E7400 o/c causing headaches!

[burnoutbob]

Hello all.

I'm relatively new to all this. (The last time I attempted an overclock was on an Amiga, which involved soldering and oscillators!!) I've read through about a million guides and such on overclocking, and though I've managed to bump up my processor from 2.8Ghz to 3.15Gh (an abosolutely huge increase compared to my awesome Amiga over clock of about 10Mhz!!), I'm struggling to get it any higher.

 

Erm, some details may help.

 

Right, so. I've only touched the FSB so far, and if I can help it, I don't really want to start changing voltages. The multiplier is locked I believe (nothing in the BIOS seems to change this, so I'm presuming so) at 10.5.

 

I pushed the FSB up to 300 in small amounts, and 300 is as far as I can push it and still boot into Windows (Vista x64).

 

Temps sit at about (Core/System) 34

[Verran]

If you don't want to mess with voltages, then you're probably done. Overclocking generally involves setting the core voltage higher than stock. If you don't want to do that, you're going to be severely limited.

 

Also, seeing if your PC will boot is NOT the right way to check stability. You're asking for a lot of problems that way. Try some stress tests like Prime95 or OCCT and I bet you'll see you're pretty unstable right now.

[burnoutbob]

Hi

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

I understand that being able to boot into the OS isn't an indication of a stable overclock. Perhaps I worded it wrong, but my current overclock is stable (according to OCCT anyway). If I push the FSB up by a few mhz, then I run into problems, and if I go as high as an extra 10mhz, I can't even boot into the OS. Sorry, I should be better at phrasing things!

 

I'm reluctant to play around with voltages because I'm likely to break something, and replacing parts isn't an option at the moment!!

 

Thanks for your help.

[Baulten]

You simply hit the wall with stock voltage. You're stable, but anything past isn't. All that's needed is more core voltage, and maybe secondary voltages (I've done only a little Intel OC'ing, so I don't know if it's as picky as AMD about secondary voltages and CPU speed scaling).

[burnoutbob]

Ok, so I finally relented, and had a go with voltages. I've managed to get it to boot with an FSB of 310, but it seems no amount of raising the Vcore will stabilize it. I'm very reluctant to go over 1.4v, and I was reluctant to leave it at that for too long. But running OCCT gives me an error on one core, though it seems to be different each time.

 

I also tried (I'm not sure why, I'd already established that it was unstable) the Intel Burn test, which threw up errors after about 90 seconds.

 

How safe is it to raise the vcore further? Is there an upper limit? Temps are pretty stable at around 45/54, which I'm not everly concerned about, esp when the fans aren't even at full speed at that point.

[Verran]

On air cooling and summer temps I wouldn't go much over 1.4v myself. Not for 24/7 usage, anyways.

 

If you can't get stable at 310x10.5 at 1.4v, I'm thinking something else is wrong. You shouldn't have to raise the vCore nearly that much.

[Jenova69]

Make sure speedstep and C1E is disabled.

[Kingfisher]

Make sure speedstep and C1E is disabled.

What would cause this to be relevant to the OP's problem though?

[wevsspot]

burnout,

 

please post your current BIOS settings and let us take a look. Of particular interest will be your voltages, fsb and memory settings.

[sav.za]

Hi

 

Have you had any luck yet? I'm also trying to get the max out of my E7400 but have hit a bit of a wall at 3.56GHZ

FSB 375mhz

DDR 1000mhz

vCore 1.4v

Dimm 2.1v

Multiplier 9.5

 

Runs P95 stable for hours but can't get it to run stable above that. Setting the FSB to 400mhz makes it unstable and the same goes for the multiplier and memory. I still need to play around with secondary voltages but the MCP is already running hotter than what I'd like.

 

Good luck.

[jgv115]

Mate your temps are very low. You can afford to raise the vcore mate.

 

You said you had 1066 RAM. This means that you can run the RAM at 533mhz with a 1:1 ratio. If your ratio is FSB: DRAM 4:5 then it is a different story.

 

Take a screenshot of the main page and memory page of CPUZ for us

[sav.za]

Mate your temps are very low. You can afford to raise the vcore mate.

 

You said you had 1066 RAM. This means that you can run the RAM at 533mhz with a 1:1 ratio. If your ratio is FSB: DRAM 4:5 then it is a different story.

 

Take a screenshot of the main page and memory page of CPUZ for us

What I find more intresting is the small jump under load. Did you check this while running P95? Even stock mine jumps at least 10-15deg. My idle temps are also around 33deg celcius but easily jump into the 50's and low 60's if the fans are not set to 100%.