**Official ABIT IX38 QuadGT Review/Overclock/Guide Thread**

[Supershanks]

I think we have narrowed down the problem to either the mips PWM freezer or my liberty 500

yep the mips block was my next thought.
I know people have had issues with Enermax Galaxy but not heard of anything with the liberty.

I gotta get my X38 back

Sorry , i feel for you

[Ace-a-Rue]

It's a Q6600 G0, the evil type - Vid 1.225 (means it gets very hot and draws lots of A). "Normal" full load operation at 3,6Ghz and 1,32V put 107A through the PWMs (was the same on P965 QuadGT). Only my X3210 B3 Xeon was worse, I saw that one sucking up to 125A@3,2Ghz


OT: Can anyone tell me which bios to use for the IP35 pro? Since I'm gonna have the board for at least a week why not test it out a bit.
But I'll have to put a fan over NB and PWM, currently running stock idle, CPUtemp 25, System temp 30, PWM 60 - told you my CPU was evil

ok...thanks!...the low VID thing is probably going to pan out for the 45nm cpu's...i have a low VID 45nm cpu, it overheated my IP35 Pro PWM temps...first time ever going into the red.

try either 16.b03 or 16.b04 bios for the IP35 Pro

[jcool]

I'm gonna send my Liberty 500 to a friend who owns an oscilliscope - he will try to simulate my load of about 300W when folding and check the NT for any excessive ripple and stuff - I really need to know why these boards died.

IP35 Pro runs now@3,4Ghz - more is impossible due to the lack of decent VTT and PWMs overheating. 75C PWM with Fan and only 1,23V Vcore is high enough for my taste... using bios 16.B04 BTW seems to work ok. Can't run 1200 mem though.

[andre X_X]

i have the same problem with you bro... my IX38 QuadGT somehow start to buzz, ampere too high 126a on load and vcore problem. i bench a lot with my cascade + folding a lot too with q6700 and E6600...

[Humble]

Well... I had tested my system too at 3.2 Ghz today, and when priming, my board was also buzzing too. But everything else seem OK. Here's the screenshot:



I think the PWM current is normal, ranging from 65 - 75A. Everything is OK and rock solid.
In my experiment, I heard the board start to buzz when the PWM current was exceed 70A, while when the current was below that number, there was no buzzing sound at all. This opinion rather makes sense as when I tested my system before at 3.0 Ghz, it was keeping silent during priming time and the current was never hit above 60A.
About the buzzing sound, I have had same experience with my previous Commando. Some people said that the sound was highly possible coming from the opened chokes. And may be the sound from this board also come from the same sources, the half opened chokes. May be they're trembling when handling high PWM current...
But, in my humble opinion, it's not a big deal, as long as everything is running normally on low temps, rite?

Well, may be I could use some help to running my system stable at 3.6 Ghz. I had raised:
FSB to 9 x 400 Mhz
Divider set to 1:1.5 (makes RAM running at 1200 Mhz@5-5-5-15 2.2v; tested more than 1000% dual Win Memtest stable, so it's not a RAM error)
Vcore to 1.45v
VTT to 1.4v
MCH to 1.45v
ICH to 1.1v
ICHIO to 1.55v
Both GTL to 68%
But, it always gave me error when priming in blend mode under 5 minutes.
What should I do to make it stable? I think raising a little Vcore may help, but any suggestion will be highly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[redmodel]

I have mine priming about 6 or so hours everyday right now, and have had the board up just over two weeks now. No buzzing here.

I'm trying to get my cpu stable at 3.6ghz with a low vcore and temp, it's certainly been a struggle.

Anyhow, I have mine at 440mhz x8 right now (3520mhz) with the 12b09 firmware at about 1.5v

Just to note, my PWM currently idles at 39A, and at load, it can go up to 110A. I have a 40mm fan pushing air to the PWM right now. So, temps at load can go from 80 to 110c. Depending on the FFT in Prime. So, I don't think the board should have an issue at pushing the PWMs at 110A or so for a continous period of time.

