4 x 2gb overclocking on Striker II Extreme

[nathanc]

For ages, my Striker II quite happily ran my Q9450 at 3.2 linked and synced with a 1600FSB.

Earlier in the year I replaced the original 4GB of 1.9v OCZ RAM with the max the board could take: 4 2gb sticks of Ripjaw PC3-12800-C9 memory.

Unfortunately, this resulted in having to drop the memory speed to 1333.

For a last hurrah and to tie me over to next year when I (hopefully) upgrade to Ivy Bridge, I thought it was about time I pushed the system a bit further.

If I could get the memory back up to 1600 - I know it's more than capable of greater speeds than that, and I O/C my 5870, I could get StarCraft 2 back up to 1920x1200 at ultra quality rather than the 1680x1050 that I have to use presently to keep good frame rates.

By pushing the NB voltage up to 1.54, I've been able to get the O/S stable but 3DMark or any game will just crash.

I use air cooling (Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme + low RPM pwm fan). My BIOS settings are:

Unlinked
FSB - 1600
Mem - 1333 (I want 1600)
vcore - AUTO (I believe I need this on auto for
pll - 1.5
vtt - 1.36
mem - 1.65
nb - 1.54
sb - 1.50
CPU GTL_REF(0~4) Ratio - I don't understand these at all so they are on AUTO
I am using C9 memory timings with 2T.

I have managed to get 3.4ghz in the past so I know the CPU can do it I just can't help thinking it's the board that's holding me back... and this board is supposed to be great for overclocking!

Any suggestions?

 

[nathanc]

Well after a long weekend of tweaking and testing as well as over two years of ownership, I managed to get a whopping 3.5ghz using the Crazy Auto OC option and 1800 Auto memory options with an end result of FSB of 1750 with a 1:2 memory ratio!

I never tried the auto settings in the past, but they must set additional settings that aren't available in the normal BIOS.

The memory is at the tightest C9 but I might try to bring that down to C8 or even C7.

I am happy now, and the next task is to install my Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 5870 when it arrives at the end of the week and push for 1ghz plus on my 5870.

 

[Propan2ol]

Hi Nathan, I have a striker II Extreme also and found when I changed the ram my setup would crash in a similar way to you although I am using 2x4gb vengeance. I put the mem voltage up by 0.02v to get it stable so 1.52v in my case. I then link'd and sync'd @ 1600. All running happily. My NB only needs 1.42 to be stable on those settings. Glad yours is all up and running though.

 

[pecnarf]

im also a striker 2 extreme owner, i found that a lot of the new memory on the market are design for running on low memory voltage. but the striker 2 extreme is design for high voltage on memory. so using memory design to run at 1.5v won't run well on this board. i manage to find some 8gb of kingston memory 2x4gb that will runn at 1.76v. my system is currently oc to 3.4ghz at 1600fsb on a q9550 it was link and sync but due to the fact that my acrtic cooler freezer 7 pro rev1 is on it last leg and about to die it not cooling the cpu as it use to.

 

[nathanc]

It is quite incredible but there must be hidden timings that the auto OC sets!

I'm running linked and synced with an FSB of 1748mhz and memory speed of 874mhz. The memory is running at 8/8/7/18/28/2T (on cpu-z) with a voltage of 1.62 (pc-probe).

The NB voltage is reading 1.33v (pc-probe) and I've set the vcore to 1.3725 in the bios (everything else is set to auto) - it seems to rest at 1.42v (pc-probe) when the cpu is idle (at 2622mhz).

Other readings from PC Probe are SB = 1.5, VTT = 1.2 and PLL = 1.52v.

Temp wise, I'm very happy with a core range of 36c idle and 61c under Prime95 4 thread load (the ambient temp is around 18-20c in my room at the moment).

My Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme cooler plus Skythe Kama PWM which is spining between 500-600 rpm (all the case mounted Noctua NF-s12's don't even register on PC Probe) whilst writing this post - are still a wining and quiet combination!

When I previously had 2 sticks, the voltage settings were way higher to get 1600mhz FSB stable! BTW, I've always used the Anandtech mucho bucks Striker II Extreme article for voltage guidance.

One very happy Striker II owner (for a change!)

 

[Propan2ol]

I went for the 2x4gb vengeance as I heard there were a few issues with 4x2gb configurations. I'm running 9-9-9-24 1T and solid as a rock at 1.52v. But I did find on a few forums people having issues, like pecnarf said with the lower voltage ram, but no issues for me yet so very happy.

+1 for the striker II extreme.

 

[nathanc]

I went for the 2x4gb vengeance as I heard there were a few issues with 4x2gb configurations. I'm running 9-9-9-24 1T and solid as a rock at 1.52v. But I did find on a few forums people having issues, like pecnarf said with the lower voltage ram, but no issues for me yet so very happy.

+1 for the striker II extreme.

I just spotted this.. you are running 4gb sticks on your Striker II Extreme?

I thought it only supported 2gb sticks!
I would assume that if it does support the higher density, it is still limited to 8gb?