Throttlestop overclocking Desktop PCs

[frankr2994]

Well I had some time yesterday in my office and decided to play some more. The whole prime 95 stress test was more or less impossible because of power limits in the past. I did some playing and Ive seem to got a stable 4.0 all core turbo running prime95 blended 6 core hyper threaded. Not quite 4.0 because I brought the bclk down one notch using TS. I'll play more this week with it. If I can find a way to hit 4.2 with prime 95 I'll settle. For the hell of it I was pricing some stuff out to see what it would cost to have something "better". You know it's still pretty damn hard to beat a 4.0 6 core with 40 pcie lanes . Anything with a decent amount of pcie lanes seems to cost too much in the motherboard department. Granted I'm comparing my full system ram , storage ect. Costing me like 400 bucks lol

 

[Retrorockit]

I came across an interesting tool while looking for something else. It's for a VRM hardmod that isn't well known except to some GPU overclockers.
The mod is kind of simple.
The VRM controller chip has a VSENSE pin. This reads the CPU Voltage and the controller maintains it at the specified value.
If you install a resistor to GRD there it will pull down the Voltage the regulator senses, and the VRM will add more power until it senses the proper value again.
The actual Voltage supplied will be higher due to the spoofed feedback signal. You can install a potentiometer to make it adjustable. In the past a V. gauge was added to know the actual Voltage produced.
Now there is an app that calculates the Voltage change with various potentiometers.
You input the existing CPU Voltage in mV, and the resistance to GRD at the VSENSE feedback pin. The app produces a chart with the resulting mV each potentiometer setting will produce at the CPU.

vMod Calculator - Apps on Google Play

Easy calculation to choose you potentiometer and predict voltage output

play.google.com

 

[frankr2994]

Just did something similar to that with a 36v battery charger the other day lol. Never thought of that. I would think though that its going to be hard for me to identify my vsense pin on the motherboard though. I can do it physically looking at wires but even taking voltage readings really won't tell me what pin it is. And I damn well know that dell didn't publish it lol. If I can figure it out I'll try it.

 

[Retrorockit]

You can look for the datasheet from the VRM chip manufacturer. Pin 4 is one of the usual suspects. That's what it is on the Dimension E520 anyway. I had moved on to other things by the time I found that out. but this mod would get past Intels 1.60V CPU limit. I could probably take the QX6800 past 4GHz if I wanted to with the tricks I've learned since 2015. But the QX9650 goes right past that in the T3400 workstation anyway. You might get lucky and find a trace on the MB that's labeled VSENSE. But you're absolutely right Dell will be of no help with this at all.

 

[Retrorockit]

While researching a CPU Voltmod I found out that Vsense is now a CPU pin. So the VRM may be on the CPU since LGA1366.

 

[lexluthermiester]

So the VRM may be on the CPU since LGA1366.

No it's not.

 

[Retrorockit]

I'm glad to be wrong about that. That means there's hope for a VSENSE mod.

 

[frankr2994]

Well I haven't found anything but I also haven't pulled my motherboard out of the case to try and figure it out on my own lol. Slightly off topic I just picked up an EVGA 1070sc yesterday. I wanted a new gpu but ya can't go that route. This one cost me 300 US and they are going for over 400 now. What I thought was funny is that I never new that the 1070 and 1080 are the dells of gpus. Power limit locked down. Any overclock results in a hard throttle lol. The card is 100 times better than the Quadro k2000 I had in there but I was looking for a card so my kid and I could play steam VR. This works but it would be nice if it worked better...bonus I ran VR with my cpu overclocked to 4.2ghz. steam VR used all 12 logical cores at about 20 percent while my GPU was maxed out.

 

[Retrorockit]

While looking into some LGA775 mods I found a patch to add SSE4 support to CPUs that don't have it. This got me wondering about AVX support for X58.
What I found is that a lot of newer games are releasing patches to run on non AVX systems. Apparently there was enough backlash form X58 owners that they bothered to do this.
VR seems to require AVX. No patch for the computer itself to add AVX fubctionality that I can find. So there seems to be some work being done in this direction.

