Need advice on OC'ing Asus Sabertooth Z77 with i7 3770K

Totally Dubbed

Totally Dubbed

Totally Dubbed

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UPDATE 12/11/12:
Thought to update people again:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1291703/ivy-bridge-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboards/800#post_18498293

4.5ghz OC stable.
The problem i had ALL THIS TIME, was a FAULTY RAM DIMM -> meaning OC's were impossible...as it was also failing on STOCK:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1320660/...stable-system-on-stock-clocks-prime95-failing



Hey OC'ers!

So I've got my build up and running, and I went straight in pretty much for OC'ing.

I've clocked atm to 4.4ghz, with 1.25v on the vcore.
I ran Prime95 for over 7hrs30mins, and it came up with only 1 error, after 6hrs45mins testing (stopping 1 worker, out of the 8 in the process):
[Sep 30 00:53] FATAL ERROR: Resulting sum was 4.417117661945961e+071, expected: 229043359113193.7

After googling, it seems memeory or vcore related?
My RAM is the vengeance 1600mhz 16GB CL9 - running 9-9-9-24 timings.

Would anyone care to share their OC profiles - I don't really want to OC to something like 4.8ghz+ but 4.4-4.5 is reasonable enough for me, as I want to keep temps down.

Temp wise - I got the Antec920 working away.
I got liquid temps peaking no higer than 35c (liquid temp)
I got motherboard sensors around 55-40c (CPU and vcore being the hottest ones)
Realtemp gives me a MAX peak at around 80c, but is around 60c (after around 3hrs) and around 70c (after around 7hrs)
The peak 80c, comes I think when prime is running, and the antec has to start cooling.

I shall take print screens of the bios now, and post them :)

Cheers for any help!
 
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Do you want to use offset mode or normal vcore control?

For me I get an extra 100Mhz from the same voltage not using offset, but then the voltage is constant whereas on offset it goes down to 1.08v or so most of the time when not under full load.

I have the P8Z77 pro so fairly similar biosso i'll see if I can grab you some settings.
 
Krono5 said:
Do you want to use offset mode or normal vcore control?

For me I get an extra 100Mhz from the same voltage not using offset, but then the voltage is constant whereas on offset it goes down to 1.08v or so most of the time when not under full load.

I have the P8Z77 pro so fairly similar biosso i'll see if I can grab you some settings.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply!
Honestly - I don't really mind or care about the mode bro.
I went for manual simply because I felt 1.0xxx v was too low for the CPU to run properly.
Maybe a false assumption on my part?
 
there seems to be 2 potential problems with offset I have found, firstly you can get BSODs a little more easily with the Vcore changing all the time along with C-states/Speedstep or one of the other power saving settings. Iirc I disabled one of these as I started having issues and it fixed it.

Secondly in offset mode motherboards like to pump way too many volts through at higher clocks so you end up with bigger and bigger negative offsets (-0.1 etc). This causes problems when approaching 5Ghz as the offset is also active when it clocks down to 1600mhz and the voltage can go sub 1.0v. Which will inevitably cause crashes when the CPU clocks down and is undervolting itself. IB won't clock that high with acceptable temps on anything less than the extreme end of cooling so shouldn't be a problem for most chips.

I'll go grab my bios settings now.
 
Krono5 said:
there seems to be 2 potential problems with offset I have found, firstly you can get BSODs a little more easily with the Vcore changing all the time along with C-states/Speedstep or one of the other power saving settings. Iirc I disabled one of these as I started having issues and it fixed it.

Secondly in offset mode motherboards like to pump way too many volts through at higher clocks so you end up with bigger and bigger negative offsets (-0.1 etc). This causes problems when approaching 5Ghz as the offset is also active when it clocks down to 1600mhz and the voltage can go sub 1.0v. Which will inevitably cause crashes when the CPU clocks down and is undervolting itself. IB won't clock that high with acceptable temps on anything less than the extreme end of cooling so shouldn't be a problem for most chips.

I'll go grab my bios settings now.
Click to expand...

Cheers for that!
I'm letting my RAM test go on for a little while, then will provide screenies :)!

Really appreciate the fast reply guys!
I'm overall happy with what I got so far, as I'm surprised I haven't had major crashes (I did have 2 crashes beforehand, when i FIRST built the system: 1 being the actual asus OC thing that crashed it....2nd was me just playing around at 4.5ghz lol)
FYI: I have uninstalled all SOFTWARE based OC things - like that turbo V evo thing that asus provide - it hoenstly just annoyed the hell outta me if anything.

So I'm quite impressed that, with a random pick at around 1.25v I'm getting near stable (considering almost 7hrs, is not a short stress test)
I feel I might need to manually put the VRAM voltage up a notch - maybe to 1.5 or so - as I think it might be lower, due to it being on auto (if memory - literally - serves me right :D)
 
these are my offset settings. You should start at 43* multiplier and 0 offset and then work your way up using the lowest offset you can to keep it prime stable. PLL overvoltage is important for 4.5Ghz and over from what i've found and I needed to turn some c-states off to get 4.6Ghz stable.

