X79 and/or rampage IV OC'ing thread for those of us still left....

[JrRacinFan]

@dalekdukesboy count me in altho ive only been clocking via multipler on a 3930k

I'd like to get my hands on an X99 but odds are i may retire them in favor of kaby lake before i end up going that route, $$ wise.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

ah ty for tip. So is it unlocked? I'm assuming yes because bclock is so limited with this platform and reason I shy away from xeon's only due to the fact you have to do your research due to some are locked some are unlocked based on series etc. Anyway that's a good thought plus I got nice memory already it's probably the memory controller that's crying mercy. Also I'll go through your suggestions and review my own steps and see if I can get this thing exactly where it wants because atm it's at least slightly off for some reason. Thanks again!

@dalekdukesboy count me in altho ive only been clocking via multipler on a 3930k

I'd like to get my hands on an X99 but odds are i may retire them in favor of kaby lake before i end up going that route, $$ wise.

Yeah, you have exact same thought as me and WELCOME! Yeah, Kaby lake leaks and speculation plus AMD's upcoming offering may be very promising and priced well, so yeah hate to shell out a lot for a platform bit by bit over months as I can afford it...only to find I could get brand new platform for less...and perform the same or better! So probably wise to wait and I found that xeon v2 for 300$ which is less than I paid for any processor I can recall back to core 2 duo.

but you can get a 4930k for 200 bucks lol.

https://www.techpowerup.com/227716/intel-readies-skylake-x-as-its-next-high-end-desktop-platform

Well, Kaby lake X will be here in about 10 months according to this...however other than being a slightly higher pin count socket and more memory bandwidth and I believe die shrink to 10 nm...as most comments say it really at first look seems pretty underwhelming.

I wouldn't say that X79 is inherently picky, but I would say that SB-E is, at least from my experience. I couldn't believe how much easier it was to overclock IVB-E, even going from a 4c/8t SB-E to a 6c/12t IVB-E. The only voltages I had to play with to get this 4930K stable were VCORE, VDIMM, and a slight increase on PLL to 1.8125V. Maybe part of the reason I look back so fondly on clocking the 3820 was simply because it was a challenge and required a good bit of learning and tinkering... this 4930K just felt too easy after having played with the 3820.

It was in an early reply but I noted your PLL voltage but what was the magic number for you with VCCSA? You said it and PLL were critical (which I have also found) but I am curious what your VCCSA was for comparisons sake.

 

[Random Murderer]

ah ty for tip. So is it unlocked? I'm assuming yes because bclock is so limited with this platform and reason I shy away from xeon's only due to the fact you have to do your research due to some are locked some are unlocked based on series etc. Anyway that's a good thought plus I got nice memory already it's probably the memory controller that's crying mercy. Also I'll go through your suggestions and review my own steps and see if I can get this thing exactly where it wants because atm it's at least slightly off for some reason. Thanks again!

...but you can get a 4930k for 200 bucks lol.

All of the E5 16xx v2 chips are unlocked, it's just that the 1650 is the cheapest 6c/12t IVB-E Xeon. The next step up is the 1660 which is also 6c/12t but a bit useless if you'll be overclocking since the 1650 is cheaper. the 1680 is what I've had my eye on, but they're still expensive as hell. The 1680 v2 is IVB-E, unlocked, but 8c/16t while retaining the 130W TDP of the i7 chips.

It was in an early reply but I noted your PLL voltage but what was the magic number for you with VCCSA? You said it and PLL were critical (which I have also found) but I am curious what your VCCSA was for comparisons sake.

If you mean on the 3820, I don't recall an exact figure, but it was a little under 1.3V, I want to say 1.275V.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

All of the E5 16xx v2 chips are unlocked, it's just that the 1650 is the cheapest 6c/12t IVB-E Xeon. The next step up is the 1660 which is also 6c/12t but a bit useless if you'll be overclocking since the 1650 is cheaper. the 1680 is what I've had my eye on, but they're still expensive as hell. The 1680 v2 is IVB-E, unlocked, but 8c/16t while retaining the 130W TDP of the i7 chips.


If you mean on the 3820, I don't recall an exact figure, but it was a little under 1.3V, I want to say 1.275V.

I can see why you have your eye on that 1680...8 cores and ivy wow! You'd have serious performance and benchmarking number fun with that one! Obviously it would be the best silicon available so even with 2 extra cores dragging on your overclock the superior silicone required to have 8 functional cores may all but make up for that. Wow, I'd love one of those but I'm sure when I look it up it'll be close to the craziness of the x99 CPU's I've looked at.

