First Time OC: ASUS Sabertooth, i7950, Silver Arrow Cooler

[Illydth]

Going to be starting my OC testing tonight. Have a couple VERY basic questions to begin with.

As I'm running an ASUS board, should I be using anything but the standard tools to play with my OC setup?

Recommendations here seem to be: CPU-Z, Prime 95 (I've heard LinX as well), and Coretemp.

Asus comes with "PC Probe II" which has a CPU temp on it...but that's not per core I guess, so probably coretemp is likely better?

Any other tools I should be looking at?

I assume all the work should be done through the AI Tuner part of the BIOS and not external tools?

--Illydth

 

[dugdiamond]

start with the lowest clocks and slowly work your way up thru the multipliers.

if your rig fails to post, simply up the voltages

this is what works for me...

do the cpu 1st

memory 2nd

and northbridge last

timings can be found on many pages here (and elsewhere), plus you always have the manufacturers guides as a good starting point

 

[MxFScotch]

DDon't use the temp in ai suite its just the t case temp. Download. HWmonitor for core temps. Or whatever shows ind core temps and min max temps as well. I personally uninstalled the ai suite it kept giving random warnings that were crazy.

 

[Illydth]

Thanks for the advice, I believe I'll follow that.

Starting the process, we'll see where I get to tonight. Read a couple of the excellent guides posted here, I hope I'm ready for this.

--Illydth

 

[Illydth]

So initial Statistics (don't have screen shots to post, sorry folks).

Running Prime 95 in stress test mode, no overclock (Other than Intel's version) at this point.

CPU-Z reports:

vCore: 1.232V

Freq: 3207.2 MHz (Intel's Overclock is on I believe so it's pushing a single multiplier overclock I believe).

Core Temps are as follows (Silver Arrow Cooler, Prime after about 30 minutes of run).

Core: Low / High

-------------------------

Core 0: 50 / 57

Core 1: 51 / 58

Core 2: 48 / 55

Core 3: 49 / 55

And after stopping the test (30 seconds after test stopped)

Core 0: 34

Core 1: 34

Core 2: 34

Core 3: 31

These look on par with a non-overclocked situation for a cooler like this? I know it's kinda hard to tell but how's this in comparison with what you all are seeing stressing the system out with a NH-D14 or something equivalent? I had to slide the cooler around a bit when I installed it in the case, so I'm a bit worried that I don't have the thermal paste on correctly at this point...looking for some basic comparison (non overclocked) data points to figure out if my heat under load is where it should be before I start OCing things.

--Illydth

 

[dugdiamond]

this may help you...

click me

also try these settings:

200 x 21

Core Voltage 1.28750v

uncore voltage 1.375

Dimm voltage 1.65

Ht off

speedstep off

C1 off

and also this:

Core Voltagr 1.28750

QPI Voltage 1.25625

VRAM Auto

Bclk 191

CPU Ratio 21

Ram 1531 (or something like that )

QPI 3062 (Basically twice the Ram frequency)

HT Off

 

[Illydth]

WOW that is an AWESOME reference for i7 Overclocking. I'll keep that one bookmarked.

--Illydth

 

[dugdiamond]

 

[TMaksimov]

Temps seem fine to me.

Don't switch Hyperthreading (HT) off, it's pointless. It's better to have 8 threads at 3.6 than 4 at 4.0/4.2. Also if you feel like having all the info displayed on one page check out HW Monitor

 

[S_I_N]

sweet keep it going