Enduro's Guide to the NF7 rev.2 VDD Volt mod [Retired sticky]

[obsolete]

Special thanks to enduro for guiding me up - thanks man

I 2nd that, but not for the guide, the inspiration/motivation.

Very nice job, looks good.

 

[enduro]

Awesome job man. That looks 100% better. You can almost see the difference in shape between my original and your pic now. Have you booted up yet? Should be interesting to see if it helps, especially with a vdd volt mod.

 

[Hughhefner]

Very nice guide, glad its a sticky. I'm in the process of lapping 2 new DFI NF2 mobos and all the tips really help.

 

[Suma]

Awesome job man. That looks 100% better. You can almost see the difference in shape between my original and your pic now. Have you booted up yet? Should be interesting to see if it helps, especially with a vdd volt mod.

Well man I booted it up just to make sure it works, nothing more.
and it does, I ran it passivly with this copper iceberq I had, even w/o thermal paste and it wasn't even hot!

I'm gonna lap and vmod my primary board this week.

Suma.

 

[enduro]

Glad this thread is helping people. For some reason, the word lapping and volt mod make people start to sweat and worry, but these two mods are probably the easiest that you can do. Good luck with the lapping of the prim. Suma. Burn that white stuff off

 

[felinusz]

enduro, I think you'll be happy to know that I'm going to give lapping my northbridge a try this weekend, thanks to your insipiring guide

I've tried pretty much everything on my board except for this, trying to get it stable above 211 MHz on the FSB. My northbridge is as warped and concave as any, and I'm now getting the feeling that perhaps really poor contact with my Northbridge cooler might be holding me back - I have to use an *extremely* thick layer of AS3 for the cooler to even make contact with most of the chipset. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

I should also add that your results are very impressive, and speak for themsleves - 255 MHz is pretty insane for a socket A setup.

 

[pwnt by pat]

I find it kind of funny that everyone is wooning over the lapping part and not the actual report of the mod (although it isn't origional). Felinusz, how are you not stable above 211? The 255 is impressive even though the timings are 3-4-4-x. Still, for 2.7v, that's pretty amazing.

 

[enduro]

Thanks Felinusz. Hope the mod goes well because an overheating NB can cause numerous problems. Make sure that you try every vdd selection available to test out your board after the mod. Many people have had success running a 1.4V vdd, although in my opinion it's because of a glitch that some boards have that change the 1.4V in BIOS to 1.8V actual vdd, so if you do the vdd volt mod you get the same effect, but you can manually change the value with a resistor instead of being stuck with 1.8V

pwnt by pat, the reason my timings are at 3-4-4 is because of the ram IC's. They are Hynix BT D43's, that will overclock to 270 Mhz, but can only hold cas 2.5 up to a 220 fsb. They respond well to low voltage, so most people can run up to a 260 fsb with 2.7V, and then at 265 they up it to 2.8 and usually find their max somewhere around there. So it's not out of choice that I run loose timings, but at a 255 fsb, who's complaining

 

[pwnt by pat]

Indeed.. I couldn't get +240 stable out of my bh5 on an infinity dc 3.3v...

 

[enduro]

Really? That mush have been a bit dissapointing. I didn't want to get BH5, even though I had the opportunity, because I have heard that the newer revisions haven't been doing as well. That, and cutting a trace on my board and doing two mods just to be able to overclock the ram is a bit of a turnoff for me anyway. Although the timings at high fsb that you can achieve Incredible chips just for that property alone.

 

[enduro]

All right guys, just thought I'd post a warning. My board is "dying". My soundstorm has stopped working, and my stable fsb has gone from 255 to 240. I ran 2V for a while, and I was running 1.9V 24/7 for about a month. For your boards safety, you might run it at 1.85V max. I'm not sure if it was the 2V or the 1.9V that did it in, but I've heard from someone here that with the earlier NF7's, 2V was killing boards left and right. Unfortunately, no one has posted that in a long time, so I didn't read it....... I was going to upgrade to an Abit NF3 anyway, but still. Make sure you guys only run 1.9V if you can upgrade to a new board, because I don't know what caused it to slowly die on me.

 

[Suma]

Sry to hear that enduro!
How was your nb cooled? was it hot?

(logon to AIM man )
Suma.

 

[enduro]

And no, my NB is cool to the touch. That's what is odd. I wonder if the voltage was just too much for it? I'm not sure, but I made sure to feel it every once and a while when I was testing it to make sure my NB wasn't baking to death.

 

[enduro]

All right, I feel stupid, but it wasn't entirely my fault I guess.

You know how my onboard sound just went out randomly yesterday? Well, I was thinking about it, and I had transfered all of my files to a new hdd that day. I decided to reload the nforce drivers, just to make sure, and although it took two fresh installs, my sound is back, so that was probably what was messing up my overclock as well. I'm guessing that my chipset drivers didn't copy over like normal or something, and that's why my overclock and sound died off. :smack: should have checked that first. I just didn't expect the file transfer to miss something like that. Oh well, just wanted to post back that all of the death and doom posts before don't apply.

I haven't been able to test my fsb again, but I'm going to assume that since my sound is back now.......

BTW, if you see this post else where, yes I have copied and pasted this, I'm just letting certain people know that the vdd I ran wasn't a problem.

 

[Suma]

Oh, that's a relief. Thanks for the update man!
But you gotta check that fsb again bro, let us know...

Suma.

 

[enduro]

Yeah, I'll check it out when I get home. It was 11 last night that I reinstalled the driver, and I knew that I would stay up till 1 if I wanted to test out my overclock again.

 

[Suma]

Well, I sure wish you luck man.
Suma.

 

[enduro]

Hmmm. FSB is still down. I can't get 255 to run 3DMark01 without failing out. So maybe there is something going on with my board....... or some drivers were messed up. I don't know. Right now I'm at 200*12.5, and I'm gaming just fine, so no biggie. I'll just settle here until the NF3 Ultra or NF4 comes out in the Abit flavor.

 

[Suma]

Damn enduro, I'm sad to hear that.
Cheer up man.

Suma.

 

[OCFCaTalyst]

I ran NF7 Nb's @ 2.0V for a long time w/ no problems so it shoudl be fine

-CaT