Also your voltage on VCCSA is probably dead on...with 4.5 ghz and 2400 memory with CAS 11 I could get away with 1.2....however pushing memory to CAS 10 and/or pushing the bclock and memory over 2400 it required 1.28-1.3. So I think your guestimate from memory is dead on considering your overclocks were similar to mine right down to memory timings/speed and your voltages are very similar...which for a decent CPU of same exact 32 nm type. Oh btw, I haven't tried over 4 gig IBT but have encouraging results with 2450 memory and 4.6 ghz and CAS 10 timings.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

All of the E5 16xx v2 chips are unlocked, it's just that the 1650 is the cheapest 6c/12t IVB-E Xeon. The next step up is the 1660 which is also 6c/12t but a bit useless if you'll be overclocking since the 1650 is cheaper. the 1680 is what I've had my eye on, but they're still expensive as hell. The 1680 v2 is IVB-E, unlocked, but 8c/16t while retaining the 130W TDP of the i7 chips.

Just to put a fine point on it...a quick search or two through various channels the best price I saw for the 1680 was $875 or so. I guess it all depends on how relevant x79 with 8 cores is vs Kaby lake X which just yesterday Techpowerup reported on timetable and more solid specs on the cpu's/platform etc. X99 really doesn't give you a whole lot more than x79 other than a few better speed ports and few extra types of ports and 2-4 extra cores...however with the 1680 you get roughly the same unless you really "need" 10 cores and those are almost double the price of the 1680 as of this moment so yeah, kinda tough to make good decision now without hoping you guessed right. To me it just seems too many balls are up in the air and not enough have fallen to the ground to make a solid decision with enough certainty to know you won't regret it later.

 

[Random Murderer]

Just to put a fine point on it...a quick search or two through various channels the best price I saw for the 1680 was $875 or so. I guess it all depends on how relevant x79 with 8 cores is vs Kaby lake X which just yesterday Techpowerup reported on timetable and more solid specs on the cpu's/platform etc. X99 really doesn't give you a whole lot more than x79 other than a few better speed ports and few extra types of ports and 2-4 extra cores...however with the 1680 you get roughly the same unless you really "need" 10 cores and those are almost double the price of the 1680 as of this moment so yeah, kinda tough to make good decision now without hoping you guessed right. To me it just seems too many balls are up in the air and not enough have fallen to the ground to make a solid decision with enough certainty to know you won't regret it later.

For me, it will really be a decision of going with a newer architecture that has negligible IPC gains and ending up with a completely new system, or keeping the system I have and just swapping CPUs. It would be down the line a bit, hopefully the price of the 1680 drops a good bit around the time Skylake-X is released.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

For me, it will really be a decision of going with a newer architecture that has negligible IPC gains and ending up with a completely new system, or keeping the system I have and just swapping CPUs. It would be down the line a bit, hopefully the price of the 1680 drops a good bit around the time Skylake-X is released.

Ditto, simply put. Let's face it, not that hard to pop off your cooler and stick cpu in and reattach cooler and you have major upgrade...much more hassle to remove motherboard and every stupid connection from power supply etc and reattach it all and blah blah blah. So yeah, as you said I am so tempted to grab a cpu for this platform but just don't know how much IPC improvement and other possible gains from new platform that would make it worth the hassle and money to upgrade to a whole new platform. But now that you made me aware of that interesting xeon beast ty I will have to keep an eye on that as well as the actual performance numbers etc from Kaby lake...also, you didn't mention it but WHAT IF AMD pulls off a stunning upset of Intel and their next platform is a great value and performance is comparable to Intel? Maybe it's pretty unlikely AMD will be good enough and maybe you know more than I do about it but that's another potential wrinkle in our upgrade thoughts.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-...0x-/162100562943?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

Not sure if this is unlocked...but if so it appears to be the XEON version of the 4960x

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Since im not running SLi anymore (currently -- maybe upgrading to a 1080ti next year after the price gouging stops) ive thrown in a USB 3.0 controller card to cover for the dead ports. I dont think i'll bother getting the board repaired. Its a had a good life and done its time. Maybe i'll do a complete system overhaul in a year or two.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah, not sure what I'm going to do I have at least one pci-e slot (first one) that is toast on this board and now it's back to on every cold boot booting with code "00" then resetting and booting normally...which I guess is ok but isn't quite right so just not really happy with that quirk which I can't figure out relating to anything whatsoever. literally it showed up one day, disappeared for month/s and for last month or so is back so maybe it relates to settings I have but no idea why it would even do it in the first place makes zero sense to me. I have a 980ti currently and probably is more than good enough for a long time I'll probably sit out 1080 train and get the next crop of GPU's. Anyway I hear you on the board, though it sounds like minus those ports it's fine so I wouldn't rush till it gives you some major problem or major features stop working.