What I have noticed, is that my VTT volt setting has literally no affect on the overclocking of the q6600 I have. When I had the 680i, the VTT made a huge difference when overvolting it. But, with the ix38, it makes no difference at 1.25v to 1.5v when pushing 440mhz. Has anyone else noticed this?

[JPxM0Dz]

Well I finally screwed my IX38, flashed to the latest bios and all it does is repeadedly reboot and will not post anything.
I get message code 9.0 which is complete uguru initial process AWARDBIOS take over booting job , then I it goes to code 11 which of coarse there is no decription for.
I repeadly cleared cmos with no positive affect and removed mobo's battery for up to an hour with also no affect. I'll leave it out overnight to see if that helps.
Should have stuck to bios 11, I wasn't really having any issues, just wanted to flash to the latest bios which would have rectified a few minor issues with ram timings, now I have nothing ;(

Oh well, RMA time... Again!

[jcool]

i have the same problem with you bro... my IX38 QuadGT somehow start to buzz, ampere too high 126a on load and vcore problem. i bench a lot with my cascade + folding a lot too with q6700 and E6600...

Oh crap. And you've got an Epsilon 800 which means I'd better don't go for the Epsilon 700 I was planning for... this uncertainty is driving me nuts.
If it's neither the PSU nor my PWM freezer (which doesn't touch anything but the phase chips) then what?!
Maybe this board just can't cope with continuously high A for long periods of time
I tell you this, if my third one's going down then I'll change mobos for good.

Andre what kind of cooling you got for your PWMs?

Edit: Come to think of it, 126A under load isn't that unusual if you're running a quad under phase change@4Ghz+... Remember, I got >160A at 3,6Ghz and only 1,32V (which was 107A before).
I think your mobo might actually be ok, buzzing seems to be the price of running excessive QC speeds...

[naokaji]

i'll pick my ix38 QuadGT up tomorrow evening at the postoffice... wish me luck that i got one of those that work

[jcool]

They all work, just don't push it too far or have the wrong PSU ;(

[AMDfreak]

I think your mobo might actually be ok, buzzing seems to be the price of running excessive QC speeds...

If Abit thinks that's ok then I'll never buy another Abit mobo again. It amazes me that this stuff gets past quality control.

[Ace-a-Rue]

check your choke coils to see if they are embedded in enough silicone.

[andre X_X]

@jcool: nope,not epsilon, now im using silverstone 1000w olympia, its an old siggy.

lol, 126A is on air... now even E6600 @ 3.6ghz 1.45v bios(uguru says 1.39v idle and 1.36v load) idling at 62a and loaded Folding at 146a. vcore is going crazy too... pwm always cooled by high cfm 7cm thermaltake fan.

[jcool]

@jcool: nope,not epsilon, now im using silverstone 1000w olympia, its an old siggy.

lol, 126A is on air... now even E6600 @ 3.6ghz 1.45v bios(uguru says 1.39v idle and 1.36v load) idling at 62a and loaded Folding at 146a. vcore is going crazy too... pwm always cooled by high cfm 7cm thermaltake fan.

Ok so yours is good as dead. I was thinking you'd be running a quad... Don't shut it down unless you've got a replacement, it will most likely not start again

But the fact that you kept your PWMs actively cooled all the time is a very interesting one - means that it's probably the PSUs killing off these phase chips

[Johnny Bravo]

OK guys I have an abit technician looking into this issue, he's gonna setup a board and running it flat out of a couple of weeks to see if he can establish the same issues.

Any/all information about your setups and what they were doing would be much appreciated

[andre X_X]

im very sure its because of continuos load from folding... since at first it happened when it shutdown cpu to connect other HDD. turn it on, start folding and an instant restart when cpu hits 100% load. its because the vcore is now idling @ 1.42v where it should at 1.49v (set in bios 1.52v). pwm current start going nuts, first only 121a now it even more than 140a. now i run it @ default but the pwm current still crazy high.....

[jcool]

Jap it's definitely a high load problem.
Both my IX38 died after at least 1 week of continuous folding operation.
Since I already had the exact same setup folding for month with the P965 QuadGT I'm once again pretty sure the mobo is to blame.

