Official MSI P7N Diamond (780i) Discussion/Review/Overclock/Guide/BIOS Thread

[Overspeed]

Yeah...I don't use anything special to spread it out either, just a fingertip. Like Loonym said, the TIM on the sinks is a real pain; I was going to use isopropyl alcohol but found some other stuff in the garage that seemed to work better. Oh yeah, you may need a pair of pliers to squeeze the pushpins...I couldn't have done mine without it. As a side note, prime has been running for just about 8hrs now @ 3.6ghz and is still going strong.

Awesome guys, I appreciate the input. Do you have any favourite brands as far as the ceramique is concerned? I'll use some on the CPU as well. I was looking at the mini 40mm fans on this page:

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...minorcatid=102

We have the $5 to $23 fans there in that size ... I like quiet fans, but long lasting as well. Is 40mm too small? I usually oder from that site so if you find a professional brand of ceramique there, i'd love to know the link. Looking forward to the tweak, and thx again all.

[bluspikez]

I think a 40mm fan will fit just fine on top of the nb part of the 'sink, but you will have to bend up the rollercoaster part a bit to get it to fit right. Here's a linky to the stuff I would get....linky

[FedericoUY]

Hi all, I've been reading this thread for many days. Really intresting. Have had some problems with freezes while watching movies or youtube videos. I try all bios available (official 1.1 and 1.2, 1.2b1, 1.2b2 and 1.2b3, not tried the performance ones) all the same. Have had another problem: freezing when inserting a USB pendrive. I've tried to fix the pendrive issue by pushing a little SB to 1.6v, and for some days this issue didn't happened. Any suggestions? i know many people are same as me with this video issue. Thank you.

ps: sorry my english, i speak spanish.
loonym: do you used to have a x3360(q9550) on your P7N?? Wich was your max fsb stable value?

[loonym]

ps: sorry my english, i speak spanish.
loonym: do you used to have a x3360(q9550) on your P7N?? Wich was your max fsb stable value?

Your english is fine, no worries. Yes I used the x3360 (c1 stepping) for quite some time and it runs really well in the board at 8.5x450. After 450 it becomes more difficult to stabilize and the voltages a little too high (at least for me.

And welcome to the forum

[FedericoUY]

Ok thanks loonym. If I reach 450(x8) fsb would be great. Can't do it now because I'm on stock cooling, I've reached 375x8 on stock with no extra voltages, that's 3000Mhz, but in some day's I'll be changing my cooling system. I have a Q9450, most peolple say this is not a good combination, but I thinks this processor is really fine on this MB.

[Overspeed]

I recently added a new SATA drive (3 hhds active now) and have a number of USB devices always running. Anyone have any thoughts on wether I should take the SB off Auto and assign it a higher value? I'm curious if I'm starting to overload it at auto voltage. That and recently i've started experiencing weird blips in movies/games/programs when hdds are being accessed, wondering if caused by insufficient voltage.

[crucial33]

bluspikez, did you have that real hard purple stuff on yours?

crucial33, that ac freezer will fit fine. That's not a real strong cooler so keep that in mind when you oc.

Your actually right. I read all these rave reviews around the arctic cooling freezer 7 pro, and its actually showing very similiar temperatures to the standard intel cooler. Im very very dissapointed. Although it is quiet. Anyone got recommendations for a decent cooler for the P7N2 and Q9450?

[PCGamerX]

Been reading this thread for 2 weeks waiting for my account to become active so I could post on it. I have recently build a new gaming system using the components listed in my Sig. and am having some issues.

First off let me say this forum has so much valuable info, you guys rock. Ok, the issue at hand is, using the Optimized or Fail-safe Default settings in the bois I am getting a ton of fragmenting on the video while gaming. It seems like any time the CPU is under load for any length of time it will begin to fragment, at times so bad it crashed the game (LOTRO) i am using. I read at the beginning of this thread that the voltages needed to be set to other than the "AUTO" settings.

I am hoping that you guys can give me base voltages to set the NB/SB etc. at so I can get some stablility before I begin fooling with OCing.

Thanks in advance.

[Yoosty]

Your actually right. I read all these rave reviews around the arctic cooling freezer 7 pro, and its actually showing very similiar temperatures to the standard intel cooler. Im very very dissapointed. Although it is quiet. Anyone got recommendations for a decent cooler for the P7N2 and Q9450?

The Xigmatek 1283 HSF is currently one of the best, do not forget to get the Xigmatek Retention bracket. That way you can screwed it down, instead of using the push/pin method for better cooling.

[FedericoUY]

Hi PCgamerX and Overspeed: I have had the same issue that you have. I have 3 HDD's connected (2 in raid) and some USB devices. The only way I could find to get stable was upping a little the SB to 1.6, and as I have 4GB of ram, i upped a little NB too, to 1.3. On this values none of those chips are giong to get hot, not even close to that. My Pc is now very stable, and I'm using 1.2b2 bios as I found it to be good.

