The Maximus Formula Thread - Help/OCing/Guide/Rampage conversion

[Grnfinger]

post your setup for 3.5GHz maybe your just missing something

[steve30x]

Its the same as the settings you posted but I lowered the voltage in the bios to 1.487. It fails prime95 after an hour with 1.5v

[EDIT] I take it theres very few people with this motherboard now

[Grnfinger]

Its the same as the settings you posted but I lowered the voltage in the bios to 1.487. It fails prime95 after an hour with 1.5v

[EDIT] I take it theres very few people with this motherboard now

Most have moved on, I have the board on my shelf in the basement for a spare if I should need it...

Tweaking GTL's might get a 100 or 200 more MHz out of that chip but you'll need to decide if its worth the effort..X38 boards seem to be 45nm quad core limited you will find the odd board that will prove me worng but you wont find many...my Maximus X38 could only run a Q9550 and a Q9650 to 425FSB on any multi, I'll hunt up my old profiles for 3.6GHz and a few other templates to try it might help get you a little higher

[OLDcomer]

..X38 boards seem to be 45nm quad core limited you will find the odd board that will prove me worng but you wont find many...my Maximus X38 could only run a Q9550 and a Q9650 to 425FSB on any multi..

Q9550 C1 P5E X38 8.5x483

Prime95 Blend




IBT

[mooch49]

i just got this board and paired it with a 8400. i am using the stock cooling. i just want to overclock to a 3.4. can i do that with little problem. if so, can you give me some of the settings for cpu voltage, fsb termination, north bridge, etc. thanks

[steve30x]

You will need to change the cooler to be able OC. The stock cooler wont cool the CPU enough when its overclocked.

[Grnfinger]

i just got this board and paired it with a 8400. i am using the stock cooling. i just want to overclock to a 3.4. can i do that with little problem. if so, can you give me some of the settings for cpu voltage, fsb termination, north bridge, etc. thanks

8x425 would be the best combination for your chip, if you have a decent chip it should do ok on the stock cooler but will run on the warm side steve30x is correct and you should invest in a better cooler.
378x9 will work but not as good for bandwidth as 425x8

[loften]

i think the stock 45nm coolers have no copper in the heat sink like the 65nm coolers have.. since the 45nm cpu runs at lower volts i think they figured they don't need any copper to cool it.. so if you have one laying around from a 65nm cpu with copper, it may work fine for that mild oc. i would just get a decent cooler for it though.. another thing i would do put a fan on the the north bridge heat sink. if it is the se with water block, i removed my water block and made up a regular heat sink with a small fan.. it made a huge difference in temps on my north bridge and in the entire area around it.. including my ram temps.. i am on water on my e8500 and north now so it doesn't have any heat issues other then at 4.5 with my ram at 1141 i fried 2 sticks before i put a fan over them.. i plan on keeping this board for a while.. i am going to try to get a set of g.skill 1200 for it to see how it does and may get a gigabyte ga ep45 to play with. especially after seeing the oc's with lower volts and temps in the gigabyte thread but i don't plan on upgrading to i7 maybe upgrade to a amd and x4 if i do upgrade.. i don't know if i am missing anything by not upgrading but i kind of like this board..

[ShawnTRD]

Ok haven't had a RAID setup sense getting did of my two Raptor 74's. So now I have two WD2000JS (200GB SATA) drives. And when I try to enable RAID in the BIOS I can't get past the USB detection of the bootup. I think it's hanging before reading SATA drives. Am I doing something wrong?

[askimo]

Q9550 C1 P5E X38 8.5x483

Prime95 Blend




IBT

Awesome OC considering that you are using X38.

Are you using water cooling?

[OLDcomer]

Awesome OC considering that you are using X38.

Are you using water cooling?

No. Just Xigmatek HDT-S1283 with two push-pull fans for the CPU and one 70mm fan for the northbridge.

[ShawnTRD]

No. Just Xigmatek HDT-S1283 with two push-pull fans for the CPU and one 70mm fan for the northbridge.

I have a 40mm fan for the northbridge. Can you take a picture to show me how you fit a 70MM fan?

[OLDcomer]

I have a 40mm fan for the northbridge. Can you take a picture to show me how you fit a 70MM fan?

It fited perfectly between the cpu cooler and the video card after I sealed it with plastic foam to absorb vibrations.

[loften]

how do you like those g.skills? i have been thinking about picking up the 2x2GB pc9600 to try out..

[OLDcomer]

how do you like those g.skills? i have been thinking about picking up the 2x2GB pc9600 to try out..

You'd better try some ocz blades at more reasonable price.

[loften]

i was tossing up the two, the ocz 9600 are out of stock and after reading the elpida graveyard thread i wonder if those blades have the same elpida chips?? maybe wait and see if anyone reports any dead ones or hope the g.skills come down in price like everything does right after i buy it..

[Commander_HK47]

hey guys,

Its been a while since i was last on. Had some issues resting my password after forgetting it...

Anyways i am still playing around with this board.

I have a goal of taking the cpu to 4Ghz~ with the memory at 1200Mhz, yet still remaining stable.
It seems that after about 400mhz FSB, that i need to start droping my memory speed down to be able to boot.

I was wondering what steps i should take to get my north bridge capable to handle the same memory speed at FSB speeds higher than 400MHZ.

I have test the system with Intel Burn test at the higher FSB/lower Memory speed and Intel burn test says it passes, i would just like to run the memory at the speeds it rated at.


System is in sig.

[faithful10]

I am running 533 mhz FSB with 4 sticks of kingston hyperx pc8500 cl 5 mem.

i'm using 8 multiplier so that gives me 8*533= 4264 mhz.

Using rampage bios 0601

Here is my everest mem benchmark:

[JH_man]

I am trying to further OC my Q6600 on this board (fine tuning settings at 3.52 ghz now), and got some questions:
1) If I lower the ram fsb strap from 400 to 333 mhz, do that put less strain on the nb? And if so can I lower the volt a bit? It looks to me NB temps is lower when running 333 strap...

2) What is a safe 24/7 OC of a q9550 on this board?

3) Anyone have a odd temp read from nb/sb on this board with everest v4? Not tried v5 yet. The earlier version I had it said about 45 degrees C, after I changed to a newer version it says usually 50+, and when OCing OCCT testing close to 60 C.

JH_man

[JH_man]

4) Is there a problem running the Ballistix 2x2gb 8500 set in command rate 1 on this board?.. If not what settings are adviced?

JH_man

[JH_man]

I found this on asus boards from a guy there, is it correct?
"
Maximus Formula needs stock 1.25 voltage on NB to run 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 at 4-4-4-12 timings and needs 1.45 volts to run 4 x 1 GB DDR2 800 at 4-4-4-12.

When you set DDR2 800 at 5-5-5-15 at 2.2 volts, its more likely that you get errors because of unneeded voltage. DDR2 800 5-5-5-15 doesn't need 2.2 volts at all. It will work better (and more likely flawlessly) with about 1.9-2.0 volts or even lower.
I.E. never set voltage more than needed on RAM modules, otherwise it is the best way for errors and system instabilities.

Also Crusial Ballistix uses Micron D9 memory modules, which can work at 3-3-3-8/9 at DDR2 800 and 4-4-4-12/15 at DDR2-1066 flawlessly, so try to tighten your timings a bit more.

I have tested myself OCZ Reaper HPC PC-8500 and Crucial Balistixs on my Maximus Formula (both Micron D9s) and they worked flawlessly with correct voltage and correct settings.
"

JH_man

[loften]

i think they are not supported by the mobo and many people had issues with the newer crucial ram.... my crucial double sided 4x1 8500's ran error free at rated specs and volts.. they ran at 1141 for about 4 months then i water cooled the cpu and nb and didn't put a fan back over them and fried 2 sticks.. my nb had a fan that was offset a little and it cooled the memory.. now i only have 2 sticks in with a fan over them still running.. i tried 4,4,4,12 - 4,4,4,15 and i couldn't get them to be error free.. 5,5,5,15 ran error free at 1066 with rated volts but as soon as i started overclocking them i had to go to 5,5,5,18 at rated volts to get them to not error.. it could have been me being a rookie and or other settings like ai/performance level stuff but i tried..

[Grnfinger]

Crucial ram and the Maximus are not compatible this topic has been beaten to death, also OCZ is not the best choice fort his board...I know its a long thread but there is a search button.
60c for your NB is not a good thing, you should look and remounting the NB heatsink with some better TIM, and no one can cay what volts your NB needs every board will be different depending on FSB ,divider and ram speed so wherever you got that info you should toss it out...

[JH_man]

Right now I am trying to get my current rig 100% stable, but the problem is the NB it looks like. I have to run 1.51volt in bios/1.54volt in everest, and the NB gets very hot (everest says close to 60 C under heavy load and hot inside but dont know if I can trust it, see above for more info about this), and it looks like that is the reason for hangups.

The FSB is set to 400 strap, ram is running at 880 at 5-5-5-15. In OCCT is stable, normal PI has been stable at all clocks, extremesystems PI is unstable and has been so for all OCs over 3.2ghz I have tried, CoD4 is stable but after 3-4 hours of Lotro (it stresses the NB ALOT) it hang. I uped the CPU volt to 1.45625 and rest of the night it was stable, but also it got colder in the room so not easy to say if it really helped or not.

What I need to know is what stresses the NB the most? Do low ram timings stress it more the high? Do the strap to FSB mzh have impact, will 333 stress it less then 400 strap? etc... I need to stress the NB as little as I can without going down too much in OC.

If I have to start to refit the chipset coolers etc to get it to be stable, I am considering jumping over to a i7 or Phenom II rig...

The machine has been rock solid at 3.2ghz for about 19 months at low volts all over. It boggles me uping the fsb just 40mzh (400 -> 440) should make it soo much harder to get it stable.

Can it be the ram that for some reason create these problems? Can they cause the NB to 'overheat'?..

JH_man

[Grnfinger]

Your overclock is a modest one and running 1:1 should not tax the NB to hard.
I would run the ram through 3 passes of memtest on your current overclock to rule out bad dimms if you get errors try stock speed settings and re test.
If your still running bios 401 might I suggest running something a little more recent