E8400 at 4ghz and Asus P5Q Pro Turbo - check my settings...

Diggsy

Diggsy

Diggsy

Soldato
Joined
31 Aug 2007
Posts
4,796
As title really, just setup a new system for a friend based on the following hardware...

Asus P5Q Pro Turbo
Intel E8400 cooled with Titan Fenrir
2x 2gb Kingston HyperX 8500
XFX nVidia GTX260
2x 500gb Samsung F1 in Raid 1
Pioneer DVR217
Corsair HX520
Antec 300

Running Vista Home Premium.


I decided to see how it would overclock and looking around the net it seemed that 4ghz was a nice target for these chips.

So, I changed FSB to 500, multi to 8 and CPU voltage to 1.3 and bam, it's running Prime95 Small FFT's at 4ghz no problem at all :D

Now, I have left everything else on auto, including all other voltages, but should I change this? If so, what do I change any of the values to?

It has been running now for 30mins and the highest CPU temperature recorded (CoreTemp 0.99.5) is 54c on both cores. Both cores are always the same temperature too, so I assume he got a nice flat chip and I have installed the cooler well ;)
 
Looks pretty good so far, the p5q pro turbo is a newer motherboard, the earlier versions of this series were known to overvolt extrmely high if things were left on auto, p5q deluxe in my sig being a good example.
 
Thanks for the reply. I have looked at the voltages according to V Tuner and none of the ones left on auto looked that high to be fair. Values on auto showing as follows (although I don't know if it shows them auto adjusting or not)...

Northbridge - 1.32
Southbridge - 1.1 (lowest I think)
DRAM - 2.3
SB PCIE - 1.5 (again, lowest I think)

So, I am currently adjusting these in an attempt to keep them as low as possible, while keeping things stable.

Anyway, with that in mind I am currently trying...

CPU - 1.275 (under load according to Asus Probe it is showing 1.26v, and CPU-Z lists 1.256v)
DRAM - 2.1
NB - 1.26
SB - 1.1

I left the others on auto as they were showing at the lowest anyway, although I might just set them manually to the lowest settings, so I am certain they are locked.

It is currently running Prime95 Small FFT's and has been for the last 10mins with no issues. Would be very nice if I could keep the volts this low at 4ghz. :)

The chip itself has a VID of 1.2625v according to CoreTemp for what it's worth.
 
Last edited:
Can you check what the CPU PLL voltage is set at, this and vtt aka FSB TERMINATION are the most critical with 45nm cpu's, NB at 1.32 is a wee bit higher than normal, i currently run a quad on 1.26 NB and 1.26 VTT, PLL AT 1.54, dual cores often need less of theese settings on theese boards compared to a quad.
 
Thanks for the tips again, looks like it's setting PLL way too high, it's at 1.8v! FSB Term at 1.4v, going into bios to change now...
 
Okay, been into the bios and tried dropping everything to the lowest values. That resulted in no boot. Then tried again with PLL and NB a little higher. Got to Windows loading but no further, so going to increase again a litte more.

Will keep you posted.
 
1.8v on pll is extremely high, 1.4 on fsb term is right on the limit for 45nm cpu's, fsb term aka vtt is about as damaging to theese cpus as high vcore, 1.4 vcore being the reccomended maximum setting for cpu volts.
 
Again, thanks a lot for that.

I have tweaked in the bios and these are the settings that got me back into windows...

CPU - 1.275
NB - 1.26
SB - 1.1
SB PCIE - 1.5
CPU PLL - 1.56
FSB TERM - 1.36

Only issue now is with all the faffing around the RAID 1 array has gone bonkers and is having to re-initialise :eek:

I will maybe have a play around tomorrow changing one at a time and see if I can get any of them lower than that. But are they within a safe range now?
 
Last edited:
Yep Diggsy, the main voltages to watch for are the pll, nb and vtt, the first p5q boards were known to overvolt theese setings extremely high if left on auto or the lowest manual setting, hence its reccomended to start any oc with knocking theese settings to 2 notches above default, can be the same with the ram voltage, i run ocz reaper pc 8500 which is rated at 2.1v, but i have it set at 2.02, was the same with the previous ocz reaper pc 6400 ram i had, depending on bios revision they overvolt ram by upto +0.08v, i ran both theese kits on overclocked quads (q6600 at 3.8ghz, current q9550 at 3.8ghz) without an issue at 2.02vdimm.
 
That's great, thanks again for your help setter. I really haven't got a clue about these Asus boards, or 45nm C2D's either. I assume the short time running the higher voltage won't have done any harm? It was literally running for less than 1hr on those settings.

Won't be able to do any more tweaking until the morning as the RAID array is apparently going to take another 1.5hrs to sort itself out!

But I think most of the settings are as low as I dare, as I just raised them one at a time until it booted into Windows.

I wonder if it would be better giving the CPU a little more vcore to see if it will let me back off some of the others?

Oh one other thing, the only one now left on Auto is the CPU GTL REF. Is that ok on auto?
 
Right, booted to a blue screen this morning, so further fiddling around and these are the current settings...

CPU - 1.275
NB - 1.3
SB - 1.1
SB PCIE - 1.5
CPU PLL - 1.56
FSB TERM - 1.28

Will try to lower the NB a little bit more, but not sure if it will be stable much lower, however I think everything seems well within the safe zone now, yes?

EDIT - have backed off the NB to 1.28 and it seems ok thus far anyway. Will monitor things and see how it goes.

EDIT 2 - also had to bump the FSB TERM to 1.3, any lower and all sorts of weird error messages were appearing in windows.

So, latest settings are...

CPU - 1.275
NB - 1.28
SB - 1.1
SB PCIE - 1.5
CPU PLL - 1.56
FSB TERM - 1.3

Also, I wonder was the blue screen due to the NB or CPU voltage being too low? Raising NB fixed it and got me into windows, but I am wondering if I raised the CPU slightly, could I back off the NB?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom