The Phenom II List of Overclocks

[Cybercat]

your running too hot, and the chip could be failing stress at oc settings as a result, in my opinion. please try to get this temperature down and then try to re-oc.

take an average of your temp using ITE smartguardian and CoreTemp. It would also be a good idea to get a thermal probe on the heatsink/waterblock if you are able to, so you can add in to the calculated average.

Well often it fails before it even gets a chance to heat up. Like if I try 3.5 at stock vcore, I'm lucky if the OS boots. I've been using smartguardian to monitor temps. Core Temp would act funky (temp would get stuck it seems). Anyway, other than the floor fan I don't have many options to lower temps, but I'll post back here if I think of something. I don't own an external temp probe.

Cybercat might I make one other suggestion, Your using 8 gigs with all 4 dimm slots populated, this tends to add stress to the mem0ry controller.( yes i know how to spell )

Try running only 4 gigs and see what you can acchieve, I know you probably have no plans to run 24/7 with 4 gigs but it would help determine what is limitng your OC.

Yeah I've played around the with memory. Underclocked it, took some sticks out, etc. I didn't try memtest like you suggested earlier though. Either way it didn't make any difference in stability. It seemed like a memory problem when it kept BSOD (memory dump) but never failed prime. But I don't think it is. I appreciate your help, I think either there are some BIOS issues or I just have a dud. Anandtech was able to get 3.9GHz with stock cooling on my board with an ES.

[chew*]

Well often it fails before it even gets a chance to heat up. Like if I try 3.5 at stock vcore, I'm lucky if the OS boots. I've been using smartguardian to monitor temps. Core Temp would act funky (temp would get stuck it seems). Anyway, other than the floor fan I don't have many options to lower temps, but I'll post back here if I think of something. I don't own an external temp probe.

Yeah I've played around the with memory. Underclocked it, took some sticks out, etc. I didn't try memtest like you suggested earlier though. Either way it didn't make any difference in stability. It seemed like a memory problem when it kept BSOD (memory dump) but never failed prime. But I don't think it is. I appreciate your help, I think either there are some BIOS issues or I just have a dud. Anandtech was able to get 3.9GHz with stock cooling on my board with an ES.

Did you pass prime blend or just small fft's? If not blend try it if it passes small fft's and not blend your memory timings/subtimings need to be tweaked.

[Rammsteiner]

Did you pass prime blend or just small fft's? If not blend try it if it passes small fft's and not blend your memory timings/subtimings need to be tweaked.

Might try small FFT's later, good point.

I think the BSOD's messed up a few things for what was to be considered stable, almost stable and unstable. Normally if something BSOD's it's far from stable, but this thing brainfarted and just BSOD'd for about everything.

Ive to say it's thus far going good regarding Prime Blend.

285HTT, 13x multi, 3.705Ghz. NB and HT are at a 7x multi and the RAM is running 1:1. Before starting Prime I also ran for a 25% coverage Memtest, no errors. I know 25% or my previous 40% ain't like solid but if something would be really unstable it would have error'd. Now Im running for almost an hour Prime Blend, no issues yet either.

Last thing Im going to do is tweaking the NB a bit. I'd love to and try to get this CPU even higher but Ive been there before since I started OCíng and having 24/7 OC's being just at the edge isnt something you want, just a little ambient rise or whatever and it's all unstable, most of the time this happens when you just forgot the OC's and settings you tried

Maybe I might try and tweak the RAM a bit but this only adds up on numbers most of the time, not all that much on experience behind your PC. Im thinking about tweaking the settings that would have been done via Auto Xpress anyway (which isnt on this board) and tRAS/tRC timings, those are often set way too high.

If this all turns to be stable I might try and reinstall my soundcard again and see if nothing screws up. Creative ain't my favourite want to have brand, nor are soundcards in general, but often they've just a few features which make them shine

[Cybercat]

Did you pass prime blend or just small fft's? If not blend try it if it passes small fft's and not blend your memory timings/subtimings need to be tweaked.

Doesn't matter. Blend or small ffts, it BSOD before it gets the chance to fail them. If it's not BSODing, it will churn away at Prime no problem.

[chew*]

I don't know then wish I could help

[pershoot]

Doesn't matter. Blend or small ffts, it BSOD before it gets the chance to fail them. If it's not BSODing, it will churn away at Prime no problem.

may i suggest a reflash and a nice CMOS clear? then try your hand again. you may have a dud, or maybe something funky is stuck in somewhere that needs to be purged.

as an example,
when i first got the cpu in, i was trying to stabilise 2.6ghz nb and was jacking the volts up towards 1.28v. things started acting quite wierd. occt would only see 3 cores at launch and it was unstable. even after dropping the voltage and the nb, it was still unstable. had to 'killcmos' and then reflash to get it back (an alternate would be to reflash twice via the provided .bat file in the .zip and then clear cmos with the jumper (but it's a pain to do! (i miss ez-clear from the 790fx-m2r))).

good luck.

[Rammsteiner]

Although this was on a 6400+ with broken IMC (Im a good IMC killer), there was a difference between day and night regarding small FFT's and blend. On the otherhand, as said, hardware was broken so you cant expect all results created by that to be 100% legit

Doing 2h Prime Blend already. If Family Guy is done Ill try and get the NB higher

[Cybercat]

may i suggest a reflash and a nice CMOS clear? then try your hand again. you may have a dud, or maybe something funky is stuck in somewhere that needs to be purged.

as an example,
when i first got the cpu in, i was trying to stabilise 2.6ghz nb and was jacking the volts up towards 1.28v. things started acting quite wierd. occt would only see 3 cores at launch and it was unstable. even after dropping the voltage and the nb, it was still unstable. had to 'killcmos' and then reflash to get it back (an alternate would be to reflash twice via the provided .bat file in the .zip and then clear cmos with the jumper (but it's a pain to do! (i miss ez-clear from the 790fx-m2r))).

good luck.

Alright, I reflashed and did a solid CMOS clear. Nothing.

[Daveburt714]

Doesn't matter. Blend or small ffts, it BSOD before it gets the chance to fail them. If it's not BSODing, it will churn away at Prime no problem.

Man, you seem to be having alot of problems... Did you try stressing your chip at stock? I know it's an outside shot, but you may have actually gotten a bad chip. In that case I wouldn't hesitate to RMA it....

Mine is no OC monster, but I haven't had the problems you've been experiencing..

[Throwed]

Question:

You fellaz that are running a PII 940 already........Is the stock cooler any good or should I just throw my current Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro on it?....or Should I buy a new cooler period?

[chew*]

Question:

You fellaz that are running a PII 940 already........Is the stock cooler any good or should I just throw my current Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro on it?....or Should I buy a new cooler period?

Want my advice? get a TRUE, at least you know temps will not be an issue for your CPU if it can cool a 65nm quad, 45nm PH II should be a walk in the park.