Am I Ready to Overclock? [Pics n' Specs]

[Jeuk]

Specs:
-Asus Striker Extreme Mobo
-Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Kentsfield 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor
-EVGA 768-P2-N885-AR GeForce 8800Ultra KO 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
-Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
-*GeIL Black Dragon 4GB(4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Quad Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model GB24GB6400C4QC (only using two sticks, I thought 4 sticks of ram were giving me blue screens of death, but it might it be that just their location (the two slots closer to the CPU heatstink) are overheating?, it seems that when two sticks are on the two farthest slots from the heatsink, they don't overheat or cause restarts.)
-Antec TruePower Trio 650 Watt PSU

I recently got a new fan, as I assumed my old fan caused a lot of un-necessary restarts. The Fan is a ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler, and I did notice my temps being lowered.

Up until now, the methods by which I attempted overclocking failed. nVidia's NVTune keeps restarting the computer after crashes, won't restart by itself, and doesn't seem to change anything.

In the BIOS, when I try the Asus AI NOS overclocking, I get boot failure. When I use the CPU multiplier (default set to 9), I can go up to 10 pretty stable, but still experience problems sometimes with freezes. If I go anywhere beyond that, it will either freeze on boot, or just not start up and have to reset the CMOS.

I am thinking it's not the heat that's casuing these problems, but rather the methods by which I am trying to overclock, and not setting the voltages correctly. So I am here to ask some of the people familiar with overclocking whether I can safely get a performance boost with the hardware and temps I am getting.

PICS:

Idle Status:

While Running nVidia stability Test - "Stressed":

Thanks for any speculation, or leading me to any guides that could be useful in manually overclocking with my hardware.

 

[cabose1227]

read stickys.

 

[narcotis]

i would say do NOT use nTune to overclock anything, use the BIOS, and what sort of temps do you have?? run coretemp along with prime 95 to stress test not the nvidia testor or monitor.
What are your BIOS settings set to?

 

[cabose1227]

bios is the only way to oc good! start uping fsb by like 10fsb each time then check for stability, if its unstable add vcore until it is. keep temps 20c under tj. you have to be patient. if your pc is on fire you clocked it to high.

 

[super2007]

wait how come your ntune monitor shows different then mine?
running vista on air cooling
BTW turn off your speedtrap n power saving things to make your cpu run stock ghz..

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

The rebooting should be because of Windows bugchecking.

A bugcheck means you're not stable!

 

[crosshairs]

My experience with Ntune is its complete ****....
I had all sorts of crashes and lock ups that mysteriously went away
after uninstalling it...

Use the BIOS, its the only way to go..

 

[cabose1227]

Bios 4 life!

 

[jason4207]

You've got your RAM in single-channel. The RAM slots should be color-coded. Make sure to use like-colored slots.

That board may not like 4 sticks of RAM at a time.

 

[Jeuk]

Ok, so I took some of your advice here.
I disabled power saving to have the CPU running 3000 constant.
I downloaded core temp and prime95.

These are the temps while Prime95 is running.

I went to the BIOS, and tried use this forums C2Q guide to overclocking.
Tried setting the CPU multiplier to 11, and setting the voltage to 1.35 (because initially windows would crash). Now, with the voltage set, the BIOS said the CPU speed was about 3.66, but when I booted into windows, it still said 3 GHz everywhere (CPuz, etc).

I don't know why it didn't work.

I tried overclocking the ram also, by setting it the 5:4, but that gave me bootfailure so I reset the cmos.

The guide said the cpu sped was based both on CPU multiplier and the Bus.
I tried to find the bus clock in the BIOS, but couldn't get to it.

These aren't my pictures, but they are of the same motherboard menus:

This didn't seem like the bus to me, but is it the bottom item in that menu, possibly? that number looked familiar to the one in the guide.

I reached this menu, but was confused, because it was the FRONTSIDE bus, and the number was much higher than the one in the guide. I was looking for something like 300 or 250, which would be multiplied by the CPU multiplier to give me my speed, right?

Setting this the 5:4 caused boot failure, so I am not sure what to do at this point.

If anyone can conjure up even a minimal boost settings for me, I will try them and come back and tell you how it went. Once you give me the means by which to get a bit of a boost, I will use the same methods little by little to see how far I can go. Hopefully.

Thanks for all the advice so far, it's been great.

You've got your RAM in single-channel. The RAM slots should be color-coded. Make sure to use like-colored slots.

That board may not like 4 sticks of RAM at a time.

You see, I didn't even know that.
The RAM sticks, all four of em, have a little purple marking on the top.
So I figured they would fit into these blue slots, right?

