Overclocking on MSI P7N Plat

[Nebulous]

Hi Guys,

As I mentioned, I also have an E8400. I've had huge problems with lockups, even at stock speed. In fact, it won't even run stable at stock speed, unless I up the CPU, NB, and VTT voltage. I was also able to get a semi-stable OC @ 3.6 with these voltages. Probably somewhat overkill, but I haven't had time to narrow it down to the minimum voltages to run @ 3.0 or 3.6.

CPU +0.0875 VTT 1.4v NB 1.4v.

I also get lockups while playing video files and DVDs, as well as games. My CPU temp is running 45-50C at load now, so I should probably dial back the voltage on it. Anyway, any advice you can give Rezzie, I'm interested in too. I'm starting to wonder if I just got a bad board here, and need to RMA, though. Maybe a bad video card too... or CPU?

 

[DavidT]

Hi Guys,

As I mentioned, I also have an E8400. I've had huge problems with lockups, even at stock speed. In fact, it won't even run stable at stock speed, unless I up the CPU, NB, and VTT voltage. I was also able to get a semi-stable OC @ 3.6 with these voltages. Probably somewhat overkill, but I haven't had time to narrow it down to the minimum voltages to run @ 3.0 or 3.6.

CPU +0.0875 VTT 1.4v NB 1.4v.

I also get lockups while playing video files and DVDs, as well as games. My CPU temp is running 45-50C at load now, so I should probably dial back the voltage on it. Anyway, any advice you can give Rezzie, I'm interested in too. I'm starting to wonder if I just got a bad board here, and need to RMA, though. Maybe a bad video card too... or CPU?

Replace any parts you can, starting with the CPU. Do you have any spare LGA775 procs lying around?

 

[Nebulous]

Unfortunately, I don't have a spare LGA775 CPU to try. And Intel was dragging their feet on the warranty replacement, basically saying that, if the processor is working at all, it must be a problem with the motherboard.

I'll definately RMA the board. I suspect it's the main cause because A) Because tweaking FSB and NB voltages seems necessary to get any kind of stability. and B) In the brief time I had a 680i board before this, I had no freeze-ups with the same CPU. (Too bad dual channel memory was broken, heh).

I also got a video artifacts followed by a freeze once, so yeah, I may as well RMA my 8800 GTS 512 too. I guess the bright side is that I've already tested the memory thoroughly AND replaced the power supply, so I should be running out of potential causes. Thanks DavidT.

 

[Nebulous]

Ok, I got the replacements, and everything seems to be working fine now. Based on this thread, I also switched from Vista 64 64 bit to XP 64 bit.

Note that the P7N plat may also have SATA controller problems with the Nvidia nforce drivers, so if you see disk errors in the event viewer after a freeze up (which I did on my current board), just disable command queuing on your HDD's SATA controller.

 

[andrihb]

Hi. I have the same mobo and same cpu and i'm having the exact same problem (i think) as you. After a few hours of browing, some corruption artifacts appear and a few seconds lader, everything locks up. then sometimes i can move the mouse again a few seconds later but it never recovers fully and i have to reset. i tried using both of my 8800gt cards on their own, i tried another ram kit, i tried removing the only hardware i could remove, my x-fi. I have it narrowed to to either a bad mobo or a bad cpu. What did you replace?

 

[andrihb]

Oh and i forgot to say that i am not overclocking anything right now, i would like to in future but first i have to get this problem out of the way.

 

[Nebulous]

If you're getting video corruption followed by freeze-ups, it's possible that it could be this issue:

http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=117287.0

For me, the video corruption problem went away after I set hardware acceleration to "Disable all DirectDraw and Direct3D accelerations" (on the troubleshooting tab of advanced display properties).

My other random freeze-ups while gaming were fixed after I sent in the motherboard and my video card (I have just one) in for RMA.

If you're getting this just while browsing the web and not watching any videos, it could be something else, maybe a bad motherboard, assuming your video cards are good and you don't have any temperature problems. I would disable hardware acceleration to see if that helps, and contact MSI for support (and possibly the beta BIOS with the video fix). Another possibility is a bad power supply, although that's probably not as likely.

Also, you might want to post in the MSI forums about your issue too... just be sure to provide enough detail.