 

[frankr2994]

I would suspect alot of newer games are going to start supporting older tech but not because of cpu limitations. There is alot of chatter out there about people switching over to console gaming because they can't upgrade from say a gtx960 due to the market. I'm not a kid but have kids and like to do a little light gaming myself and it took me over a year to find a "deal" on a card that was released in 2018.....can I buy a card that cost 1200 bucks...ya but I wouldn't be able to hear my game over my wife yelling at me.

 

[Retrorockit]

I'm not a gamer at all but I need to buy fairly recent cards so my results don't get buried in the back pages at userbenchmark. My $20 Optiplex 380 needed a GTX1060 3GB to stay near the front of the chart due to 1500 other examples of that system. I found an HP OEM GTX1660Ti that would fit. But getting my hands on one proved difficult. Also a 6GB GPU in an 8GB system doesn't make a lot of sense. I have added a 2 fan GTX1660TI 6GB OC to my collection. My T3400 and XPS 420 can run 16GB DDR2 800 (which is also not cheap). One of the original Throtttlestop Overclocks in a T3400 QX9650 @ 4.15GHZ got buried there due to a GTX760GPU. Unclewebbs T3500 overclock is hard to find there for the same reason. I think he landed on page 7 or 8 with the fastest CPU score there.
It takes a GTX1080 to make the front page on that system.

 

[frankr2994]

Well my user benchmark has my cpu 5th on the list using TS. My system as a whole though....I would need a 3090 to compete. I run user benchmark for shits and giggles though. I don't really care. If I build something for someone I show them the results to demonstrate how badass it is at least for what they need to do with it. Ideally I really only want a good GPU to push multiple monitors while coding a developing. This is what I would love to do with my spare time.

And as far as building the rest of my PC. Still need 2 more nvme drives, 2 4tb hdds, 4 more 8gb ecc modules and a dual controller USB 3.2 card. Then I'll have everything my little heart desires for a few years. 64gb of ram,fast cpu,fast GPU and 4tb of fast access mirrored storage

 

[Retrorockit]

The T3500 Xeon overclocks are finally at the front at userbenchmark. By a decent percentage too. I can't afford to buy every system and every GPU that TS could help. I have a couple T3500s but I personally don't need the power, and I can't think of anything new for me to do to them. LGA775 on the other hand I actually have a couple of new tricks to try there. I'm sure a 4GHz Optiplex 380 will impress absolutely no one!

 

[frankr2994]

Hey I've been browsing the forums here instead of the usual 2 threads and came across some software called power monkey. It applies settings before booting. Now I'm not concerned with using many of the features there because TS just makes things too easy. However there is a TDP option in power monkey. Would it just be a waste of time to see if that could unlock it prior to booting since TS can't change it? If I unlock TDP I'm certain I could run a very stable 4.6ghz even in stress test.

 

[Retrorockit]

I came across this benchmark of Various Dell computers form Purdue Universities IT dept.

Dell Model Benchmarks

engineering.purdue.edu

The Precision T3600/5600 is still king of the hill. So frankr2994 TS OC project is still relevant.

 

[frankr2994]

Never said it wasn't relevant. But all this benchmark talk maybe I need to set my clock back up and run a passmark to see if my 5810 scores higher than your old precisions lol. Still curious if this new software can bypass my TDP level to allow me to use TS to have a higher stable clock

 

[Retrorockit]

That's the T3600 benchmarks.. This thread has mostly been about the older T3500 . But no AVX on the X58 CPUs leaves them behind for modern gamers.
But the OC T3500 at userbenchmark runs mid 80's CPU scores. A bit faster than the T3600s there.
There are only 5 samples of T5810 there . I thought you had the T3600. I don't have a feel for what the T5810 is. The T3600 looks ripe for an overclock. Just for the AVX support.
T3500 https://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-Precision-WorkStation-T3500--/2522
T3600 https://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-Precision-T3600/1882
T5810 https://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-Precision-T5810/157256

 

[frankr2994]

Lol ya I have a t5810. Not all that old technically. A 5810 is really just a next gen t3610. When they went to a 3620 that was a different PC all together. I believe based off the t1700. So instead of the 5000 series keeping dual CPUs they made it a single socket. Here is my user benchmark run at 4.5ghz 6 cores.https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/49845914

 

[Retrorockit]

Your link leads to a larger T5810 sample than I was finding. Most of them about equal an OC T3500 but a few like yours get up to 90%CPU score which the T3500 won't do.