-Q6600 G0, running at 450x8 (drawing 107A@1,32V)
-Enermax Liberty 500

[andre X_X]

same as me... looks like >100A continuos load causes this problem. with E6600 @ 80A whole months no problem at all... my Q6700 takes only about a week then it start buzzing and another week for complete mess up...

[AMDfreak]

OK guys I have an abit technician looking into this issue, he's gonna setup a board and running it flat out of a couple of weeks to see if he can establish the same issues.

Any/all information about your setups and what they were doing would be much appreciated

Your efforts are much appreciated Johnny.

My first board started buzzing after 2 weeks. I was testing for high CPU clocks on a Q6600 G0. I had the CPU Orthos stable at 3.7 with 1.59 vcore. I raised the various other chipset voltages to their higher ranges trying to get higher FSB at lower multi's as well. Once I got it where I was happy for 24/7 use I ran the SMP Folding client 24/7. Unfortunately I did not think at the time to check the amperage on the PWM's.

The CPU is water cooled, and the mobo cooling was left unmodified other than pointing a couple 92mm fans at the PWM's and NB. I used 4x 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500, and my PSU is a PCP&C Silencer 750. In case it matters I did have 5 hard drives and 1 optical on the same PSU. I do not think the PSU was overloaded as my Kill-A-Watt showed about 450W usage at load.

Hope this helps, let me know if there's anything further I can answer. When I get my 3rd board back I'll keep it dialed down until something gets ironed out.

[redmodel]

I finally started up my second ix38 with the e2160. A couple of things to note.

I'm running Prime95 on it now, and with the e2160 at 365mhz x9, it is only taking up 35A on load! and with a 40mm fan, the PWM temps are staying under 50c.

Now, I've noticed, with the e2160, Coretemp and uguru shows the exact same temps, at idle and load.

But, with my q6600, Coretemp Shows higher temps from 10c on the coolest core to 20c difference on the hottest core compared to Uguru Temps.

Along with that, PWM uses 100A easily, the q6600 is at 440mhz x8.

[Beastage]

I finally started up my second ix38 with the e2160. A couple of things to note.

I'm running Prime95 on it now, and with the e2160 at 365mhz x9, it is only taking up 35A on load! and with a 40mm fan, the PWM temps are staying under 50c.

Now, I've noticed, with the e2160, Coretemp and uguru shows the exact same temps, at idle and load.

But, with my q6600, Coretemp Shows higher temps from 10c on the coolest core to 20c difference on the hottest core compared to Uguru Temps.

Along with that, PWM uses 100A easily, the q6600 is at 440mhz x8.

I'm worried about the diffrence in temps between coretemp and uguru, I can't use coretemp because I run vista64bit (and I prefer to keep the driver protection) , now during the winter it doesn't matter if the real temp is 20c higher, but in the summer that is critical.

What should be trusted?

[wilson]

Hi guys can you please tell me what setting you have this at?? 32 is default but it says you can go up to 250 or so with it. Is it worth putting 64 or 128 in and seeing what it does or should i leave it at 32?
Cheers Paul.

[jcool]

Just leave it at 32 unless you have problems with any PCI devices (e.g. a sound card that produces sound delays/lags or something).

[redmodel]

I'm worried about the diffrence in temps between coretemp and uguru, I can't use coretemp because I run vista64bit (and I prefer to keep the driver protection)

What should be trusted?

You can use Coretemp with Vista64. That's what I am running now.

Here's How:

http://www.overclock.net/operating-s...emp-tweak.html

It should work with driver protection still on.

Right now, I am going by the CoreTemp reading, so I am doing okay right now. It would be quite nice, if the uguru temps was the right one, because than I can overclock even higher

[wilson]

Thanks jcool..
I have another question that is does this mobo allow 4gb of ram to be run at 1066 or does it have to be run at 800 like most other boards? I have 4gb of dominators and was told to run them @ 800 Mhz but when i benchmark it gives worse results than when it had 2 gb @ 1066.