Overclocking the i7

Jet

Jet

VIP Member
Hey everyone--my F@h rig is together and running beautifully! I'm just wondering what voltages you guys have used--namely, Thermal-Reactor. I easily hit 4.0Ghz with this chip--I used 1.3V for that, but I know I could get it lower. Right now I'm at a wall at 4.3ish at 1.36V.

These are my settings:
Vcore: 1.375V (I'm going for 4.3 stable right now)
Ram: 1.654V
IOH: 1.197V
VTT: 1.410V
ICH: 1.20V
IOH CSI: 1.20V
IOH/ICH PCIE: 1.64V
PLL: 1.86V

CPU is at 210x21, QPI and Uncore at lowest ratio, and Ram well under stock (630Mhz, DDR3 1260).

Do you have any suggestions?
 
THERMAL-REACTOR said:
Raise your PLL to 1.88 and do you have a QPI voltage setting or is that the VVt you have listed?
Click to expand...

It's the VTT/QPI, whichever you want to call it. What voltages did you need to reach 4.6?

EDIT: Right now I'm sitting cool at 4Ghz--1.3V, 70C load temperatures.
 
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To reach 4.6 I used 1.5v (prob 1.47 would do) on the Vcore and had my QPI voltage at 1.42. The IOH is your northbridge voltage and up to 1.3v is safe but after that you have to start watching your temps. Sometimes increasing the IOH will allow for high OC's with less voltage but makes your motherboard run hotter. Also if you are only needing 1.3v for 4.0GHZ put the QPI VTT voltage at about the same level (1.3-1.35) it should help with temps a bit. For my 4.2 I have it set right now at 1.33Vcore and 1.35 QPI and idle at 36ish and highs are like 62-63ish.
 
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It's quite curious to see how much the Vcore has to ramp up over 4Ghz. Right now I'm trying to optimize settings at 3.8Ghz--and am down to 1.2V currently with no obvious stability issues yet.

The only complaint I have with the ASRock X58 Extreme is the large increment with the VTT/QPI voltages--each increment is 0.07V, so I only have 1.2, 1.27, 1.34, and 1.41V, etc.--so there's not much fine tuning.
 
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Jet said:
It's quite curious to see how much the Vcore has to ramp up over 4Ghz. Right now I'm trying to optimize settings at 3.8Ghz--and am down to 1.2V currently with no obvious stability issues yet.

The only complaint I have with the ASRock X58 Extreme is the large increment with the VTT/QPI voltages--each increment is 0.07V, so I only have 1.2, 1.27, 1.34, and 1.41V, etc.--so there's not much fine tuning.
Click to expand...
Well the asrock isnt a higher end board, finer voltage adjustments would be pretty ,well, dumb since under load and such its not going to keep the most stable/clean voltage(as the asrock is somewhat of a lower end board with lower end voltage regulators). However, there may be a bios update out or such..
 
bomberboysk said:
Well the asrock isnt a higher end board, finer voltage adjustments would be pretty ,well, dumb since under load and such its not going to keep the most stable/clean voltage(as the asrock is somewhat of a lower end board with lower end voltage regulators). However, there may be a bios update out or such..
Click to expand...

Where do you find information about the quality of the voltage regulators?
 
It appears like things are going smoother now--doing a slow, methodical overclock is always better than a fast one. My board really doesn't like the 20X multi or terribly high BLKs, so I've resorted to the Turbo (21X) multi. That's helped a whole bunch. Now I'm getting stable results up in the 4.1-4.2 range with 1.35V, though temperatures are somewhat of an issue now--the hottest cores are toying with 80C. After Finals this weekend I'm planning on reseating the i7 920, using Bomberboysk's TIM and possibly lapping it to see if I can get a bit more headroom. I also have some more fans on the way I got for cheap used, so that should help with noise as well (I'm running my fans maxxed out right now).
 
Sounds about right. You're probably gonna need water to go any higher if you want to make it quiet.

