New to overclocking i7 920

[Kevin1873]

I was wondering if I could get a little help. I'm not new to hardware but am new to overclocking and it's definitely a field that brings me back to my nub days so i feel kind of helpless and reading some posts some of you have a better grasp than I do about it so any help would be much appreciated.

I'm running the Intel i7 920, Asus P6T Deluxe Mobo, 6GB DDR3 Corsair XMS3 1333 Ram with a EVGA GTX 285 Video Card.

I would like to overclock the CPU to stable 3.4~3.6 and overclock the ram from 1333 to 1600 but so far I'm a little lost. I understand the basic, just bump up the base clock or BCLK, but at what value of BCLK can I achieve 3.4~3.6? Should I leave the Turbo Mode on or turn it off? I notice some here leave it on, some turn it off. Same with HT. Where I get really lost is the voltage for the CPU, QPI/DRAM voltage as well as the DRAM voltage and CPU rating settings in the Bios for the Asus board. I don't really want to mess with any of that until I get some feedback from some of you.

This is the site url I'm using to kind of gather some information since they used the Asus Deluxe board in their overclock scenario. Only problem is they were trying to get over 4GHZ out of their test, I don't want that. A stable 3.4~3.6 would be fine so I'm guessing I wouldn't use the same values they did. Overkill I would imagine.

bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/06/overclocking-intel-core-i7-920/3

Any help would be much appreciated. Right now I have the BCLK set at 150 with every thing else on auto and I'm at 3.1GHZ with idle at 34C. I haven't ran Prime95 yet. Want to wait until I get up to at least 3.4GHZ but would also like to get all the voltages plugged in correctly as well as I know that will help with cooling. Please remember I'm way behind on a lot of the terminology and steps so explanations in laymen terms would really help me out. Thanks again.

 

[monkey7]

First of all I'd like to point you at my i7 overclocking guide. It hasn't been finished but it gives you an introduction to all the terms and values of the i7 cpus.

Second of all you shouldn't ever fill in someone's numbers and see what happens. You could of course try but most of the time you would either have too much voltage or too little. It's better to just start the trying game. Up your bclk with 5, prime95 for 10 minutes, up your bclk with 5, etc. When prime95 fails, increase vCore with a max. of 1.375v. Before you do all this I'd start by setting the VTT (qpi in asus language) voltage to 1.35 (safe max.).

And make sure to take all voltages off 'auto'. Auto nearly always overvolts and it's better to watch it yourself. Most things you can leave at normal, I have only set vtt (qpi) to 1.34, vcore to 1.25 and vDimm to 1.64 for a 3.2GHz speed on my ud5.

 

[filthy]

Kevin, I would be interested to find out how you got on, as I am in exactly the same situation. I have the same CPU, Mobo and Ram as you.

 

[Kevin1873]

Well right now Filthy, I'm totally at a loss. I don't know if it's the crappy Thermaltake V1 cooler on the CPU or what. I've had the computer for about 2 weeks now. The first day I got the comp just for fun I took the BCLK and bumped it up to 166, everything else on auto. CPU overclocked to 3.4 and I ran Prim95 for about 10 minutes and it never went over 50C. I put the BCLK back to 133 and left it at that. Now I've had some time to play with with it but for some reason I can't even get the CPU to run stable with the BCLK to only 150 without the CPU heating up to over 80C while running Prime95 for only 2 minutes. It's got me quite confused I don't get it. The CPU fan is running at 2109RPM even though it's only rated for 2000. I've tried everything, slowly bringing up the QPI and the CPU voltages, still nothing. Can't run Prime95 for more than two minutes before the it reaches 80C and continues climbing so I kill it. With a BCLK of 133 and everything on auto I idle at 30-32C with Prime95 running it never gets over 50C but as soon as I change the BCLK to anything over 133 the temperature just keeps going up and up and up non-stop so I'm totally confused as to why especially since some people have overclocked to stable speeds up to 3.6 with the stock heatsink and fan on the CPU. It's really ****ed me off so I haven't touched it since. I tried using the Turbo V but it locks up my computer any time I set the BCLK above 150 so I gave up on that, too. So as of right now I have absolutely no idea what to do. The tests above were also done with Speedtest, Turbo mode and HT all off but even that didn't help.

