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My Sandy Bridge Nightmare

nlel1975 said:
I tried to go higher and it will not boot. I am surprised you are getting temps up to 65C after hours running Prime 95 with a Artic Freezer 7 Pro rev 2. I am getting 71C max @ 1.280v with a Akasa Venom a better CPU cooler (in theory). This would suggest you are running with a lower voltage (unless my installation of the Venom is crap but I do not think so, its 17C cooler then stock)
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I just wanted to say that the Sandy bridge CPU and P67 really do work in a different way to anything we have seen in a desktop before... it's much more like a laptop.

What i think is catching many people out is the fact that when speedstep / turbo cuts in and out the voltage changes too.

I can only talk about the Asus P8P67 Pro as thats the only board i have, but what happens is...

If the CPU Vcore voltage is set to Auto in the Bios then the voltage in windows will change massivly at stock speed from something like 0.890v to 1.256v. This will scale up in conjunction with the Multiplyer increasing and the amount of time load remains on the CPU.

If the voltage is manually set in the Bios by selecting manual and then entering a CPU voltage... say 1.20v then you will have 1.20v regardless of the speedstep / turbo multiplyer setting. Meaning at 1600MHz 100x16 (when idle) you will have a vcore of 1.20v and at full load say 3300MHz 100x33 (2500k at stock) you will also have 1.20v vcore. the result oif this is that your idle temps will be higher and your full load voltage is lower than on auto (so you may become unstable).

There are also settings in the bios that will cause vcore to rise massivly if the CPU is demanding more current. I have seen mine, while set at stock vcore rise to 1.35v when running prime, but I have adjusted some of the Power functions in the bios.

You also need to understand that other things affect the CPU temp. PLL voltage and also the memory controller, so Ram voltage and speed.

In summary... working out what is going on with your voltages / temps on Sandy bridge is much more complex than before.

Another quick note. Asus Bios 405 shows much lower temps than the latest ones... I trust the later ones myself.
 
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Lot of boards got issues, and asus been plaqued more than most.
sandy as a chip also I guess isnt to be banged around especially at 32nm.
No issues yet 5ghz 2 days going 24/7.
 
Flopper what voltages you setting in your bios and what does the board actually say is being applied.

Just interested as I have a similar setup.
 
Balb0wa said:
i cant remember any other launches with issues like this though
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i can, when the 45nm Wolfdale duals first came along there was a rash of E8400's dieing early on as people where used to the bullet proof nature of 65nm conroe's.
 
Scougar said:
Still stunned you are using Load line calibration at all Simon. That can give voltage spikes.
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If the spikes were that bad it wouldn't even be an option in the bios. I've had llc enabled on core2 builds and my current i7 build and had no problems, my mates ocuk i7 build had it enabled as well. The fact that these sb boards gives you degrees of llc is great. Use it.
 
Really? I'd read an article that it does help with vdroop, but when the load comes off the cpu, it spikes. This was with an asus board and Core2 stuff though.
 
Scougar said:
Really? I'd read an article that it does help with vdroop, but when the load comes off the cpu, it spikes. This was with an asus board and Core2 stuff though.
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It may well have been true but I suppose its been a while and they've had time to fiddle with it.

Running at 100% LLC on mine and its just dandy./ 4.5ghz @ 1.31v. With no LLC that drops to 1.2v under load and BSODs in seconds.
 
I use to run with LLC on but I realized my PC was idle for long periods of time so I had to disable it because I wanted C1E enabled for power saving reducing the cores speed and voltage, the droop on my board is minimal so it's all good. It's true that if you use manual voltage you may as well disable all power saving settings because with no voltage decrease you are gaining nothing. Saying that, my rampage 2 has the option to change the voltage input to offset voltage, doing this allows all power savings to work fine, now my 4.2Ghz 1.33v overclock Reduces to 2.8Ghz 0.992v when idle on desktop or web browsing and that's way better than running at max volts and speed 24/7.
 
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RavenXXX2 said:
I use to run with LLC on but I realized my PC was idle for long periods of time so I had to disable it because I wanted C1E enabled for power saving reducing the cores speed and voltage, the droop on my board is minimal so it's all good. It's true that if you use manual voltage you may as well disable all power saving settings because with no voltage decrease you are gaining nothing. Saying that, my rampage 2 has the option to change the voltage input to offset voltage, doing this allows all power savings to work fine, now my 4.2Ghz 1.33v overclock Reduces to 2.8Ghz 0.992v when idle on desktop or web browsing and that's way better than running at max volts and speed 24/7.
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Thats not strictly true... P=IV power = current x voltage...
The voltage may stay the same but the power consumption will drop as the frequency scales down (as a result of decreased current)...
At least that was my understanding. It explains why the power production of a cpu increases as the frequency is increased regardless of the voltage being the same...
 
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