With all my fans at max, case closed and ambients around 75F, I push 78-79C under prime and 80-81C under pi.
Turbo-throttling seems to start at around 80 - 82C on my system. So this is my limit.
I've tried to push 4.3 GHz, but couldn't get it stable even with 1.4v (LLC on) with temps hitting 90C under linpack. So I'll wait until winter when ambients go down to -10F. (If Thermal Reactor has any tips, I'd be grateful. :D)

I've gotten 200 x 21 rock stable with:
1.275v (LLC on)
or
1.335v (LLC off)
and
Uncore @ 1.3v.

I've never had a single crash/BSOD/error with these settings even under a few hours of linpack/prime/pi. (These have about a 0.025v headroom before the slightest instability.)
So it might be 24/7 stable.

I don't sustain it though, cause I can't hear myself talk if I push my fans above 70%. I also run it @ 100% 24/7, so I'm not sure how long it will last under this kind of torture.
I plan on handing it down to my parents when I build my next rig (Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer). So it needs to last.
 
Yep--I tried to see if it was bigadv stable, and it wasn't at 4.2. The one frame it completed was actually slower than when it was at 4.0, so it was throttling. I keep on thinking that I'm ready to fold, and then I want to tweak it more :P. First I was at 3.8, and then I got 4.0 stable, and now I'm trying for 4.1ish :P.

What's LCC? What cooling are you using?
 
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EDIT: LLC = load line calibration. It compensates for vdroop and increases stability, but it causes large voltage spikes which is rumored to be damaging to higher OC'ed processors in the long run.

Pushing the point of turbo throttling 24/7 is a little too hot for my tastes.
But that's just me.

I like to keep my temps below 70C - which I'll admit is pretty conservative for i7. (Since stock i7 with stock cooler will push 80C on a hot summer day...)

Staying below 70C is something that's been drilled pretty well into me after months of tweaking my Xeon-rig. :rolleyes: (It's hard not to cherish a pair of $1300 processors. :o)
Every time I think about it now, I keep wanting to allow myself to sustain 75C on my i7 rig... since burning out an easy-to-replace $250 processor is definitely a lot more comforting than burning out a pain-in-the-@$$-to-find $1300 processor... :D


I've got:

Cooler Master Hyper N52

but I replaced the fans with something a little louder... :D

2 x Delta FFB0912SH-F00 92mm Fans


With this, 4.2 GHz was a cinch - both with temps and getting it stable (with enough headroom for 24/7)
What are you using?

Like I had mentioned, they make my ears bleed at 100%. So I only max them out when I'm running above 4GHz.
For some strange reason, when I go from 3.5 GHz (2.8 uncore) to 4.2 Ghz (3.4 uncore), my frame rates in Crysis go up from 25 FPs to 40+... which, proportionally, is waaaaaay more than it should be. lol


Too bad a TRUE won't fit in my (or any) Micro-ATX case... :(
 
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Yep--I have the Corsair H50. In hindsight, I debate about it. I really like it, and it's silent minus the fan, but sometimes I wonder if I should have gotten a TRUE, but with a better application of TIM and some lapping, I think it should be adequate. Folding at 4.1/1.35V is less intense than LinX or Prime; I'm only hitting low 72s most of the time and maxing out at 77/77/76/73, so it's not too bad. Just wondering why 4.2 froze last night :P. Probably should have kept it at 4.1 so as to not lose a whole night's work, but we'll see.
 
I made an edit about LLC while you were posting that.

If you're having trouble getting 4.2 stable with 1.3xx vcore (and most boards will auto-enable LLC at this point), then that makes me think that I probably got lucky and gotten a decent batch or decently binned chip. This isn't the first time I've seen someone with a D0 have trouble hitting 4.2 on air with 1.3xx+ vcore.

EDIT: But then, most of the guys over at XS seem to really know what they're doing (a lot more than me), so that might be a factor...

EDIT 2: I just realized that your Corsair H50 is self-contained water... nice. That might be something I'd try in the future.
Any idea how much better than a normal tower sink it is?
 
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poke349 said:
I made an edit about LLC while you were posting that.

