Z77A-GD65 + i5 2500K Overclocking - How to start?

[profJim]

What page in which Intel datasheet?
Did you check the addendum datasheet?

[Chike]

Page 78, 7.10

EDIT: sorry page 90 for Vccsa, 78 beginning of DC specs

[profJim]

Thanks Chike, but my question was for Zach_
I was creating my post before I saw your post.

[Chike]

I know but I don't think out datasheets are different, AFAIK there is only one datasheet and it's in vol. 1 of that datasheet.

[Zach_]

Sorry, my bad, I was looking at Intel's 3rd gen datasheet (It was 3 AM FFS lol), on Intel's Datasheet for 2nd gen 2500K it says on page 82:

VCCSA - Min 0.879 - Max 0.971 (0.965 should be my max)
PLL - Min 1.77 - Max 1.89
VCCIO - Max is 1.05 + 2-3% (1.07 should cut it here, maybe 1.09? So how come Chike says 1.2 is safe? )
VID - Min 0.25 - Max 1.52

Well thorough is the way to go here, I'm just getting desperate, 4 sleepless nights of monitoring Prime95, waking up in the middle of the night to check if it didn't crash, gets the best of me.

I'm also uncertain of my voltages, I'm seeing people run their CPU with PLL at 1.8V whereas I'm at 1.85, S/A at 0.925 and I'm at 0.965...

I'm starting to worry that maybe I bumped the voltages too much and maybe that's causing prime to get unstable...

From Intel's datasheet, I'm seeing that the typical PLL is 1.8V, typical I/O is 1.5 and that max S/A is 0.9 + 5% or so... so I'm pushing it a little.

I'm very uncertain about the voltages I have set...

BTW HCI has been running error free for more than 2 hours now... What do you think should be the next move?

I'm gonna go to bed now but I'll check your message in the morning, I'm going to let HCI run all night long and report if i get any issues, if IBT and HCI are fine then we only have this P95 nut to crack.

Good night for now :)

Voltages that are too high can cause problems, even if they are still within the allowed range.
Required voltage settings differ with each system.
If you install another 2500K in your system, you might have to tweak some settings.
Same thing if you move all your hardware to an identical motherboard.

My recommendation:

1. Test Prime95 AVX Large FFTs at stock cpu speeds for at least 6 hours.
2. If OK, test Small FFTs at stock speeds for at least 6 hours.
3. IF OK, o/c to 4.0GHz and repeat both tests.
4. If OK, o/c to 4.2GHz and repeat both tests.
5. If OK, increase cpu speed 100MHz and repeat both tests.
6. If OK, repeat step 5 until you say "enough already".

Maybe your system would appear to be stable if you avoid the Prime95 AVX program, but you'll probably go crazy with the nagging feeling your system might crash. No matter how much stress testing you do, there's no guarantee that any system is 100% stable.

FWIW, my "fully" stable system rarely gets a BSOD, crash, or freeze after I've completed my stress testing, but on very rare occasions, I find a text or image file that somehow got corrupted.

Get a good nights sleep and let's see what Sin has to say.

Ok, Memtest ran fine up to about 300% coverage so I decided that 3 hours is enough to know that it's at least stable enough to run Prime.

I then tried increasing VTT to 1.11 and reducing Vcore to 1.39, and only ran the FFT which I failed on, the 320K one, I still got a BSOD.
So I increased Vcore to 1.41 and tested again, this time the 320K FFT passed so I moved on to a large FFT test, guess what, another BSOD, this time on a 400K FFT.

So I decided to say "F*ck it" and reverted everything back to stock settings and let Prime run for 6 hours on stock settings large FFT test, woke up and it was A OK, no errors.

So it's not the AVX version, it's instability in my OC... And I'm not one to let it slide... I have to get this thing stable.

Chike, I'm willing to pay you to get my system stable at 4.8, I'll just give you my PC, do anything you want with it and give it back to me stable, lol :)

[profJim]

Chike, I'm willing to pay you to get my system stable at 4.8, I'll just give you my PC, do anything you want with it and give it back to me stable, lol :)

He sounds pretty desperate, Chike needs to triple his normal fee

[profJim]

Now that I've had some fun at Zach_'s expense:

1. Save your current stock bios settings as a bios profile, you can name the profile IamPissedOff.
2. Do some seriously demanding gaming benchmarks and note the scores.
3. Overclock your system to 4.0GHz and rerun Prime95 Large FFTs for 6- 8 hours or more.
4. If there are no errors, repeat step #2.
5. Overclock your system to 4.2GHz and rerun Prime95 Large FFTs for 6- 8 hours or more.
6. If there are no errors, repeat step #2.

Save a new bios profile for each step that has no stress testing errors.
Quit overclocking at any time, you can always pick it up again when you're feeling better about the world.

[Zach_]

Yeah I've already saved my stock settings as a BIOS profile, personally, I don't even care about the benchmarks, the OC is just something I wanna do... :)

I think I'll take a couple days break and resume next week, need some time off from this... Will be back with more results next week.

Also, what about Orthos? Could it also be a good way of testing multi threaded CPUs with AVX instructions?

[profJim]

I think I'll take a couple days break and resume next week, need some time off from this... Will be back with more results next week.

Smart move, but....
....I'm betting that we hear back from you in 2 days, 3 at the longest.

Check out the following freeware program: Who Crashed (Crash Analysis Tool) from Resplendence Software - Free Downloads
I've never used it, but it might help if/when you get another BSOD.

**edit**
I haven't used Orthos for a long time, I preferred Prime95 and OCCT.
OCCT has some really demanding options and provides nice voltage graphs and/or CSV ouput files automatically for each run.
If either of them support AVX stress testing, give them a try.

[Zach_]

Thanks, I'll give WhoCrashed a try, question is, will it be able to identify Overclocking instability.

From OCCT 4.1 release notes:

This version introduces a brand new GPU:3D Test, completely rewritten in DirectX10.

Linpack has also been updated and now includes an AVX-capable version. If your CPU supports AVX, the AVX version will be better. If not, untick the box for better performance.
Changelog : OCCT

MAIN
Revamped the test scheduler - allows more flexible auto tests
Added an very small and lightweight update checker that will warn you once when a new version has been released.
Revamped the UI slightly : tabs are now on top of the tests, system info remade
Main window cannot be out of bounds when loaded - sorry
The ON button doesn't blink anymore - the status label will.
The FPS graph will continuously refresh
New icon (that's the feature everyone was waiting for, i know)
CPU:LINPACK
Now has 2 versions : AVX-capable and the older one (from 3.1.0). Use the AVX version on AVX-capable CPUs, and the other one if not, for better results.
GPU:3D
Brand new test supporting DirectX10 ! Much more efficient, better at error checking... requires Windows Vista or Seven (out of the box - DX updated issues are gone with it).
TRANSLATIONS
Updated
SETTINGS
Now carried over from version to version

So OCCT does support AVX, but just for the Linpack test it seems, does it have a similar test to Prime's?