After reading this whole thread, all 19-pages with 1,130 posts I'm just starting on overclocking my new system purchased from Newegg around 2005-12-10 and I'm following the
overclocking guide from HardOCP forum which I found to be the best written. I'm posting my experiences and setup as a reference to others so that they know what to expect from this CPU, motherboard, and memory combination.
The first test is the motherboard,
DFI LanParty UT SLI-DR Expert 939 nF4 PCI-e Rev.AA0 with BIOS: 2005-11-02. I found that the limit is
297.44 MHz for the HTT maximum with LDT 1.30V, CHIP 1.52V. As you see I've upped the LDT from 1.20V default to 1.30V as recommended there and also on this thread. (Edit: Was testing this before switching the flow on the rear case fan.)
Testing the CPU right now,
AMD Opteron 175 DC 2.2GHz 1MB 90nm 939 CCBWE 0543TPMW, and it seems to be short time (15-minute Prime95 smallFFT two-instances with CPU affinity set) stable and almost limited at 2,706 MHz (246 x 11 x 4) with 1.59V (1.55V x 102.4%) at 48C - 51C in Smart Guardian. I even tried going for 1.62V (1.55V x 104.8%) but the CPU would fail at around 2,750 MHz so there wasn't that much leeway gained by the extra voltage and the CPU temps would be 50C - 53C occasional jumps. I tried dropping my CPU multiplier to 10x and also 9x, and even 9.5x (I know about 0.5x not working well) but the final CPU speed ends up either being limited at around ~2,700 MHz CPU or 297 MHz HTT at 9x.
At least that's what I thought at first after I realized that the fan on the back of the case was blowing air into the case against the Zalman which was blowing air from the front of the case creating a huge heat spot right over the CPU and PWC area. D'oh! I switched the fan last night and my previous temps were ~48C for CPU, PWC, chipset, and now they are 38C for all, a -10C drop. (I know that the temps might not be accurate because of reports of DFI motherboards now showing accurate numbers, but I haven't tested the numbers with a DMM yet and I'm hoping that this being a new edition DFI Expert Rev. AA0, which is the 3rd edition it is fixed.) The aluminum case with hundreds of holes is also serving as a huge heatsink for the system since now the front of the case is as cold as ice with the air being pulled through it when before the fan switch it was heating up a lot with the hot air being thrown at it. I see that this air setup is working well, almost as well as some folk's water setups when the temps are compared.
After this oversight was fixed, I'm hoping that I'll be able to reach 2,800 MHz at least since the temps are keeping low. I've run short Prime95 Small FFT tests at
1.62V (1.55V x 104.8%) but the system still bombs after 10-minutes even though the temps hold at 38C at full dual-core load. Right now it's running
2,750 MHz and the test hasn't bombed after a few minutes.
I'm thinking that it's time for
1.66V (1.55Vx107.2%) and see if that stabilizes the system. Some folks here were talking about pushing this CPU to 1.7V with water and I'm thinking that my 1.66V might still be safe enough with the low temps.
Also, I'm just starting to test the limits on the
Mushkin 2x1GB XP4000 Redline 991493 DDR500 3-3-2-8 - Orange Slots. The good thing is that in the memory
2x1GB/1x1GB OC Database the memory is listed as being able to do
10. highoctane | 2x1GB Mushkin XP 4000 - Samsung UCCC | 3-4-4-8 1T @ 275MHz | 2.7v | Link! - SPi 32M Stable: Yes and
12. JNav89GT | 2x1GB Mushkin XP 4000 - Samsung UCCC | 3-4-4-8 1T @ 270MHz | 2.8v | Link! - SPi 32M Stable: Yes. I'm hoping that I'll be able to match those speeds on my setup and I'm using those recorded speeds as my starting point. Right now it's running the short test #5 in Memtest+ 1.65 with 270 MHz memory through 1:1 CPU/HTT (270x10x3) with VDIMM at at least 2.74V through 2.80V and default 3-3-2-8 timings and the tests succeed and continue. It looks like this memory is at least good at these settings and I'm researching the exact settings for these chips and my motherboard on
Mushkin's own support forum.
I'm not really willing to remove the IHS from the chip since this is a brand new computer and I want to at least enjoy it through the holidays to play some games like Battlefield 2, Doom 3, maybe F.E.A.R. etc. I already have a nice
Zalman CNPS9500 LED 92mm Fan+Heatsink +
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste 99.9% for air cooling that seems to be working well in my case for a straight-through airflow from the 120mm case fan so I'm not looking to go to water or phase at this time.
Once I find the maximums for each components then I'll try to match them up and run long time stability tests. So now that I've shared my setup and my limit of ~2,700 MHz I'm looking for other settings to try to increase the overclocking potential of this chip. I'm hoping to reach
2,800 MHz since the temps are holding low.
Are there any other settings that I've missed or did I reach the cap for this release of the CPU with air cooling?
What is the highest tested voltage that has been safely applied to this chip?