Q9450 - Trying to hit 3.4 stable

****ing hell.

There was nothing wrong with your board. At all. Niether of them. Just the BIOS revisions. I had no end of **** right up until 1305, which sorted out my random BSOD's, memory IRQ errors and my inability to clock over 2.83ghz.

Now, I can help here. I'm running a Q9450 at 3.6ghz stable and I've got the same board and some PC8500 RAM.

Anyway.

If the memory is sli ready, enable it and set it to expert. Go into your voltages and (for god sake) set them ALL to auto, except memory, which you should set to about 2.1 (I'm smack bang on 2.1) Get rid of the C1 and start playing with the FSB in unlinked mode.

I have those exact settings and I'm FSB 1800mhz (450) right now and it's stable. I think 1800 is the board limit because anything past 1850 is unstable and I'm not adding more volts to this as it's running hot and I honestly don't want to fry my chip before next year.

(god dman it people are stupid. Two boards RMA'd for nothing? Bet they love you)

EDIT

And yeah, your voltages are too damn high. Especially your NB, you're going to fry it at that voltage. Anything over 1.4 is considered excessive.

Also, I don't mean to get offensive, but today I've seen 8 people (seriously) say they've RMA'd equipment that hasn't needed it. When I try to RMA stuff that actually needs RMAing (like bad memory that I've test) retailers are iffy about the whole thing and I have to bust into some jargon and flex my know how to confuse the buggery out of them and make them realise I'm not the driod they're looking for.
Edited by Shin2k35 - 6/26/08 at 6:20am

Chill yourself, mate.

I own this board, too, you know? Check my sig. I'm using it right now.

I couldn't get my 1066mhz RAM to boot past 667mhz for a month. The board was underclocking my RAM like a bastard and I was powerless. Eventually, I read in the OCZ forums about upping the voltage and manually setting to expert mode (the combination of the two. Couldn't be one or the other otherwise I wouldn't get past the CPU INIT) When I finally got my RAM running at 1066mhz, I was getting BSOD's and all sorts every few hours, perhaps every ten minutes (this was with Vista 32/64bit and XP 32/64bit) I was at my wits end, but I knew the board worked fine because when it did work, it ****ing worked! But I couldn't get it to overclock, at all. Nothing past 2.83ghz. Even running stock was a hassle for it.

Then, last week, I updated to 1305 from 1205 and voila, I've not had a single problem since and I'm running at aforementioned frequencies at 37C idle right now (I'm running far too hot under load, but I'm getting a new cooler soon and thus am avoiding running programs at 100% CPU)

Anyway, the reason I suspect your RAM wouldn't post past 850mhz was the BIOS and that's the reason I suspect you RMA'd a perfectly good board. You were lucky, you got over 667mhz, at least.

So, onto actually helping you.

Right, first off. Setting voltages to auto is just fine. Why do you think they're all set to auto initially? I'm only talking from my experience. I have our CPU clocked at 3.6ghz at stock voltages (vcore is at 1.216v). So, I think you overvolting your componants is unnecessary right now.

I'm willing to spend my time here with you and help you out, so, if you will, set everything to auto, then raise the NB to 1.38-1.4v and the memory to 2.2v (make sure the RAM can handle that, if not, adjust accordingly. Mines rated at 2.4, so I run at 2.1, but you've already tried 2.1) Take off Loadline Calibration (for now) and remove C1 and EIST (if you haven't already) leave the CPU FSB settings to auto and finally, if your RAM is SLI ready (not a clue if it is) enable that and set to Expert (I feel like an expert at handling this board now. There's so many problems people are having!)

I'll be hanging around for a while so post your results!

(P.S

Clearly you got offended at what I had said. I can see why, but I felt your reply was unjust/unneeded. However, I apologise and I should've made it much clearer it was a general rant at the idiotic masses that read the internets and assume word of law. IE, if it doesn't work then you send it back. Whereas in the days of old, if it didn't work, you were told to piss off and RTFM. I personally feel validated because I called my retailer and they wanted me to RMA my board (I refused), a week later and it's fine (I did call the lads at OCUK to let them know it was ok and gave them advice on the issue)

)

What error messages were they?

IRQ NOT LESS THAN EQUAL

MEMORY MANAGEMENT

Either of those or similar?

EDIT:

I think there's a third that just displays a code and not a name at the top.