Petr0id,
excellent shots! first, like you said earlier, stock cooler may hold you back here, but it doesnt mean that you cannot start figuring some things out.
Question: what vCore were you using when you ran the Prime95 test a few posts ago?
Next, there is a progression of testing that helps you to determine some limits such as max FSB, Max (more or less) CPU frequency, etc.
the first thing to do is to start with all voltages on the CPU page at default...setting them manually is fine, make sure enhanced power slope is ON and Voltage offset is OFF,
now set your multiplyer to the lowest possible and put your host clock to 333 (stock),
next, go to the memory page and set your memory to 400/800 and raise timings...i know you said that you had issues with running higher than 7-7-7-21, but try to set it to 9-9-9-28 or higher and be sure to set the Command Rate to 2T. Memory in Black slots, right?
also, just to keep out the possibility of your video card causing issues, put the PCI burn in back to 100Mhz for now.
save and exit and boot into windows. remember...this board has issues with changing memory settings and being able to boot fully the first try, so you may have to power cycle a few (a few could be up to 5) times to get into windows.
once you get into windows, download this: http://www.ultimate-filez.com/files/IntelBurnTest.zip
open the zip and extract the LinData and intelburntest.exe files to your desktop or to a folder somewhere. we will use this program a little later, but good to get it now b4 i forget.
if you were running at 400x9 earlier on stock voltages, go ahead and restart the computer, enter BIOS and jump to 400x{lowest multi} without changing anything else. save and exit.
if you were not running 400x9 with stock voltages, restart computer, enter BIOS, go to ~360x{lowest multi} without changing anything else. save and exit.
so the idea here is that with the processor multiplyer set to its lowest, the memory speed set to its lowest, and the memory timings more loose than normal, we can increase the host clock of the CPU which increases the FSB and know pretty well that when we reach a point of instability that it is caused primarily by the FSB and related voltages rather than by some other thing. this process of OCing takes more time, but is less frustrating than the "just crank-it-up" style. Plus, you will have a better understanding of what your configuration is capable of in multiple categories.
the way to proceed here is to gradually increase the FSB (by 10-30 each time) until windows freezes on boot or a quick Prime95 (version 25.8 or 25.9) small FFTs or in place large FFTs results in an error or crash/bluescreen, ect.
using a piece of paper, or preferably a second computer, keep a spreadsheet of the settings that you are using and note whether testing was successful or failed/froze/bsod. the more information you have here the easier it will be later to troubleshoot issues.
[EDITED] once you get to that point, then increase the vFSB by 1 step, change nothing else, save, exit, reboot, enter windows, try testing again. at a certain point (and this could be quite high...Host Clock 450,470 maybe higher with dual core), increasing the FSB will not fix instability and you will need to raise vCore or vMCH (see last 2 sentences in this post). but once you figure out if vCore or vMCH was needed, increasing host clock should again cause instability that can be fixed by vFSB.
one very important practice to get into is making sure to only change one thing at a time when trying to troubleshoot instability....if you raise vcore, vfsb, vmch all at once, sure it may fix the issue, but what WAS the real issue? understanding what is causing the problem give you a better grasp overall of what is going on.
[ADDED] also, when you get to the point where windows freezes upon loading and you are still at default vCore and no increase in vFSB fixes the issue WRITE ALL VOLTAGES AND SETTINGS DOWN. this point allows for some more advanced tuning that we can go back to later.
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