Thank you to macsbeach98 and Rasparthe for the guide and assistance in this. You guys are great!
***Warning*** - Moddifying you motherboard in this manner can damage your computer components.
***Caution*** - Do NOT leave overvolted computers unattended. They can burn-up and cause a fire, burning your house to ashes.
***Danger*** - Soldering irons are really, really hot. Picking one up like a pencil hurts really, really bad. Just trust me on this one.
Still reading? Good. As you may have guessed this is my Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P vCore Volt Mod project. By following macsbeach98's guide located here I successfully hard modded my board. Why you ask. Because 1.5v isn't enough for my plans to LN2/DICE my AM2 CPU's in my sig. With this mod I'll be able to go well above the manufactured recommended settings and push these babies as far as the can(likely beyond what they can handle. Stay tuned for the fireworks folks).
Enough talky. Here's what I did. I purchased (1) 10k Ohm Cerment Potentiometer (Trimmer) from Radio Shack for about $3-$4. Stripped 1 wire from an old IDE ribbon cable. After practicing soldering on very, very small points on a dead MB I decided I was ready to give it a try. It's been a long time since I've done any precision soldering and it was definitely a challenge. I've include an image with a penny to show just how small these points are. 1 point is about half the size of the letters on the penny.
I stripped about 3mm off one end of the wire and tinned it. Clipped that down to about 1mm and soldered it to the correct point. Then measured the length needed to mount the trimmer where I wanted it. Macs used the back of the keyboard/mouse I/O panel and it seems like as good a place as any so I used the same. I then adjusted the trimmer to max resistance (full clockwise). I believe this is to minimize the risk of overheating it while soldering to it. Then I soldered the other end of the wire to the "bottom" lead on the trimmer. I then cut a short piece of wire to make the ground. Soldered that to the middle lead(the actual adjustment pole) and then to the keyboard/mouse I/O shield(ground). The trimmers top lead will not be used in this application so it's best to trim it off. Used a little double stick tape to secure it in place and you're done. Hot glue would have been better for this but my hot glue gun has grown legs and has apparently gone on vacation.
View attachment 161487
View attachment 161488
View attachment 161489
View attachment 161490
View attachment 161491
I did have some troubles getting it to post, but that's because I had the settings on the trimmer wrong. If you follow the steps I did you'll want the trimmer turned fully clockwise(Max resistance) to set the vCore close to the BIOS setting. Otherwise you're way overvolting it. I'm just glad this system survived my brain fart.
Here are the results.
At stock settings before the volt mod my Athlon 64 X2 6000+ had 1.40v in BIOS and displayed 1.392 in CPUz.
View attachment 161492
At stock settings after the mod the (1.40v in BIOS) CPUz displayed 1.456v. A bump of 0.064 with the trimmer at max resistance.
View attachment 161493
To offset this "free" bump in voltage I need to remember that what I set in the BIOS will be increased by approximately 0.064v. Here's a shot of CPUz with the Bios set to 1.35v. Actual vCore is now a hair over 1.4v for my "Moddified" stock setting.
View attachment 161494
This is all with the trimmer still set at max resistance(lowest vCore increase). How much will turning the screw get me? You'll have to stay tuned for that one. I'll need to get some cold!!!
Stay tuned.
***Warning*** - Moddifying you motherboard in this manner can damage your computer components.
***Caution*** - Do NOT leave overvolted computers unattended. They can burn-up and cause a fire, burning your house to ashes.
***Danger*** - Soldering irons are really, really hot. Picking one up like a pencil hurts really, really bad. Just trust me on this one.
Still reading? Good. As you may have guessed this is my Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P vCore Volt Mod project. By following macsbeach98's guide located here I successfully hard modded my board. Why you ask. Because 1.5v isn't enough for my plans to LN2/DICE my AM2 CPU's in my sig. With this mod I'll be able to go well above the manufactured recommended settings and push these babies as far as the can(likely beyond what they can handle. Stay tuned for the fireworks folks).
Enough talky. Here's what I did. I purchased (1) 10k Ohm Cerment Potentiometer (Trimmer) from Radio Shack for about $3-$4. Stripped 1 wire from an old IDE ribbon cable. After practicing soldering on very, very small points on a dead MB I decided I was ready to give it a try. It's been a long time since I've done any precision soldering and it was definitely a challenge. I've include an image with a penny to show just how small these points are. 1 point is about half the size of the letters on the penny.
I stripped about 3mm off one end of the wire and tinned it. Clipped that down to about 1mm and soldered it to the correct point. Then measured the length needed to mount the trimmer where I wanted it. Macs used the back of the keyboard/mouse I/O panel and it seems like as good a place as any so I used the same. I then adjusted the trimmer to max resistance (full clockwise). I believe this is to minimize the risk of overheating it while soldering to it. Then I soldered the other end of the wire to the "bottom" lead on the trimmer. I then cut a short piece of wire to make the ground. Soldered that to the middle lead(the actual adjustment pole) and then to the keyboard/mouse I/O shield(ground). The trimmers top lead will not be used in this application so it's best to trim it off. Used a little double stick tape to secure it in place and you're done. Hot glue would have been better for this but my hot glue gun has grown legs and has apparently gone on vacation.
View attachment 161487
View attachment 161488
View attachment 161489
View attachment 161490
View attachment 161491
I did have some troubles getting it to post, but that's because I had the settings on the trimmer wrong. If you follow the steps I did you'll want the trimmer turned fully clockwise(Max resistance) to set the vCore close to the BIOS setting. Otherwise you're way overvolting it. I'm just glad this system survived my brain fart.
Here are the results.
At stock settings before the volt mod my Athlon 64 X2 6000+ had 1.40v in BIOS and displayed 1.392 in CPUz.
View attachment 161492
At stock settings after the mod the (1.40v in BIOS) CPUz displayed 1.456v. A bump of 0.064 with the trimmer at max resistance.
View attachment 161493
To offset this "free" bump in voltage I need to remember that what I set in the BIOS will be increased by approximately 0.064v. Here's a shot of CPUz with the Bios set to 1.35v. Actual vCore is now a hair over 1.4v for my "Moddified" stock setting.
View attachment 161494
This is all with the trimmer still set at max resistance(lowest vCore increase). How much will turning the screw get me? You'll have to stay tuned for that one. I'll need to get some cold!!!
Stay tuned.
On average 6ghz plus.
Stock voltage. It wouldn't go 1 MHz faster no matter where I set the voltage. I now suspect the RAM may have been an issue, and it wasn't a BE. 
Mobo was a M4A785-M. 