If you're having trouble getting 4.2 stable with 1.3xx vcore (and most boards will auto-enable LLC at this point), then that makes me think that I probably got lucky and gotten a decent batch or decently binned chip. This isn't the first time I've seen someone with a D0 have trouble hitting 4.2 on air with 1.3xx+ vcore.

EDIT: But then, most of the guys over at XS seem to really know what they're doing (a lot more than me), so that might be a factor...

EDIT 2: I just realized that your Corsair H50 is self-contained water... nice. That might be something I'd try in the future.
Any idea how much better than a normal tower sink it is?
Click to expand...

You probably just got lucky...nevertheless, I'm quite satisfied :). I disabled LCC because early on I was seeing some issues with it. I see a fair amount of Vdroop, but it's not the end of the world.

The Corsair H50 is decent--most people put it on the level of the TRUE, but fans play a huge factor as well. Right now I just have a push-fan scenario, but I'm planning on a push/pull soon once more fans come in. I got it for $55, so I'm not complaining. It's a cool idea, even if low end water is frowned upon!
 
Jet said:
You probably just got lucky...nevertheless, I'm quite satisfied :). I disabled LCC because early on I was seeing some issues with it. I see a fair amount of Vdroop, but it's not the end of the world.

The Corsair H50 is decent--most people put it on the level of the TRUE, but fans play a huge factor as well. Right now I just have a push-fan scenario, but I'm planning on a push/pull soon once more fans come in. I got it for $55, so I'm not complaining. It's a cool idea, even if low end water is frowned upon!
Click to expand...


If you're 4.2 semi-stable @ 1.300v with LLC off, then you're chip is on par with mine. ;)

That Corsair H50 seems like it would be a lanboxer's dream. Small enough to fit into a lanbox - radiator included... though I can't justify letting go of my $70 cooling solution ($30 for sink and $40 for fans) in my i7 lanbox... lol... Even if it's a lot quieter.
I spent a lot of effort getting those fans... :o and even if I rarely put them to max speed, I still do a lot of benchmarking and frequency scalability testing for my programs at above 4GHz...
 
poke349 said:
If you're 4.2 semi-stable @ 1.300v with LLC off, then you're chip is on par with mine. ;)

That Corsair H50 seems like it would be a lanboxer's dream. Small enough to fit into a lanbox - radiator included... though I can't justify letting go of my $70 cooling solution ($30 for sink and $40 for fans) in my i7 lanbox... lol... Even if it's a lot quieter.
I spent a lot of effort getting those fans... :o and even if I rarely put them to max speed, I still do a lot of benchmarking and frequency scalability testing for my programs at above 4GHz...
Click to expand...

I just grabbed another Antec Tri-cool 120mm from another computer for push-pull, and my temperatures dropped significantly. Before in LinX with one high fan at 4.1Ghz I was hitting high 70s and now with two fans--the push on medium, the pull on high (for some reason the "new" one isn't as loud on high) I'm getting low 70s...unscientific, but I'd estimate ~5C decrease in temperatures.
 
Jet said:
I just grabbed another Antec Tri-cool 120mm from another computer for push-pull, and my temperatures dropped significantly. Before in LinX with one high fan at 4.1Ghz I was hitting high 70s and now with two fans--the push on medium, the pull on high (for some reason the "new" one isn't as loud on high) I'm getting low 70s...unscientific, but I'd estimate ~5C decrease in temperatures.
Click to expand...


Scientific enough for me. lol ;) An improvement is an improvement.
Now you're making we wanna try those... But they'd probably freeze up if I took it into sub-zero ambient... (which I plan to along with a couple of other friends who OC)

And if you're not worried about noise... get a pair of these...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185054
:P:P:P

I've got three of them in my Xeon rig. (Intake, exhaust, and chipset*.)
Yes that's what it took to keep my NB from frying... :eek:

btw, I remote-control my Xeon rig, so it isn't next to me anymore - hence why I don't care about the noise it produces...
 
I got a San Ace 120x38, 3x Lian Li 120mm, and a Panaflo 90mm for cheap--it'll be interesting to see how loud the San Ace is :P.
 
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