ

I ran Prime and Found immediate failure... So I started to look into successfull OC's.

As I have found, the problem has not been NB Voltage or FSB Termination voltage. The Problem is core speed, memory speed and memory voltage.

333mhz, 1600mhz Memory, Memory 2.0v (Rated) - Stable
400mhz, 1600mhz Memory, Memory 2.1v (above Normal) - Stable
400mhz, 1600mhz Memory, Memory 2.0v (Rated) - UnStable

Its definitely a Quad Core, 4 Sticks of Memory, Memory voltage/CPU related issue. Other voltages can be really low and stable but the Memory Voltage is the issue.

I would assume that 2 Sticks of either set would run fine with 2.0v, but when combined 2.1v is needed. It would be an interesting test, but testing Memory is a rather risky endeavor. Water Cooled 1.5" ID pipe is NOT flexible, and getting hands around them is not fun. In addition SATA cables can be pulled out, and pressure on the motherboard when you push/pull on the tubes makes me nervous. Would definitely be a better, more enjoyable experience in a test environment.

Ok, Set FSB Strap to North Bridge to Auto, along with the other Memory setting features, and just picked out a low speed of Memorry (around 1200mhz). I am now able to run at 1.45 NB, and I am running a 1.3 vcore.

I can clearly lower the vcore a few voltages, and my temps under prime burn are reaching 67c. at 410mhz, I have to get more out of this machine. Water Temp is 91f, so its not heating up the water much.

Very stable OC so far, doesnt seem to make me worry. Summer May lead me to lower clock speeds, but until them I will keep pumping them up. I hope these posts help people understand some things

When I started OCing, the thing that was recommended to me was small incriments. But that fails in this time. Once your memory reaches a point you need a massive boost of a voltage or two, and then your stable for quite some time.

Hmm, If a board defaults to a "higher than normal" rate for anything, like vcore, or nb volts, it usually means that the board was not stable under regular settings, and seeing as how the board is targeted at overclockers, the assumption is that the user would bump the volts anyway and never notice the defaults being high.
I have only built two Asus machines and the 1st one CUSL2C? PIII s370 I hated it, even though it had an unlocked 1.2g tually ES.

The other was an Athlon 3800+ (venice) that I built for my mom. (I'm not at her house so I can't look at the board to see what model and I just don't remember) The 3800+ board is running fine, but I never overclocked it...it is plenty fast enough to do her email.

I have a couple of OEM Asus PII and PIII boards and they are dudu..they are in a pile of boards that I really don't know what to do with, but it is not the boards fault, as OEMs do not want people snooping around in the bios messing things up, so the settings are stripped out.

One thing you never mentioned is your power supply. What is the rating?
BTW, I would offload some of the fan headers from the board to the power supply (with adapters of course) Overclockers do not need any unnecessary voltage drops on the board if it can be avoided...it can add to instability especially if the power supply is not up to the challenge.
Example:
I have a friend who's computer wouldn't boot, so on a whim, I decided to pull the hdd power and Voila! it booted. so I plugged it back and no go. so when I replaced the supply for her, I researched the board, and found what the board needs, and got one a bit bigger in terms of wattage the original was just short of what is actually needed.

Weak or marginal power supplies can also cause the mobo to fail do to stress.
Sorry for being long winded, but that's just me

I appreciate the offer but The board is water cooled with additional snap on fans and heat pipes for the mosphets and such.

Its hard to know what the voltages are set too, but the lights on the board are all set to yellow.

I have a Seasonic 600w PSU...

Also I agree that Asus Blows. Their customer service is a joke and they screwed me really bad on a RMA. I am more then happy to tell everyone not to buy one of their products, and I hope they go out of business and/or rot in hell. I think I would rather have Haliburtain dig for gas in my back yard rather then deal with Asus.

It is actually a 650 or 700w psu. I looked at the packaging, but I forgot which one it said. Anyways, allot of power from a great PSU manufacturer. Corsair and other top notch companies where not providing PSU's at the time, or if they where the prices where ALLOT more. Now the prices have dropped and the new Corsairs have single rail high power products.

I run a Corsair, Seasonic, Antec and PC Power and Cooling PSU in my 4 machines. Been happy with all of them. The PC Power and Cooling is the only company that offers custom wiring based on your schematics and your needs. My PC Power and cooling PSU has 24 5 pin SATA power adapters. Its a custom wiring and meets all specs including power requirements.

700w Seasonic PSU (just threw the box away)

My memory was marked for 2.0v on the memory label. I am running them at 1133.4 MHz at 2.0v, but found it unstable at higher OC's without high NB values.

I was going to buy low voltage Memory. When I remembered that the The JEDEC #1-3 (444MHz, 592 MHz, and 666 MHz) where rated at 1.5! The bottle neck has been that I am running an X38 Chipset which has problems handling the voltage of 4 chips. Note: My NB is watercooled on this board.

I found running the processor to be MORE stable at running the memory 1.6 volts then 2.0! It goes to show you that at a certain point MORE voltage, leads to less stability! This is not the first time I have found this to be true! I might never be able to run this Memory to its Max 1800mhz, but a higher CPU speed seems to always be more beneficial then a higher NB speed!

Currently I have been decreasing the voltages to try and reduce water and CPU temps.

Multiplier 8.5
FSB: 425
Memory Speed: *Will Fill In*
CPU Voltage: 1.25
NB Voltage: 1.45
Dram Voltage: 1.5

NB Voltage of 1.35 wont boot, 1.41 will boot but fails prime. 1.45 passes prime.

Current Prime Temps - 65-70c

The Temps on Prime are a bit high. I wonder if cleaning and then resetting the cooler will reduce temps. These seem very high for water cooling I really don't want to go any faster unless I can get the temps down.

Edit found this post on Load Line setting: going to test it out. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=554335