IIRC the high VCCSA was needed to get my RAM stable at ultra low timings so you can probably leave that on auto. LLC is very important and should be on atleast 75%. I just put mine on the max as that as what stopped all vdroop when using a fixed voltage and helps manage the gap between full load and idle voltage. Some of the other Dig+ settings are quite high but it all seemed to help stability for me, you should probably experiment with them.

With these settings cpu-z says 1.312v voltage at full load, 1.088v when idle. Voltage isn't really important due to the thermal limits, so over 1.4v which starts getting to a point that may damage the chips lifespan on air the temps would be insane. I just ensured it didn't go above 85c during the summer when it was about 30c ambient in the room under Prime small fft's. 80c is imho the safe thermal limit for these chips.















 
One last thing, BLCK frequency wasn't really changeable for me at anything above 45* multi but once you reach the multi limit for your chip you could see if one or two ticks are possible.

Also BF3 MP proved to be the sternest test of stability I found. Prime stable for several hours would crash within 10 minutes of playing metro 64 player. If it can survive and hour of BF3 and an Hour of prime small fft's/blend then it'll likely be 100% stable.
 
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Legendary mate! Thanks a lot. I'll do some tweaking.
As for bf3. I need to investigate that. Simply because i feel that the game is a little choppy sometimes. I feel it has something to do with the gfx. For some reason or another, i feel the gfx isn't doing its job.
Ie. When i had paint open and was dragging images, there were lines moving, it wasn't smooth. I had lucid mvp that came with it too, which i don't know if it is actually helping either.
Finally one thing that's weird is the cpz, that doesn't pick up the memory of the gfx!
 
Ok here's my bios currently - or what it was at, when I got that Prime95 error:



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Here's AFTER (copied settings) - I'll do some benchmarking.



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So far I'm hitting 4c-7c higher temps (within minutes of prim95 running) - fan is running a little faster in RPM - coping with the temp change.

I also should state, I have no idea about iGPU - i know that's the GPU within the i7...but I have no use for it. Should I disable that?
Went ahead and disabled it.
No need for iGPU or virtu when I got a GTX660ti...Rather use the GFX fully.

A few things, whilst browsing the bios:
-High precision timer is enabled - is that ok?
-My PCIeX16_1 link speed I've set to GEN3 instead to auto - is that recommended?
 
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Right - I hit that same error, but within several minutes.
Suggestions are welcome :)

Now I'm back on my original settings, but with RAM voltage up a notch - and blimey, temps are around 80c, peak at 90c which is dangerously high.
 
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You shouldn't be messing with RAM and/or GFX overclocking at all until you've got the CPU sorted otherwise you'll have no idea which is causing any errors. Best to eset the bios and start again only touching cpu things until you have it stable at an OCyou're happy with, only then moving on to RAM.

I do not know why you have an offset value of 0.090v. I hope you didn't copy mine as That is very high and I specifically stated to start at a lower multi and zero offset to find what works best for your cpu.

iGPU should be disabled as it's only real use is with lucid mvp which is buggy as hell.

hpet and PCIeX16_1 link speed are both fine although I don't see why you'd neeed to change them from auto.
 
Krono5 said:
You shouldn't be messing with RAM and/or GFX overclocking at all until you've got the CPU sorted otherwise you'll have no idea which is causing any errors. Best to eset the bios and start again only touching cpu things until you have it stable at an OCyou're happy with, only then moving on to RAM.

I do not know why you have an offset value of 0.090v. I hope you didn't copy mine as That is very high and I specifically stated to start at a lower multi and zero offset to find what works best for your cpu.

iGPU should be disabled as it's only real use is with lucid mvp which is buggy as hell.

hpet and PCIeX16_1 link speed are both fine although I don't see why you'd neeed to change them from auto.
Click to expand...

hehe I did foolishly copy your settings - JUST to see the outcome.
Outcome was fast problems and heating.

-As for the auto things - I felt, maybe it would not go to gen3 for example.
-iGPU wise - cheers for confirming.
-You are very right about isolating the problem and not going all out - I'll do that if this overnight prime95 gives me any errors.

Will be running for over 6hrs before I go to sleep :)
 
ive treaked my settings now gone back to offset so voltage drops when idle.

should i use load line ultra high
cpu power phase extreme
dram power phase extreme

thanks
 
Krono5 said:
Out of curiosity what core voltage was cpu-z showing with those settings?
Click to expand...

I didn't even check mate - but right now, I got 1.248v-1.256v (whilst prime is buzzing) lol

I tweaked my core v a little - I think it's that, that's triggering the fatal errors on prime.
When I have it as something else, it comes really quick.

I'll print screen bios, when I finish testing after tonight - be it a fail or successful prime test.

richy850 said:
ive treaked my settings now gone back to offset so voltage drops when idle.

should i use load line ultra high
cpu power phase extreme
dram power phase extreme

thanks
Click to expand...


Hi there - check the print screens above.
If you got specific questions, please create a new thread ;)
 
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