Overclocking help needed - i7 950

[Tomas Torasen]

Hi!
I just got a new chassi with better ventilation. Also a better CPU cooler for the CPU.
I'm currently at about 20-25 Celcius at max with the turby thingy on in bios which gives me about 3200 mhz. I'm guessing I have some room in terms of temps to get it higher.
Have tested some suggestions online for my Gigabyte GX58-UD5 and same CPU but cant get the PC to even boot up with those. I've currently reverted to my previous bios settings.

Anyone here good at this stuff?

 

[Mark Spaeth]

Overclocking is all about patience. You really need to take your time and minimize the amount of changes you make each time you reboot your computer. This should get you going...http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/538439-guide-overclocking-core-i7-920-930-a.html. If you have other issues I can most likely help you out.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

I got that, and I'm not sure that even if I get it overclocked, the reward will be worth a week of stress testing.

I'm gonna give it a couple more tries though. And thanks for the link.

Will try those settings I had but without the RAM and PCIE changes.
What is the right way of absolutely locking these settings.. I heard somewhere that those settings might change also just by turning up the BCLK?

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Ok heres where I'm at so far.
Cpu clock, temps on idle and high load from linX and passing first stress test:
http://imgur.com/yLL5A.jpg

My ram looks like this. There's 12 gigs on 6 slots:
http://imgur.com/K7Ea4.jpg
Whats the next step, aside from more extensive stress testing? I'm guessing the ram..

 

[Tjeerd Feddema]

I recently overclocked my i7 920. Just be sure to keep the voltages within limits. Also, if you got a succesfull overclock, take a look at the BIOS and see what voltages you left at "Auto". Almost every motherboard gives way to much voltage on that setting. Never change the PCIE bus yourself. Just leave it. Further, voltage difference between CPU QPI and DRAM should never be higher then 0.5V.

EDIT: Just seen your screens, that seems to be quite alright. I think you could go even further. It might be good to post a screen of your voltages to.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

now I read some more, since I'm not very knowledgable about this and feel I'm taking quite a risk trying this.

Apperantly linX should be run at least 50 times to be considered stable. It stopped and told me "error" after 26.

Thanks for the info. I will check CPU and QPI voltages, so far I've only upped CPU Vcore.
I'm currently now at 1,300V at CPU. Too much?

Edit;
Should I leave PCIE at auto or leave it at the same value but set it manual?

Edit 2:
Ok now I read some more and managed to get CPU Vcore voltage down to 1,25000v (1,300v before) and QPI is at 1,29500V (higher than before)
I use the special multiplier in this CPU at 24, BCLK at 165 which gives me 3960 mhz.
It just passed 50 times through LinX which is considered stable. I couldnt get it stable at any other values I tried so I think I'll keep it here.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Hmm as I said in the last post. I ran a good stress test, everything was stable. I did some racing and noticed a definite boost in performance.

Now this morning, my PC gets a failed boot up and sets itself back to default values again. I try exactly the same settings that were stable, and again it fail to boot. How strange is this? Anyone have any idea how this is possible?
I tried now to remove the extra multiplier and set it at 23 and increased the BCLK value so I reached the same frequancy as before, I've managed to boot up without problems but havent run any stress tests yet.

 

[Simon Roberts]

Mines running at 4.2Ghz with the Corsair H70 cooler, cant remmber off the top of my head what all bios settings are but i'll post them up tonight

 

[Damian Henderson]

Take a look at this thread, should be able to help you out allot.

http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=137546

 

[Lee Ross]

I have my 920 at 4.4GHz for benching and 4GHz for 24/7 use, can post my setting if you like but i'm sure your multi is higher with that chip so may not help.

My highest clock so far but it's with air..