E8400 won't OC much

Duke

Duke

Duke

Man of Honour
Joined
29 Jun 2003
Posts
34,662
Location
Wiltshire
Hi all,

I bought an E8400 (3GHz) a few months ago when they came out and already had a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P mobo with Crucial Ballistix 4x1GB PC8500. I swapped out the memory for 2x2GB OCZ Reaper memory, which now runs much cooler. Before this, I bought a Noctua NH-U12P cooler which is keeping the temps under control.

I'm struggling to get much of an OC out of the E8400 and was hoping for a lot more from the 45nm chip.

At stock (with speedstep on), the chip sits at ~1.120v and goes to 1.200v on load and it sits at around 40c in Windows.

Overclocking wise, it will sit happy (10hrs small FFT prime testing) at 3.6GHz (423MHz FSB) at 1.35v in BIOS but apart from that it goes stuck unless you uber volt it. It is stable at 3.8GHz but only when Volts are set to Auto in the BIOS and it half cooks at the chip at 1.5v+!! The system will boot at 4GHz but freezes in the BIOS / boot up.

I've lowered the multiplier to 8 and tested the board at 425 but need to go further on this I think.

Any other ideas? I thought these 45nm chips were good for say 3.4-3.6 on more or less stock volts and a small bump to 4GHz?

Running latest F11 BIOS, Corsair HX 520W PSU...

/pokes Big.Wayne and anyone else with some experience :)
 
Yeah I had them up originally (especially as I was running 4 sticks of memory), but it doesn't seem to make much difference, unless I'm not upping it enough?

What increase should I be trying?
 
+0.15v on the FSB Term and probably +0.25v on the MCH since you're running 4 sticks wouldn't hurt.

I would lower the multi to x6 and see how high you can get the FSB. I assume you've dropped the memory multiplier to x2.0 for the meantime?
 
Only two sticks now (2x2GB) but will try that.

RAM is fine, it isnt running over 800 really (5-5-5-18) and is rated to 1000. Volts on it are +0.3v.
 
Ah good point. Shouldn't really need more than +0.15v-0.02v on both with 2 sticks.
 
I run mine @3.6 with vcore @ 1.2v, my reaper 1066 needs 2.1v for 1066 so I set 2.04 in BIOS as the P5E over volts the RAM. All other volts at auto. I get it prime stable at 4GHz by just increasing vcore to 1.3v. I run it at 3.6 - 24/7. (mind you I did turn it off in August:D). If you have the RAM at stock/auto/1.8 bump it up to OCZ recommended value.
 
Bumping up the MCH by +0.25v has made it now boot into Windows at 4GHz, although prime fails right away. Memory is already set to 2.1v, although I could run this lower as at 4GHz it only runs about 900Mhz any way.

Going to fiddle with FSB/MCH volts a bit more.
 
At 445 x 9 for 4GHz the P5E allows me to select ~1050 for the RAM. Can't you change the memory divider or something?
 
Yeah can do but no point at the moment really, rather keep it low at 1:1 for now until stable.

Tried +0.3 on MCH but no joy. Hmm
 
Im @ 1.4vcore (bios) to get my 4.05 Ghz (may get a better clock if I played with the other settings)

I have found that a lot of people need about 1.4 to hit 4 Ghz.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom