JSTpt1022
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 9, 2006
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Hi all,
I've never really messed around with overclocking too much, despite having the gear for it as well as truly epic cooling capacity. But I recently got into folding@home and I've started dabbling a little bit in an effort to lower my frame times. First, I guess I should run down the relevant equipment:
CPU: E6750 (stock is 2.66)
MB: ASUS Maximus Formula
Memory: Corsair XMS2-6400 2GB (stock 800MHz)
PSU: Antec NEO HE 500
Now I normally just use the built in utilities that came with the ASUS to do a little light overclocking now and again. I either set and forget at 2.8GHz or so, or I use the dynamic booster that auto scales the cpu based on usage.
The problem came when I got ambitious and, again using the built in utilities, pushed the cpu to 3.6 and the memory to 1066. The system was at first unstable, and then locked all together, forcing me to reboot at a lower frequency. At first I said, no big deal, it just can't handle it. But then I thought, wait a second, why not?!
Today I've been manually setting the cpu frequency while folding and monitoring things a little more carefully. What I've found is quite disturbing. In the past I have primarily concerned myself with temperature and, since the C2D and MB practically run at room temperature all day, I haven't been worried. Today I started looking at voltages and was shocked to find that my +5, +3.3 and +12 rail voltages are all under:
Current:
+5 = 4.97
+3.3 = 3.14
+12 = 11.93
The last time I paid attention to these numbers they were all considerably over. Additionally, PC Probe II is showing my northbridge, southbridge2 and front side bus voltages in red. I don't know enough to know what these should be but here they are:
SB2 = 1.97
FSBT = 1.42
NB = 1.49
Here are my questions. Is it safe to assume that power supply is the source of my stability problems at high overclocks? If so, and there isn't some other problem that my lack of knowledge is overlooking, how soon should I be looking for a new PSU? Also, I know that OS overclocking utilities aren't the best as far as control and good results, any suggestions for settings in the BIOS?
Sorry for the long post. Any help or comments, positive or negative will be appreciated.
Edit: I should have mentioned that these readings were taken while folding a large work unit with winsmp w/affinity changer. Meaning that both cores are pinned at 100% usage continuously and my memory usage is roughly 45%.
I've never really messed around with overclocking too much, despite having the gear for it as well as truly epic cooling capacity. But I recently got into folding@home and I've started dabbling a little bit in an effort to lower my frame times. First, I guess I should run down the relevant equipment:
CPU: E6750 (stock is 2.66)
MB: ASUS Maximus Formula
Memory: Corsair XMS2-6400 2GB (stock 800MHz)
PSU: Antec NEO HE 500
Now I normally just use the built in utilities that came with the ASUS to do a little light overclocking now and again. I either set and forget at 2.8GHz or so, or I use the dynamic booster that auto scales the cpu based on usage.
The problem came when I got ambitious and, again using the built in utilities, pushed the cpu to 3.6 and the memory to 1066. The system was at first unstable, and then locked all together, forcing me to reboot at a lower frequency. At first I said, no big deal, it just can't handle it. But then I thought, wait a second, why not?!
Today I've been manually setting the cpu frequency while folding and monitoring things a little more carefully. What I've found is quite disturbing. In the past I have primarily concerned myself with temperature and, since the C2D and MB practically run at room temperature all day, I haven't been worried. Today I started looking at voltages and was shocked to find that my +5, +3.3 and +12 rail voltages are all under:
Current:
+5 = 4.97
+3.3 = 3.14
+12 = 11.93
The last time I paid attention to these numbers they were all considerably over. Additionally, PC Probe II is showing my northbridge, southbridge2 and front side bus voltages in red. I don't know enough to know what these should be but here they are:
SB2 = 1.97
FSBT = 1.42
NB = 1.49
Here are my questions. Is it safe to assume that power supply is the source of my stability problems at high overclocks? If so, and there isn't some other problem that my lack of knowledge is overlooking, how soon should I be looking for a new PSU? Also, I know that OS overclocking utilities aren't the best as far as control and good results, any suggestions for settings in the BIOS?
Sorry for the long post. Any help or comments, positive or negative will be appreciated.
Edit: I should have mentioned that these readings were taken while folding a large work unit with winsmp w/affinity changer. Meaning that both cores are pinned at 100% usage continuously and my memory usage is roughly 45%.