Overclocking the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R...excellent!

[miahallen]

It's essential for overclocking when using extreme cooling. This is due to what is called cold boot bug (CBB) which is worse than usual on the Lynnfield CPUs. A CBB is when the CPU is too cold to boot. On the 750, my CBB varies from -45C to -85C depending on the vcore. The easiest way to overcome the CBB is to boot into Windows at a lower vcore (I would boot at 1.425V). Well, at that point there is only one tool availble for this motherboard that will allow me to bring the vcore back to where I need it 1.525-1.65V...

But, to answer your question, yes...it's nice. eleet is better, but ET6 is good :)

[nate42nd]

Here is another nasty example of "socket burn" on a UD4P. You may have already seen it.

P55-UD6 socket burn - XtremeSystems Forums

Nevermind, I see you're on that forum too. haha

[miahallen]

Sorry to report, but it looks like the i7 870 I recieved doesn't fair so well with extra cooling. I could not even get it stable enough over 5GHz to run SPI1M. It appears that this CPU is only strong in more typical setups like 99% of you out there, and in that respect it truly shines.

I'm dissappointed I was unable to do better with extreme cooling, but the best Lynnfield based CPUs seem to be very elusive. In my humble opinion, extreme users are best off sticking to LGA1366.





For the rest of you, this platform is what you've been waiting for. If you're not a heavy multitasker or power user, than the 750 should work wonders for you. If your regular usage includes more intensive applications or if you multitask a lot...than the i7 860 is a perfect choice for you. It would be difficult for me to reccomend the i7 870 to anyone but Bill Gates. If you have money to burn, by all means. But for the rest of us, the i7 860 will be fine.

A few people have asked me about fitment for the Promitech Megahalems. Here is a quick guide:















I think the moral of the story here is that if you plan to use the Megahalems on this board, then do not get memory with tall heat-spreaders.

If you do have tall memory heatspeaders and you're inside a case, then you're probably best off using the fan in a "pull" orientation.

If you plan to use the top PCIe slot, you're better off mounting the HSF in a horizontal orientaion, or mount vertically with the fan on top in a "pull" orientation.

[Lsdmeasap]

I agree, 1366 is the way to go unless your budget it way limited. Even then there is options that come out about the same as P55

[nate42nd]

I too noticed the memory slots in close proximity to the heatsink. I don't have a very big heatsink and I have to remove my fan to install 8GB. Tall heat spreaders would require a "pull" configuration on the heatsink. The memory I have will fit under the fan so it's no big deal.