Quote Originally Posted by Zucker2k View Post
About your result, I believe you gave that pc too much volts; at least you may have gotten the voltages messed up somewhat. These chips without exception will do 450 fsb on the right board and with the right combination of volts. The stuck temp sucks, but the load temp is what matters. I never thought I'd see the day when a 4Ghz easy chip will get RMA'ed for being a poor clocker.
I might not have the experience you have with overclocking, but when I do test a new chip I keep it simple. I stated the bios setting I used before but here is the run down. I backed down my ram to PL 10 and auto settings for mostly everything(On my old quad I can run PL8 with 450FSB just fine), I did this to make sure that RAM was not an issue if I had any stability problems. I set the Vcore to auto, when trying to see where to begin with vcore I always start about 0.04v less then what CPUZ reports on auto. I set my NB to 1.38 and VTT to 1.40(Highest safe setting I know of for VTT with the intension of lowering later if I could), Ram was stock at 1.9v. I set CPU PLL to 1.54 although I could go up to 1.58-1.60 safe on 45nm according to Leeghoofd. I have never messed with GTL Ref volts, I always leave them on auto. I also turn all the Speedsteping/VT/Disable bit stuff off in the CPU tab.So given the above info, I was very surprised when I booted to 9x450 and got instant BSOD's, then when I tried 8x475 I could not boot period but 8x425 ran just fine.

I see it this way, there are plenty of people here who have Q9650's without stuck sensors, and when I pay the same price for my chip as they did why should I expect anything less? I did not RMA my chip because it was a poor overclocker, I RMA'd it because it had stuck sensors and wouldn't really overclock at all. Like you said these things are easy 4.0ghz+ overclockers and to suggest that it is impossible that I got one that was jacked up and would not hit 4.0ghz on a P5Q-D P45 board with the latest bios and the setting I mentioned above is kind of far fetched. Now, your comments are reasonable though, I did not give this chip a deep look through because my return/replacement warranty was running out and I had to make the choice of spending a lot of time trying to figure out the problem and running the risk of not being able to return it if it was a dud or just returning it and hoping for the best with a replacement.

BTW, username Makubex_GB has the same CPU/Mobo/Ram as I do and used one of KET's modded bios's and got awesome results with a 1.25VID chip. When I get my replacement I will be posting results and asking for help here in this thread or the P5Q-D thread.