I am now running two of the sticks, 1 GB each, on each of the blue slots, and no crash so far, but then again, I haven't overclocked yet.

Thanks again.

 

[cabose1227]

dont oc ram, they die to fast and you cant tell the difference when they work.

 

[wiskerbizkit]

Don't use a divider IMO. use 1:1 and underclock your ram if you have to, just tighten it up. Make sure you disable eist and c1e.

 

[Jeuk]

I won't OC ram, and I set the ratios to automatic.
I just crashed playing team fortress two, likely because the ram was close to the CPU being on the blue spot, I moved it to the far white slot, and will see if it doesn't crash anymore.

As for the CPU overclocking, still no successes.

What's causing blue screens of death and freezeups during a boot or just as windows is loading up everything?
Is it the heat? Or have I just not set things right, be it voltages or clocks?

 

[sno.lcn]

You definitely don't want to set the ratios to auto, when I do that it puts my rams way high. Manually set them as close to stock speeds as you can for now. Up to 900mhz and you're still fine though. Stay in the blue slots.

What is your overclock goal?


*Edit: For your fsb number, if it's a way high number (like in the thousands) divide it by four to get the lower number that you're used to seeing. Like 266 = 1066, 333 = 1333, etc

 

[cabose1227]

your ram being on auto was causing the bsod, it is the exact same thing that happend to me.

 

[Jeuk]

Okay, so some good news.
I managed to overclock to about 3.66 Ghz.

I took your advice, and set the RAM ratio to 1:1, but it caused boot failure.
I reset the CMOS, and set the ram ratio to "Sync Mode", which is the same thing as 1:1? isn't it?

For some reason, it worked. I set the vcore to 1.4 and the cpu multiplier to 11, without touching the bus clocks.

I am stressing the system in that pic, using 95prime and the nvidia stress test, and no crash yet.
I don't know why Coretemp is showing the voltage as 1.35, because I set it to 1.4 in the BIOS.

How are my temps looking?
Maybe I can get some bus speeds up to get some more boost if you guys reckon it's safe?

Also, I was wondering, why should I use a combination of bus speeds and cpu multiplier and not just use the cpu multiplier exclusively or the bus speeds exclusively?
I hope it's not that difficult to answer.

Any further advice is still really appreciated.
Thanks again.

 

[cabose1227]

you use fsb and multi to set up your ram better and get a more persiese clock. core temps says 1.35 because of vdrop, that means your cpu dosent get full volts you put in it gets less. your temps are preety high but some people run there cores higher than others just stay 20c under tj.

 

[sno.lcn]

^^what he said. Don't use your multi to overclock.

If I were you, I would set the multiplier at 9 and push the fsb up from there. IMHO 63C is too high. I'll benchmark up to 70C on occasion but never for 24/7. Try your best to stay under 60, if not lower. Some people say higher, I don't agree. Back off on the voltage a little and/or get an Ultra-120 or watercooling.

 

[Jeuk]

Okay, so here's what happened:
I was running the normal 1333 FSB with cpu multiplier of 11.
Then, while browsing the web of all things (no stress), I got a blue screen of death and shut down.
Rebooted the computer to find that, oddly enough, my Firefox bookmarks are gone? Weird.

Anyway, I tried taking your advice and using the FSB as base to overclock without multiplying so much. Didn't work out so well.

I first set it to about 1555 to reach 3.6 Ghz with multi of 9.
while botting into window ( the little bar that moves across the box), it froze.
I thought it might be the voltage, which was already pretty high.
I set it up a few points to about 1.425.
Tried again, but it froze.
I raised the voltage once more, got into windows, but while on the desktop for the first few seconds, it froze again.

So then I raised the cpu multiplier to 10 and tried a lower fsb, but still froze up on desktop.

I am back on cpu multi 11 with the default FSB of 1333, it was the stablest overclock so far.

However, I am trying to figure out why the FSB clocks didn't work? Maybe I needed even more voltage? But won't that defeat the point in that it would overheat everything?

Also, Nobody addressed the fact that I got bootfailure using a ratio of 1:1 when fsb overclocking, and didn't have any boot errors while OCing the FSB clocks with the ratio set to "Sync mode".

I thought 1:1 = sync mode. Maybe this is the setting that's causing the problems with FSB ocing?

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[cabose1227]

1:1 is the divider I dont think your board would put it in the bios 2 times, bsod is usually memory, check and see what clock its at. if its higher than stock due to oc up dram volts. leave the multi at stock and then oc with fsb, if you hit a fsb end ad multi.