[dogg]

I agree with FedericoUY.. NB at 1.6V is fine with a 42C temperature /sensor sticked on the hottest place I found on passive cooling above NB/..
I'm using 3 x Raptor and 1x Barracuda /no raid/, SATA optical drive and the last sata slot for external eSATA connector... So my SATA onboard slots are full...
I've experienced some scary moments with it after my discs was disappearing one by one after 1 or 2 hours from a system and at the finish disappeared system disk as well.. There was no disks showed in BIOS... but it was vista/nvidia sata driver related problem / I think/..
I needed to clear cmos to get Vista instal on IDE disc.. /without it it freezed always on the same spot somewhere in the middle of installation/.. After, when Vista was on IDE, I was connecting SATA discs one by one to the board... I was trying to find which disc is broken and started that disaster, but all of them was ok and without any data lost... Reistaled system on SATA anyway /clean instal solved some minor issues as well/... and now everything alright...

Just something that could happen...
There is some nVidia something, that makes Vista show SATA devices as SCSI, so SMART is not working properly..
I decided to start backup external to IDE just to make it more easy when..just in a case...

Federico,
I got some video corruption issues before, but not in a games, just in video and it allways caused bsod after corrupted video appeared, I've seen exactly the same on asus 780i board as well.... That was solved somewhere around 1.16, and in 1.2B2 it comming back after 10min of playing video.. In the beta 1.2B3 is no problem even after 10 - 15 hrs playing..

[FedericoUY]

Dogg, I agree with you. I've never had problems on games, and I play a lot (Assassin's creed (finished), Cod4, grid, etc). My only problem were video related, but this problems persisted with 1.2b3 bios on auto voltage (I've tried this bios). Thank you, regards.

[Bobo888]

Hi, I just finished my 1st build with the board. Im using the included sound card and drivers and my audio is skipping constantly. This did seam to start after my 1st overclock but i cant find any answers on google. Any advice is much appreciated.

[Yoosty]

Hi, I just finished my 1st build with the board. Im using the included sound card and drivers and my audio is skipping constantly. This did seam to start after my 1st overclock but i cant find any answers on google. Any advice is much appreciated.

You can find info on sound card drivers on page 27 of this thread. Use the Youp-Pax drivers for the soundcard (Pax-X-FI-XP-32-V5.10). Also you can place the sound card in one of the lower 2 pcie slots, most find this works well, since it is away from where you place your graphic card in the upper 2 pcie 16x slots.

[Overspeed]

I recently added a new SATA drive (3 hhds active now) and have a number of USB devices always running. Anyone have any thoughts on wether I should take the SB off Auto and assign it a higher value? I'm curious if I'm starting to overload it at auto voltage. That and recently i've started experiencing weird blips in movies/games/programs when hdds are being accessed, wondering if caused by insufficient voltage.

Bump

[FedericoUY]

You can find info on sound card drivers on page 27 of this thread. Use the Youp-Pax drivers for the soundcard (Pax-X-FI-XP-32-V5.10). Also you can place the sound card in one of the lower 2 pcie slots, most find this works well, since it is away from where you place your graphic card in the upper 2 pcie 16x slots.

Is this driver better than the original from the cd? Is it newer?
I was using the original one with a patch that is on MSI page to download on the driver section (I was going to tell bob to download it), but I guess this one should be better (Pax-X-FI-XP-32-V5.10)?.

[bluspikez]

@overspeed...try it and see if it helps. 'nuff said. We are here to help, but something like changing one setting...just try it! If it helps, great, if it doesn't, then oh well, try something else. Let us know if it does help, though. IMO upping the sb volts should help.

[Overspeed]

@overspeed...try it and see if it helps. 'nuff said. We are here to help, but something like changing one setting...just try it! If it helps, great, if it doesn't, then oh well, try something else. Let us know if it does help, though. IMO upping the sb volts should help.

I didn't want to bump up the SB without understanding what concequenses might result. I know little about the SB I'm also not sure what a safe setting might be.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I have to bump up my sb to 1.65 to get my raid array stable. You shouldnt even need to go that high.

[Overspeed]

On a different note, while I am preparing to pull the ciru-pipe off, clean, ceramique and re-seat, I need to think about putting the spot fan on the NB. I have been informed that I will likely need to bend the curved fins pipe up a little to get the spot fan to fit underneath. My problem is I cannot bend them up as the CPU cooler is in the way. My CPU cooler works great, but I would replace if needed. So can I have a few opinions on a decent upgrade? I would like it to be as quiet as the one I have, (see sig) but also provide excellent cooling. Thx.

