Help with first attempt at OCing

[jbholsters]

Hi guys, I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction for trying to OC my PC. Here are the specs:

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-HIPER, Type M Power Supply, 880W, 80 PLUS®, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, Quad +12V, SLI Ready

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-ASUS, P5Q Deluxe, LGA775, Intel® P45, 1600MHz FSB, DDR2-1200 16GB /4, PCIe x16 CF /3, SATA 3.0 Gbit/s RAID 5 /8, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX, Retail

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-INTEL, Core™ 2 Quad Q9550 Quad-Core 2.83GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 12MB (2 x 6MB) L2 Cache, 45nm, 95W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail

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-THERMALRIGHT, Ultra-120 eXtreme CPU Heatsink, Socket 775/AM2, Aluminum

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-OCZ, 8GB (4 x 2GB) Reaper HPC Edition PC2-8500 DDR2 1066MHz CL (5-5-5-18) 2.1-2.3V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC

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-ASUS, EN9600GT SILENT/HTDI/512M, GeForce® 9600GT 650MHz, 512MB GDDR3 1625MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, DVI /2, HDTV-Out, Retail

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</TD><TD class=txtp colSpan=2></TD></TR><TR class=tdp><TD class=txtp vAlign=center colSpan=2>- (4) SEAGATE, 500GB Barracuda 7200.11, SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB cache

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</TD><TD class=txtp colSpan=2></TD></TR><TR class=tdp><TD class=txtp vAlign=center colSpan=2>-MICROSOFT, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition w/ SP2c, OEM
I would like, if possible to get the quad core up around 3.0 or slightly higher.
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[Buddy J]

Looks like you've got the right components. But an 8.5x multiplier on the processor means you'll need 470fsb to hit 3GHz. The P45 boards are great at pushing high FSBs, so it'll likely depend on how you set it up. Have you overclocked before?

[jbholsters]

No, I haven't overclocked before. Maybe I should not try for 3GHz? Should I go more conservative?

[primesuspect]

Welcome to Icrontic! You've come to the right place for your adventure! :D

[_k_]

To get around 3.55GHz on that core its going to take vCore of ~1.30v. If you push it up to 400FSB then that yields 3.4GHz. That vCore is for load voltage not bios voltage setting.

As for the FSB v and Northbridge v I have no idea for that board.

[Buddy J]

No, I haven't overclocked before. Maybe I should not try for 3GHz? Should I go more conservative?

We'll shoot for the highest we can get that's stable. I'm not well versed in Quad Core overclocking, so I'd rather let somebody else pipe in with instructions. If they haven't posted by later this evening, I'll try and help you out.

[_k_]

Alright Holster I have spent some time looking at the BIOS for your board, I think I have it all together of where to start). So if you go to your BIOS and scroll over to AI Tweaker this is where you are going to be making all your changes. Set the first option to manual, OC Tuner. The next option, FSB frequency, set this to 352 which will give you a 3.0GHz clock. Next go down to the where the DRAM Frequency is and take it off auto and leave it at 1066, your stock RAM speed, for now.

Now lets head all the way to the bottom of the screen to where you find CPU voltage, lets try setting this to 1.30, this is overkill but we are trying to get the machine to boot. The next voltage changes I am not sure about because of the chipset and the CPU, this is going to take some trial and error on your part. If you select these options, FSB Term. Voltage and NB voltage, I would start by moving them up .02 volts at a time, or if that is to small to be moved in one setting to the next simply move it up two steps in voltage.

Once this is all down hit F10 to save the changes and reboot. We are first trying to get the system to reboot and load windows. Download a program called OCCT before hand though, run this when you boot into windows to see if the program tells you the machine is unstable. The other thing you need to do is download CPU-z and check that the CPU is running at what you set it to as well as tell me what voltage the CPU is pulling under idle and load when OCCT is running, this tells us drop from BIOS to idle for voltage and vDrop under load.

Now if you have questions or something isn't working or you can't find something post back up. Your CPU voltage will not need to ever go about 1.36 for anything we are doing. A serious OC is going to take about a week to get close to perfect because of the time needed to check stability. So if the machine crashes try raising FSB and/or NB voltages, Asus should have something built into the BIOS that if the voltage gets to high the numbers will turn red cause you are to high GO BACK DOWN.

Once you get it to where it runs OCCT for say 4 hours we will start to drop voltages and/or increase CPU frequency.

[jbholsters]

Ok, I tried setting the FSB to 352, took DRAM off auto, and set the CPU voltage to 1.30. Windows would not load the first time, however it did load on the second attempt. I tried running OCCT but it failed within 2 minutes of starting.

I wasn't sure what voltage to start with for FBS Term, Voltage, or NB voltage so I left them on auto.

[_k_]

You have to take them off of auto. Try both the FSB and NB voltages at 1.5v, I think that should keep the NB high enough to get a boot and keep you out of the "red". If the same kind of problems are still present then try increasing the FSB voltage by 0.06v+. Remember you can help me out if you get me what vCore, CPU voltage, is with GPUz.

When you took DRAM off auto you remembered to set it to 1066 right?

The issue with leaving certain settings on auto is that the board AI will not tune voltages very well when you OC and that would be the most likely reason the boot is not stable. After it failed OCCT did you try and use the computer at all, if so did it lock up on you-crash programs-seem sluggish-anything weird? The other thing is if you get OCCT to run for a awhile and it always fails at the same point change the settings in it to just test memory or just test CPU, this is the different between small numbers(CPU) and large numbers(RAM), so it can show if one part is giving an issue instead of several parts.

If you do get everything up and working but the system seems to do a "hard-lock", no response or partial but computer is not usuable, or reboots itself this should only be NB voltage being to low or FSB voltage being to low so one or both needs to be adjusted. You might want to start a notebook to help you keep track of system settings that are not working and what exactly happened, this makes a great learning tool because you start to see trends and see where the sweet spot is for ranges of overclocks with your board.

[jbholsters]

I'll give that a try. The ram was not on auto actually. It was already set to 1066 and moved higher after I changed the FBS from 333 to 352. I'll let you know how I make out.

[_k_]

You should be able to set the ram to whatever you want, there is a place to fix that I haven't seen it and was hoping just taking the RAM off auto would flip the setting. You need to hunt around for an option that will disconnect your RAM from you CPU when it is overclocked. The options will be for linked, unlinked, then ratios of 1:1 2:1 3:4 ect.