E2180 - New overclocker, first clocks

ChrissyT88

ChrissyT88

ChrissyT88

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Hi

Sorry to start ANOTHER thread - this is my first time overclocking (and first build), all seems to wrok fine, but wanted to ask a few questions. The main parts of the rig are:

E1280 - 2.00 Ghz, 10x multiplier /w arctic cooler freezer 7
Gigabyte P31-DS3L
2 gb Corsair xms2 DDR2 at 5-5-5-18 (800MHz, PC6400)
Corsair 450w power supply

My target clock was 3GHz - this is easily achievable by setting vCore to 1.5 V (1.44 recorded in cpu-z), increasing FSB voltage, and RAM will overclock to 900 MHz by increasing voltage by 0.1 V. However, the mobo was pretty cheap, and so does not have much in the way of cooling. It has small northbridge and southbridge heatsinks, but no cooling on the voltage control chips - i am therefore wary of overvolting the chip for long periods of time (i'm not sure i want to take it much above 1.4 for general use).

I have tried increasing the voltage small amounts and finding the most stable clock. With a vCore of 1.375 V (no other changes), the chip will happily clock to 2.7 GHz (270 FSB), but getting anything higher seems to require a significant step in voltage. Temps at this etting are around 19-22C idle and 47 load (prime 25.6) according to coretemp. To get it to 2.8 prime stable, i need to increase vCore to 1.4 and increase FSB voltage. Trying for 2.9 GHz on low volts does not seem to be possible (lots of BSODS).

I was wondering if these clocks were terrible/alright/good, and if there are any suggestions for taking it further. I have steered clear of MCH voltage (i was under the opinion this was more to do with memory?). I have tried lowering the multiplier to 9 and going for 2.9 at low voltage, but still wont take. Any help would be appreciated,

Cheers
 
well im no expert but those temps seem fine so i dont see any reason why you shouldnt just increase the vcore i think 1.5v is as high as you should go. I have my e2180 running at 3.2 with a vcore of 1.45v using a multi of 8 and 400fsb this gives me 1:1 with the ram running at 800mhz timings 5-5-5-18 2.1v. Hope this helps. *edit* this is on a asus p5k by the way, which is also a cheap board with no real cooling, i use a blu orb II to cool the cpu and the lian li pc7 has 2 120mm fans that help with airflow.
 
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what voltage are you running the ram at? make sure that it is all at defualt i think its best if you clock the cpu and then deal with the ram afterwards.
 
I have the same board, an E4400 which is an E2180 with double the cache and XMS5400 C4 ram.

Best when trying to find limit of CPU, keep the RAM out of the equation by setting RAM multi to 2.0 and voltage to 1.9v. No need to increase NB or FSB voltage. I have run at stock volts when the multi is set to 9 fsb at 322, 2.9GHz - the RAM runs @ 4-4-4-12 644; 3.0Ghz is 9 x 333 - Ram 4-4-4-12 667 with volts @1.4v. You could run as llwayneio suggests, but I found mine won't run the E4400 at x8 and FSB of 333 or greater.

It is much better to run the RAM in sync. with FSB ie multi of 2 and decrease the cpu multi than keep the cpu multi at 10 and run the ram out of sync. for the same cpu overclock.

Hope this helps
 
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Cheers guys - i tried running a 400 fsb with an 8x multi, but it didnt want to know, although i didnt try reducing the RAM frequency. As i said, it will OC fine to 3GHz no probs with RAM at 900MHz with 1.5 vCore and increases to FSB and RAM voltages - but i dont really want to do this! Thanks Topitoff, i'll have a play with these settings and report back...
 
Topitoff said:
It is much better to run the RAM in sync. with FSB ie multi of 2 and decrease the cpu multi than keep the cpu multi at 10 and run the ram out of sync. for the same cpu overclock.
Click to expand...

Surely you can do both? Keep the RAM in 1:1 sync and the multi at 10? I've done that.

I've got my E2180 running at 3Ghz on 1.35v quite happily. I've slackened the RAM timings to 5-5-5-15 and left it running at 2.0v. I tried an Orthos blend last night and it seems stable enough with these settings. The orthos blend stopped about 7 hours in (some error) but my PC hasn't crashed yet. I've played TF2 for two hours this morning without a crash. I'm using an Abit IP35E btw. I've got the FSB at 300 and multi at 10 and it seems to be humming along quite happily.

Will be looking at possibly tightening that RAM up but I'm in no real rush, I'm happy with stable 3Ghz with minimal tweaking from a £40 processor.

I guess it all depends on the mobo you're using as to whether you can just crank up the FSB and leave the multi and do minimal voltage tweaks.
 
try adding 0.1 to the MCH voltage, as mentioned make sure the memory voltage is set within its operating level.
 
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