 

[filthy]

I can highly reccommend the Noctua NH-U12P 1366 SE CPU cooler as detailed on this site. The one in the link is for 775 sockets but they do a 1366 socket for the i7 chips. It has about a 17 deg cooler difference over the intel stock fan. I bought mine in Jan for about £56 so they are quite reasonable but huge, so check your case for size before buying. It has two high pressure Noctua fans on it that run like a dream.

Unfortunately I am a noob to overclocking and so I cant really help you out with suggestions regarding your run away temps. Are you using real temp to monitor? Presumably you are runnning a 64bit OS? I have found start64.com to be a really useful location for software.

Keep posting if you have any luck. I'll let you know when I venture into the foray. I am still getting my head around the o/c principles and what I want to achieve. I would like to clock up to 4GHz ideally, but before I jump in with both feet I am doing a lot of reading!

 

[monkey7]

I've had the same for a more limited amount. While I first ran prime95 @ 3.7 @ 65*C it's now nearly 80*C. I downclocked to 3.2 to keep my F@H nice and cool.

 

[filthy]

It's hard to justify the extra temp when my machine can do everything I want at full res and all features turned on on every game I have. I can convert a full length film for my iPod in just 20mins. However, I would still like to squeeze a bit more out simply knowing that I can. Monkey7, will you be completing your guide to overclocking i7s?

 

[monkey7]

It's still on the to-do list, but it's lowest on the list tbh. Are you looking for the newbie or expert part II?

 

[filthy]

I have to say, I'm after the newbie follow on. I really need to be spoon fed in some respect. I have my new toy and the last thing I want to do is muck it up as you can well imagine. I have excellent cooling in the case which I have never really bothered with before hence no overclocking previously. I was running a video encoding program that sees all 4 cores at about 90% and the temps on the cpu only reached 65º so I think that I should be alright to tweak it a bit.

 

[soulfly]

First of all I'd like to point you at my [u It hasn't been finished but it gives you an introduction to all the terms and values of the i7 cpus.

Second of all you shouldn't ever fill in someone's numbers and see what happens. You could of course try but most of the time you would either have too much voltage or too little. It's better to just start the trying game. Up your bclk with 5, prime95 for 10 minutes, up your bclk witmh 5, etc. When prime95 fails, increase vCore with a max. of 1.375v. Before you do all this I'd start by setting the VTT (qpi in asus language) voltage to 1.35 (safe max.).

And make sure to take all voltages off 'auto'. Auto nearly always overvolts and it's better to watch it yourself. Most things you can leave at normal, I have only set vtt (qpi) to 1.34, vcore to 1.25 and vDimm to 4 for a 3.2GHz speed on my ud5.

hello there,

3.2 is exactly the clock that I'm looking for. I the same mother board you got. I,ll be running corsair 1600mhz ram. I would like to live the ram at that speed. I would like to maintain the cooler temps. would you be kind enough to share you bios settings so I can achive the same resulsts.

Thanks,

Soulfly.

 

[Freak]

Soulfly, when it comes to overclocking something as expensive at this I would not cut corners. All chips are differernt and so will take more/less potential difference and will also cope with the volts differently.

 

[soulfly]

Soulfly, when it comes to overclocking something as expensive at this I would not cut corners. All chips are differernt and so will take more/less potential difference and will also cope with the volts differently.

Thanks Freak!!

I'm going to play around with it. I should be ok at 3.2 boost from what I read. This is my first time doing a rebuild. My Alienware pc is 6 years old, running a P4 3mhz. With today's economy I don't see a reason of spending$2500 for a new Alienware. I'll just upgrade my Alienware full tower which is in mint conditon. I changed everything on a pc before so intalling the hardware woundn't be difficult. I just hope the cpu cooler fits. I purchased the Coolermaster V8. If not, I'll just get a smaller solution. Other than that, I should be good to go. I was going to do it before, but I wanted to give the luxury of being an Alienware owner. I know it's not the smartest thing to do.

which is why I'm just doing a rebuild. I love my tower. I hope it all works out.

Here is what I purchased,

Gigabyte x58 ud5

i7 920

coolermaster v8

corsair 6g 1600

corsair 850watt PSU

2 275 GTX 1792mb evga

seagate barracuda 32mb cache 7200 rpm 1TB

artic cooling compound

$1500 + tax