Try to overclock my system - need help

[Nellymalta]

I have a Core 2 Quad Q9400 with aftermarket cooling, artec silver thermal paste. It is on an ASUS P5P43TD board.

I am not interested in messing about with voltages yet, but I am having difficulty with the memory.

Here is my bios AI Tweaker scanned from the manual - not my screen - although my bios is not that different with most stuff on AUTO


At the moment I have :

AI Overclock Tuner set to Manual with the FSB set at 390
The CPU is locked at 8x so this gives me 3.12Ghz - any higher is unstable at stock voltages.

The Dram Frequency is set at 3:5 with gives me memory speed of 1301Mhz

But I have 2x4gb Corsair Vengeance 1600 modules in the motherboard so it seems a waste to not use this memory.

Unfortunately when i change the Dram Frequency to 1:1, even though it clocks the Ram at 1560Mhz (below 1600), the system will not post. The motherboard throws out the Overclocking Fail, F1, F2 etc to reset bios on boot up.

I have tried changing the Dram Timing Control to Manual also and set it at 9-9-9-24. It still refuses to boot.

If i switch the memory back to 3:5 then the system is stable as anything.

My motherboard manual says Memory DDR3 1600(OC), 1333, 1066, 800

But i dont know whether this means I am able to get 1560mhz at 1:1 timings or not. Am i doing something wrong or is 1301mhz the best i get get from this memory on my motherboard. I have the memory seated in the orange slots as per the Asus guide to allow overclocking.

Any help would be much appreciated

Neil

Additional Comment:

actually just read somewhere that 1600oc only supported in single channel - not dual channel. Difficult stuff this overclocking pastime. So swapper the memory into the other slot to have it single channel mode and still doesnt post at 1600.

[johnerz]

As it says the 1600 is an overclock option - so you need to manualy set all the memory settings

run cpuz and read the settings - note them down and add them into the bios - should then be fine

[Mr.Scott]

Originally Posted by johnerz

As it says the 1600 is an overclock option - so you need to manualy set all the memory settings

run cpuz and read the settings - note them down and add them into the bios - should then be fine

Or you could just enable the XMP profile.

[Nellymalta]

Originally Posted by johnerz

As it says the 1600 is an overclock option - so you need to manualy set all the memory settings

run cpuz and read the settings - note them down and add them into the bios - should then be fine

Have set the manual settings that CPU-z says. Also tried various timings from different websites. no joy

Additional Comment:

Originally Posted by Mr.Scott

Or you could just enable the XMP profile.

tried that too.

Nevermind, just gonna leave it at 1301mhz. Not sure i would notice much difference even if i got it to 1600mhz.

[jimh425]

Auto doesn't mean that you aren't messing with the V. That is, the motherboard will raise the voltage some better than others. If I had to guess, and I don't know that board, you need to increase the NB voltage and RAM voltage. Most motherboards default to 1.8 v which is fine but most performance RAM is between 2.0-2.2. Look up your specs to know more. But, that being said, you won't get a huge benefit from having your ram running at the max setting. Concentrate on the CPU overclock first. Once that it where you want it, investigate speeding up the ram if you don't have anything else to do.

If you loaded the asus tools, you probably can see the current voltages for NB, FSB, CPU, and RAM in Windows.

[phillipjos]

Ditto alway the cpu then the ram,imo