Asus P5WD2 Premium issue & overclocking

[Daias]

so i just built this new computer with a P4 920D, Asus P5WD2 Premium, and 2GB OCZ DDR2 667 (PC2-5400).

after dealing with returning a doa motherboard (newegg makes returns so easy!), i had it up and running.

problem is that when i do a shut down from winxp, it shuts down...for about 5 seconds, and then it turns itself back on. so i unplugged anything unnecessary to boot to xp and tried again, still happened. i called Asus tech support about this (and actually got someone who speaks english as a primary language for once), and they said it was a power supply and/or memory problem. fortunately my friend let me borrow both his memory and his spare supply, yet the problem persisted. anyone ever heard of this before? i googled for it but came up empty handed, except for a similiar sounding issue on these boards that a restart takes far too long. help please!

my second item here is overclocking. i'm not really in *the scene* about this kind of stuff, but i'd like to see what my system can do, with just air cooling though. my friend, knowing i wanted to do this, suggested i get the Zalman CNPS7700-CU, aka big ass fan. i also have the Lian Li PC-60B Plus case, which has a retarded amount of fans.

anyway, i know nothing about tweaking settings on my processors/memory, matching FSB speeds, etc. i do know that my memory has a CAS latency of 4, and the timing spec is 4-4-4-8, not like i know what that means. any help would be appreciated, just don't make me fry anything. =D

thanks in advance.

[n00b 0f l337]

Wake on lan in bios?

[Daias]

nope, not enabled. also unplugged network cable just in case.

[isp]

From what I've read and my own experience, it's not a unique problem you're having. For some reason they do shut down and then power back on. If I restart it basically shuts down, fans stop, and it turns itself back on. Kinda slow but whatever. I'm sure some others experience this as well.

[rotNdude]

I have the same motherboard. No issues here with it not shutting down from WinXP. There is a known issue when you raise the FSB above a certain frequency and do a "restart" that the computer actually shuts down for a few seconds and then starts back up. Good thread about this board over here:

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=176928

[Daias]

i'm disappointed there aren't posts about what settings i should jack up in my bios.

[rotNdude]

i'm disappointed there aren't posts about what settings i should jack up in my bios.

Are you talking about the settings to begin to overclock? If so, they are in the 700+ post thread I linked to. Talks about the things to disable and enable. If you go to the Intel section on that same site, you'll find a guide to overclocking.

[Daias]

i guess i'm going to have to play around with this when i get home. my friend claims to have his 920D running at 3.5ghz, so i guess that'll be what i shoot for. do you guys think i'm going to be in any danger of frying stuff with just air cooling?

[n00b 0f l337]

No. Frying stuff is hard. If it gets too hot it'll reboot or shut down. 920D @ 3.5 isnt much...

[Daias]

like i said, i'm new to this. also remember i'm not getting any more fancy than air cooling.

so where should i start for trying to ramp this thing up? from what i've read, your processor clock is determined by your fsb x some multiplier (14 and 18 apparently), and then you can also turn up the core voltage. how can you determine what is safe for a core voltage and fsb speed?

i still haven't found anything about my problem of shutdown forcing a restart, unfortunately.

[n00b 0f l337]

Multiplier on 930 is 15x i beleive. FSB speed is as much as you can get before hitting a voltage max. I wouldnt exceed 1.5 volts on air, but go for as much stabile fsb as you can.

[Daias]

i'm on a 920, not 930.

so i'm not going to mess something up by messing with settings right? i'm sure there are safeguards in place...

[vanovich]

its a known bug on these boards. anything over 240 fsb and this restarting problem appears. it dosnt happen if you just shut down, it happens when you restart.so just hold your fsb under 240 for installing all the boards drivers and so, since we have to reboot each time.then start really oc when done restarting.
:D

[Daias]

that's what's wierd about this. i restart fine, it doesn't power down, it just restarts. when i do shutdown, it shuts down for 5 seconds, and then powers back up, similiar to what you are saying, but not the same thing.

okay i just checked out a bunch of bios stuff and realized i'm totally lost. first of all, my ram has specs that are 4-4-4-8 yet i have no idea what fields those numbers correlate to. second, i don't know how to set my fsb speed or my multiplier. anyone care to give a noob some help?

[nicepun]

Which bios are you using??? I haven't experienced anything like that.

[Weedsqueezer]

Daias, not to sound like a killjoy but if you are that apprehensive (sp?) about burning up your new rig while overclocking maybe good idea to spend some time cruising forums..........now on the cool guy side........ on this mobo anyway, if you overclock to a failure, it is suppose to reset cpu clocks back to normal after it shuts down without having to reset the entire cmos. page 2-23 in my manual anyway. talking about clearing rtc RAM section 2.6 good luck and welcome to XS.

[Daias]

Which bios are you using??? I haven't experienced anything like that.

i believe it shipped with 402, and by suggestion of my friend i upgraded to 606 to no avail. it's just annoying, not like anyone actually shuts off their computer anyway...

and yes weedsqueezer i am apprehensive.

[Daias]

so can anyone point me in the direction of a guide or something? thanks.

[JoeBar]

so can anyone point me in the direction of a guide or something? thanks.
I haven't read anything that solves this issue. The best solution is get used to it... :)
The worst thing is that asus continues this bad tradition to their 975 mobos also. :mad:

[Daias]

i was talking about an overclocking guide, but it's good to know that i'm not the only one with this issue.

[Daias]

okay i've been doing a lot of reading.

apparently the fsb speed is set by changing the field cpu frequency, and this makes sense to me since it is at 200mhz and 14 * 200mhz is 2.8ghz. so i can jack that up right?

in regards to memory timing, since the specs are 4-4-4-8 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS), but i still don't know what those parameters mean, are they in ns? in the bios i have CAS# Latency, RAS# Precharge, RAS# to CAS# Delay, RAS# Activate to Precharge Delay, and Write Recovery Time, which is 5 paramenters.

so as far as my understanding of this goes, if i have a 200mhz fsb, that means a clock cycle takes 5ns right? if so, then why would i want to wait more than 2 cycles to hit my timing? furthermore at 250mhz, the clock cycle would be exactly 4ns, but i guess going 251-2 would make it safe.

back to cpu, if i set the fsb at 252 (assuming the memory likes it), wouldn't that mean the processor is running at 3.5ghz? would i need to bump up vcore or anything to be stable?

i'm just a noob looking for some answers =D

thanks for all the help so far guys!

[rotNdude]

Here is a pretty decent write up on RAM:

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=320351

Yes, the clock frequency is what you start bumping up slowly. Don't shoot for the moon right away. Also make sure you set your RAM at slower speeds and timings so you know you're just working on the CPU first. Once you have the CPU where you want it, then start upping the RAM frequency and lowering the timings.

[Daias]

still doesn't answer my question on if when it says 4-4-4-8 does that mean ns or clock cycles. thanks for the guide anyway.

i'm going to go start mucking around i think.

[rotNdude]

Yes, it does. Or maybe you didn't get far enough into it.

The standard format for memory timings are most often expressed as a string of four numbers, separated by dashes, from left to right or vice-versa like this 2-2-2-5 [CAS-tRCD-tRP-tRAS] . These values represent how many clock cycles long each delay is but are not expressed in the order in which they occur. Different bioses will display them differently and there maybe additional options (timings) available.