[Bobo888]

I have my E6300 running at fsb 390 and it seams stable so far. However any slight increase causes windows to freeze. Does this mean it's time to start increasing voltages? This is my first overclock and im a bit woried about increasing voltages as getting it wrong seams like a bad thing to do.

Also what is the best BIOS to use? I'm still on v1.0

[bluspikez]

I didn't want to bump up the SB without understanding what concequenses might result. I know little about the SB I'm also not sure what a safe setting might be.

Sorry...I just don't like it when people bump their posts, kind of a pet peeve of mine. AFAIK, anything up to at least 1.65v is pretty safe for the SB. As for pulling the circupipe and bending it, could you bend the round part up and out away from the CPU cooler? If you do want to get a new cooler, I would recommend the TRUE or any other sink designed like it (xigmatek and noctuna both make similar models that perform just as well). With coolers like that one you can choose which fan you put on it for how silent you want it (I have a 110cfm one on mine on a rheostat, so I can have it silent or crank it up for some crazy cooling.)

@Bobo888: Sounds like you do indeed need to start raising voltages. Just don't do it in big increments: go with small intervals untill you find the amount that you need. Really the only way you would go wrong with voltages is if you take huge jumps and end up with a voltage that is way over what the components can handle. With this board I raise the FSB term to the highest it will go (63 for earlier bios, 1.313v for the newer ones), since this is still well within the specs of the current intel chips, and set the CPU GTL to 66% of that (.875v on the newer bios...I believe there is a chart in this thread somewhere that states the equivalences.) The NB volts I set around 1.35-1.4v depending on the FSB I am looking at, and the SB volts can be left at auto, unless you have a lot of HDD's and USB devices, which would then benefit from raising it a bit to say 1.6v. Set your RAM at the voltage and timings that are provided with it. The CPU vCore is entirely independent on your chip, so if I were you I would set all the above around what I mentioned, and then start at stock and slowly increase the vCore until you find a stable value. As for a bios, I am on the 1.1 still (I think...pretty sad that I don't remember....:S), but I have heard good things about the 1.2b3.

[XavierMaxx]

It's hard to believe I haven't posted here in over two weeks, but I did promise I'd post back with my SLI results. Nothing spectacular - in fact, I'd say par for the course - using the system in my signature with newest drivers (which don't seem to score as well as the original 8800GTS-512 drivers). Viewable as an attachment. This was done using AFR method #1, so the GPU scores are higher but the CPU score is lower than default. This achieved the highest overall score.

Bobo:
It looks like 1.2b1 is pretty popular right now, although I'm using 1.2b2 without any problems. It didn't noticeably change anything for me over 1.2b1. If you read this thread you will see that 1.2b2 caused some issues for those who tried to jump-OC all at once. While 1.2b1 is to fix the video corruption issue, some people still seem to have it (after some time), so my assumption was that 1.2b2 was an attempt to clear that up. It appears that 1.2b3 is now out, but I have not tried it or seen any significant details about it.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I just had my first crash in a long time. I was downloading a patch and surfing the web and my screen just froze up no bsod. The only thing that I have done recently was remove mt xonar dx which I just gave up on, it gave me a lot of problems. I reinstaled the sound card that came with the board. Could that be my problem? I am using the driver on creatives site and I instaled all their bloatware by accident. I am alos using the pci-e x1 under my dual slot video card. This is really depressing. This thing was running stable for so long.

[bluspikez]

It's hard to believe I haven't posted here in over two weeks, but I did promise I'd post back with my SLI results.

SLi works great for me in everything BUT 3DMark06. I haven't been able to figure out why, either. I can run Crysis on Very High in DX10 and get 40-50 fps average, and can run all my other games (UT3, GRID, COD4, Assassin's Creed, Hellgate London, etc) on the highest settings with the highest possible AA and AF with no hitching whatsoever. Before when I ran 3DMark I got just over 17k as my highest; now when I run it with SLi enabled I get around 10k. If I disable SLi, I get 12k. I'm not sure what the deal is, since it worked properly before, but now it just doesn't cooperate. I'm guessing it is a driver issue, but I am too lazy to deal with uninstalling/reinstalling my drivers just to get one stupid benchmark to work when all of my other games work great.

As for the hardware front, after removing the circupipe and cleaning/reseating and finding stable settings, my compy is happily chugging along at 3.6ghz and I have yet to have it crash because of my cpu/fsb overclock. 4ghz is easily attainable as well, but requires a bit more voltage than I like.

@Bababooey - I have heard that the included sound card causes issues...I haven't seen any with my machine, but there is a good possibility that it is causing problems. I would try it for a bit longer with the included sound card, and if it keeps acting up then either take it out or try with a different sound card to see if it was the cause.

Oh yeah, does anyone know what happened to theYipster? Seems like as soon as I stopped lurking and started posting he vanished, and then only appeared to b**** someone out and then vanished again. It would be nice if we could update the first post to include our findings after he vanished...