 

[frankr2994]

Well remember I can't keep a 4.5 O.C. . If I managed to load up more than a few cores I'd be drawing over limit. 4.2 is as high as I can go and not worry about throttling. That doesn't lower my score too much though as most of the samples of the e5-1650v3 show all cores clocked at 3.55.

 

[Retrorockit]

I put a request in at BIOSMods.com for a QX9650 BIOS for the Dell Optiplex 380. They're the guys who did the Xeon BIOS for that system. The 120W X5470 ran just fine. The G41 chipset lists a 130W limit and support for the C2X. The Opti 380 is funny. They offered it with 32 bit OS, and 4GB RAM as the standard config. It would be funny if it turns out to be the most potent of the LGA775 Optipods.
So I'm at the mercy of the BIOS Mod Gods. Maybe offerings of burnt silicon would help?

 

[frankr2994]

I put a request in at BIOSMods.com for a QX9650 BIOS for the Dell Optiplex 380. They're the guys who did the Xeon BIOS for that system. The 120W X5470 ran just fine. The G41 chipset lists a 130W limit and support for the C2X. The Opti 380 is funny. They offered it with 32 bit OS, and 4GB RAM as the standard config. It would be funny if it turns out to be the most potent of the LGA775 Optipods.
So I'm at the mercy of the BIOS Mod Gods. Maybe offerings of burnt silicon would help?

You can try win-raid as well. Useful people on both. The main person that seemed to be able to do anything was lostnbios and they haven't sign on in a long time.

 

[Retrorockit]

You can try win-raid as well. Useful people on both. The main person that seemed to be able to do anything was lostnbios and they haven't sign on in a long time.

Genius239 at BIOSMods was the Dell Optiplex guy. He did the Xeon BIOS for me. For a donation he custom made mine out of the version I asked for to avoid digital signing. Unlocking a Dell BIOS is almost mission impossible. But adding CPU support seems to be known art. But I'll look at them also. The thread starter page at BIOSMods was almost useless. I was blaming them, but maybe it's MY browser choice. I'l look at it again.

 

[frankr2994]

Genius239 at BIOSMods was the Dell Optiplex guy. He did the Xeon BIOS for me. For a donation he custom made mine out of the version I asked for to avoid digital signing. Unlocking a Dell BIOS is almost mission impossible. But adding CPU support seems to be known art. But I'll look at them also. The thread starter page at BIOSMods was almost useless. I was blaming them, but maybe it's MY browser choice. I'l look at it again.

Genius 239 gave it a few shots helping me out. My bios proves to be bullet proof. I could also tell there was a language barrier there making things slightly difficult going back and forth on ideas. Very nice person no less trying what they did for me.

Also if all your looking to do is add certain support I believe it's as simple as injecting modules. I know your on an older system but the tool of choice is usually uefitool. With a little bit of research I'm sure you could figure out how to do it yourself. May want to have a spi programmer on standby if you brick it lol.

 

[Retrorockit]

I'm a retired truck mech. On my own with all of this. Genius 239 says his BIOS should already have the microcode I need. This is a 2nd Opti 380 MB so i'm starting fresh with this one. This is also my daily driver computer. I'll flash his 771 BIOS and see what happens. He says it has all the microcodes. I was so shocked an Optiplex would run over a 95W CPU (X5470) I didn't really think of trying to make the QX9650 run. But I'm seeing it running on G41 in a few places. The only other 130W one was the Opti 745 which had Pentium D support, but no 333fsb or 45nm CPU suppport. The Opti 380 is Dell Legacy BTX era BIOS so anything named uefi probably won't work.