So does anyone know about that xeon cpu I linked to and if it is locked/unlocked? If it were unlocked it's a steal and is esentially 4960x ivy-E but the unlocked part makes all the difference.

 

[Caring1]

It's locked down tight.

 

[Random Murderer]

It's locked down tight.

Actually, everything I've been able to find says otherwise. There was a post over on [H] stating it has a max multiplier of 57x, and a post over on CPU World stating that it is "fully unlocked." Google the ES S-Spec code, QE83.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Lol, just what I hoped for...such consistent confirmation and concensus, yeah right, at this moment Russian roulette with most chambers of gun filled is maybe better odds. But yeah seriously though that's why I asked, I saw a lot of "ifs" and conflicting information online that suggests yeah it's locked, yeah it's unlocked, yeah maybe it's unlocked, yeah maybe it's locked...like wtf? The whole mystery behind Intel's cpus especially once you get into ES's is like trying to verify Bigfoot.

 

[Random Murderer]

Lol, just what I hoped for...such consistent confirmation and concensus, yeah right, at this moment Russian roulette with most chambers of gun filled is maybe better odds. But yeah seriously though that's why I asked, I saw a lot of "ifs" and conflicting information online that suggests yeah it's locked, yeah it's unlocked, yeah maybe it's unlocked, yeah maybe it's locked...like wtf? The whole mystery behind Intel's cpus especially once you get into ES's is like trying to verify Bigfoot.

When it gets into ES chips, your best bet is to look around based on the S-Spec code. On a retail chip, the code will be 5 digits, on ES it will be 4 digits, and in this particular case is QE83.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Images/sspec/L_00000624.jpg
6C/12T Ivy Bridge-EP, 3.4~3.7 GHz, 15 MB L3, R1 core stepping.
Has fully unlocked clock multiplier.
Probably an early ES of Core i7-4960X or Xeon E5-1660 v2.

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that it is unlocked, but it's your money to gamble or not.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

True on both, I had an inkling it was unlocked right off the bat and now with everything I see overwhelmingly it points to unlocked, I guess worst case I get a pretty cheap locked 4960x to play with. So worse case isn't that bad and best case, it's a heck of a deal and most ES's are pretty good silicon hence why they are used.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Well good news... It turns out the USB 3.0 ports on my motherboard not working were because my PSU was literally on the verge of death. and the rail that powered the USB & CPU were probably failing hence me probably struggling to hold my OC. PC started shutting off for no reason at all last friday and even though a new PSU was delivered yesterday I had to go to work and was too tired to make the swap last night when i came home.

Just finished putting the new PSU in (AX760) and powered everything up and testing the borked USB 3.0 ports on the back of the motherboard was the first thing i did and surprise surprise! everything works!!

I have since removed the USB 3.0 pci-e controller as its not needed anymore.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Interesting, also great for you! I actually am considering the angle that my psu is wonky/failing myself. My camera won't work on usb ports, it recognizes camera and ports work for charging devices and my mouse and keyboard but transferring pics or hooking up to camera fails. May be just a driver problem but always used to work, also I do not have the pc shut off for no reason but ditto my OC seems all over the place and it boots funny and my tabs in browser if left open for a while eventually crash. Add to that the Asus program you can OC with and shows all voltages etc that is on when I boot at times gives weird random "warnings" with voltages on various things being 0 or way high or way low. Computer never crashes when that has happened and could be glitches in program but...just a lot of things together that make me wonder, particularly since I had a bad surge caused by me with my graphics card which was fried and one PCI-E slot it appears died...but who's to say the surge didn't do damage to the power supply which shut itself off when that happened? Also I checked how old it is...I bought it like 8 years ago new from Newegg and it's been in near constant service ever since. Anyway I'll probably did as you did and get a new modular power supply and worse case I use other as back up and I can rule it out for any problems I'm having with PC.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

HI all, been a while so just an update. Been on my laptop for few weeks, screwing around with case and it's falling apart and power switch won't turn on but all the lights were on and everything was ready and switch was wonky for a while and randomly resetting...so I got a really big case with tons of fans and room but no place specifically for watercooling just like old case...but layout is such this wasn't as easy to just tie wrap to something so I either have to take fans out like I did in first case or tie wrap to fans which I prefer to do. Anyway got lazy since I have laptop and haven't gamed a while so just posting on forums/emails etc. I also got new bios chip pre-loaded with newest bios just to rule out any bad flashes by me plus now I got like 5 chips I like having backups considering I have had a few go bad before. So...will take some pics I think this will be a great unit last bit I really need is a serious processor to plunk in but kinda stuck with current processor till Zen hits and hopefully crashes the old intel prices or at least wait and see if that is possible.

