Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R won't hold any overclock

[Omastar]

WTF? I'm frustrated here. I've got a new motherboard (see title), and despite all my best efforts, it won't take an overclock of any sort. I've disabled C1E, EIST, and the HPET timer (High Precision Event Timer, known as 'Watchdog' on the Intel BadAxe--known to cause trouble with OCs), and all my efforts to raise the FSB, change strap, etc. failed. The system would reboot 2 or 3 times beore it would POST, and the overclock would not be there afterwards. BIOS I'm using is F7a.

Any ideas?

[Charles Wirth]

I have the board and will be setting it up with an E8500, Ill post up what it can or cant do.

[Omastar]

Thanks, Charles.

Edit: Wait, is this one of the infamous Gigabyte motherboards where there are more options in the BIOS if you press Alt+F1 or something? I remember having to do that with my GA-P965-DS3.
.

[rusty]

I have the same board as you. I need more info on what every voltage means except vcore and vtt. I oc'ed my q9450 to 3.0ghz. Unfortunately, I won't be at home until this Friday, I will report more on my progress. However, like I said I need some help with voltages.
Specs:
Q9450
ga-ep45-ds3r bios:F7a beta
2x2gb 6400(red ballistix)
evga8800gtx
850 CM psu
Thermalright 120x

[Omastar]

How did you overclock at all? Tell me what all you disabled, like C1E, EIST, HPET, etc. I raised vCore and vDDR, as well as vMCH. I don't know what the deal is. Maybe it doesn't like my RAM? The board still has some RAM incompatibilities. Maybe that's the problem? It won't boot it over DDR2-800 for some reason, when the default SPD profile is DDR2-1000, 5-5-5-15, 2.1v.

[rusty]

How did you overclock at all? Tell me what all you disabled, like C1E, EIST, HPET, etc. I raised vCore and vDDR, as well as vMCH. I don't know what the deal is. Maybe it doesn't like my RAM? The board still has some RAM incompatibilities. Maybe that's the problem? It won't boot it over DDR2-800 for some reason, when the default SPD profile is DDR2-1000, 5-5-5-15, 2.1v.

Well I had to raise vcore to 1.3 I also did raise ppl I think and MCH.
I did not raise vddr at all except my ram supposed to run @ 2.2vdefault but I run it at 2.1 or something like that, it can actually run @ 1.8v no problems but I wasn't sure which volts were causing some random freezes in winxp x64 so I raised it to 2.1v.
For the rest of them I don't think I changed anything since I don't know about them. I'll be able to tell you more on Friday when get home. If you can explain what all these volts for cpu do except vcore and vtt I would appreciate that.

[Omastar]

Okay, I solved the problem. The Case Open option in BIOS was set to disabled when it should've been set to enabled, so it'd clear the message that the case sides were off on the next boot and disable the damn thing. Don't ask me what this has to do with overclocking, but it fixed the problem.

As for voltages, I'll have to look in BIOS again and write the CPU related ones down.

[rusty]

Okay, I solved the problem. The Case Open option in BIOS was set to disabled when it should've been set to enabled, so it'd clear the message that the case sides were off on the next boot and disable the damn thing. Don't ask me what this has to do with overclocking, but it fixed the problem.

As for voltages, I'll have to look in BIOS again and write the CPU related ones down.

good to hear mate I will check that option when I get home. waiting for the cpu voltages description

[cincyrob]

i also wasnt able to OC at first, but i updated bios to F9 and i can OC some now. all in auto i am at 3.7ghz with my E8400. i dont know enough about the settings in the bios to get it any higher...