 

[Ungari]

HI all, been a while so just an update. Been on my laptop for few weeks, screwing around with case and it's falling apart and power switch won't turn on but all the lights were on and everything was ready and switch was wonky for a while and randomly resetting...so I got a really big case with tons of fans and room but no place specifically for watercooling just like old case...but layout is such this wasn't as easy to just tie wrap to something so I either have to take fans out like I did in first case or tie wrap to fans which I prefer to do. Anyway got lazy since I have laptop and haven't gamed a while so just posting on forums/emails etc. I also got new bios chip pre-loaded with newest bios just to rule out any bad flashes by me plus now I got like 5 chips I like having backups considering I have had a few go bad before. So...will take some pics I think this will be a great unit last bit I really need is a serious processor to plunk in but kinda stuck with current processor till Zen hits and hopefully crashes the old intel prices or at least wait and see if that is possible.

Wait for Ryzen.
You'll be glad you did!

 

[dalekdukesboy]

You stalking me? . Couldn't resist, maybe you have your eyes on moderator spot here? HEHE. Anyway thanks, I hope so, I won't upgrade to it I have all this shit and spent so much on 2 boards etc and actually have 2 processors etc. So yeah I will wait but not to get Ryzen but just so hopefully it tanks the x79 hardware prices because people will be all over the Zen and if it's priced as low as is thought but challenges Intels 1700$ x99 10 core processors etc won't be long before prices on new and used Intel stuff will tank I'd think because value just won't be there for prices they go for currently.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Well good news... It turns out the USB 3.0 ports on my motherboard not working were because my PSU was literally on the verge of death. and the rail that powered the USB & CPU were probably failing hence me probably struggling to hold my OC. PC started shutting off for no reason at all last friday and even though a new PSU was delivered yesterday I had to go to work and was too tired to make the swap last night when i came home.

Just finished putting the new PSU in (AX760) and powered everything up and testing the borked USB 3.0 ports on the back of the motherboard was the first thing i did and surprise surprise! everything works!!

I have since removed the USB 3.0 pci-e controller as its not needed anymore.

So how is all going with your system? I see it's gotten better obviously just wondering if anything else to report, I'm still slowly taking my whole shebang and putting it in new tower so after all the tinkering and swapping of pieces I've done I think I just needed a break that was major undertaking (again) and I'm just taking my time to not burn myself out on something that should be fun plus I don't want to repeat mistakes I've made in past rushing a build together.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

For me, it will really be a decision of going with a newer architecture that has negligible IPC gains and ending up with a completely new system, or keeping the system I have and just swapping CPUs. It would be down the line a bit, hopefully the price of the 1680 drops a good bit around the time Skylake-X is released.

Now to update your comment and mine from what I see it's more like prices dropping from AMD Ryzen, not so much from Skylake-X which least from what I see or don't see isn't much of an improvement...if it were it's being hushed up and AMD is screaming from everywhere with benchies on their Ryzen and so far that if it comes out sometime soon (hopefully) may be the thing that crashes 1680/all x79/all x99 hardware prices inline to reasonable amounts assuming Intel suddenly is just an option not THE option in high performance CPU's. Big factor beyond performance of course is price, and from what I've heard from people who seem to have a good inkling pricing will be low enough to quickly force Intel's hand (assuming performance is where it should be) into cutting their prices to be viable.

 

[Kanan]

Afaik Skylake-X will arrive end of 2017/early 2018 and given it's just Skylake with more cores I'm not really excited about it.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

So how is all going with your system? I see it's gotten better obviously just wondering if anything else to report, I'm still slowly taking my whole shebang and putting it in new tower so after all the tinkering and swapping of pieces I've done I think I just needed a break that was major undertaking (again) and I'm just taking my time to not burn myself out on something that should be fun plus I don't want to repeat mistakes I've made in past rushing a build together.

So far so good, I did suffer a minor panic earlier in the week where i thought my AX760 was faulty but it was actually my OC'd graphics card causing the system to randomly die and go into boot loop. The problem stopped once i stepped the OC down a little.


Ive been looking for things to put in the other PCI-E slots. I was possibling looking at a Sata to PCI-E 4x so i could use one of my spare SSDs but it seems those arent as popular as they used to be and there is only 1 manufacturer selling it on amazon

 

[Peter Lindgren]

Hello!

I got a Gigabyte X79-UD3 for free. So I replaced my i5-3570k system. I bought a 4930k from Ebay and is very pleased!

This is my 24/7 clock with a Kraken cooler.

Time Spy with R9 Nano

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Welcome, and that's a pretty good OC with low voltage, very nice!