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

[Random Murderer]

Yeah all the "ifs" right now are the problem with deciding to make any moves with hardware.

Which is exactly why I haven't sunk any money into my PC in about a year or so, there's simply too much happening in the CPU and GPU arenas to make a solid decision on anything right now.

 

[Kanan]

Well, if you noticed in my post I said basically the same thing, so I hope your "lot going on" is better than mine put it that way, hopefully just busy or more mundane stresses, those can suck but hope no tragedies/really bad stuff! Either way, hope it gets less stressful for you. I was dating since around Christmas so that and holidays pulled me away from this, then she passed away and a coworker died...both 2 weeks ago the week of the 8th...not to emotionally vomit or TMI with you guys but just a heads up and least you know if I say something stupid or act strange maybe I'll have an excuse lol. That said, hope you all are well, definitely life gained new perspective for me since that week. Again that said, this is my escape tweaking this setup in new case and trying to get it more like Freedom's case and much less like my old mess of a case!

np bro, you can always send me a PM and we can talk, or we talk here, np. I just hope you're alright.

That's where I'm at.
Theoretically, I should be able to get a decent OC out of a 2697 v2 just by switching to the 125 strap (125 x 35 = 4375), with luck I may be able to get it to my ideal BCLK, 128.625. That would put the CPU at 4.5GHz and RAM at 2400. I doubt the VRMs would handle that, but if Ryzen ends up being a flop, I can pick up a 2697 v2 for cheaper than a 1680 v2 and at least try. You can pick up a 2697 v2 QS for ~$600USD right now, and from what I've been able to gather, the 8c/16T Ryzen chips will be $300+, so getting a 2697 v2 would still be cheaper than getting a Ryzen chip, X370 board that will OC well, and 32GB DDR4. That being said, if Ryzen lives up to the hype, I'll be building a Ryzen system as soon as I have the cash to do so and probably turn this X79 system into a server/cruncher. That's a big "if," though.

Ryzen should be nice from all the informations that I gathered, the only variable that's left is core clocks, so if the chip is high clocked from the beginning, or is able to overclock itself via its ultra flexible Turbo, or you can overclock it yourself at least to 4.2 or 4.5 GHz, it should be a winner, I'm very sure. That's a few "if's" but not big ones, because french magazine "Canard" leaked they achieved 5 GHz on air - so if that's true, the chip is a sure 100% winner. 14nm GloFo should be mature enough for that by now is my guess, but as always, it is to take with a grain of salt until we have it ourselves or reading proper reviews of it from tech sites such as TPU, we trust.

btw. I'm not using special VRM cooling as you guys, I just have a inverted case where 2x 140mm fans are directly blowing on the GPU and CPU/Mainboard without any obstacles, so essentially my VRM cooling is already included in the case itself, that's also the reason why I love this case so much, it's a big improvement compared to the one I had before, that only had 3x 92mm that were not at all blowing directly on anything but the hard drives, that were mounted horizontically compared to the mainboard (Chieftec Bravo). Just look at my avatar and imagine the left side from the GPU/Noctua is completely free with 2x 140mm fans blowing on it. That said, I just played BF1 that's using all 6 cores at about 100% (no HT usage), and I forgot to power up the fans to run at 1200 RPM, they just ran at about 1000 RPM or even less and it still was enough, nothing throttled and I was honestly a bit surprised. However, next time I'll let them run at 100% RPM again, for the sake of longevity, to not risk reducing "life time" of anything, especially VRMs on both CPU/GPU.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

np bro, you can always send me a PM and we can talk, or we talk here, np. I just hope you're alright.


Ryzen should be nice from all the informations that I gathered, the only variable that's left is core clocks, so if the chip is high clocked from the beginning, or is able to overclock itself via its ultra flexible Turbo, or you can overclock it yourself at least to 4.2 or 4.5 GHz, it should be a winner, I'm very sure. That's a few "if's" but not big ones, because french magazine "Canard" leaked they achieved 5 GHz on air - so if that's true, the chip is a sure 100% winner. 14nm GloFo should be mature enough for that by now is my guess, but as always, it is to take with a grain of salt until we have it ourselves or reading proper reviews of it from tech sites such as TPU, we trust.

btw. I'm not using special VRM cooling as you guys, I just have a inverted case where 2x 140mm fans are directly blowing on the GPU and CPU/Mainboard without any obstacles, so essentially my VRM cooling is already included in the case itself, that's also the reason why I love this case so much, it's a big improvement compared to the one I had before, that only had 3x 92mm that were not at all blowing directly on anything but the hard drives, that were mounted horizontically compared to the mainboard (Chieftec Bravo). Just look at my avatar and imagine the left side from the GPU/Noctua is completely free with 2x 140mm fans blowing on it. That said, I just played BF1 that's using all 6 cores at about 100% (no HT usage), and I forgot to power up the fans to run at 1200 RPM, they just ran at about 1000 RPM or even less and it still was enough, nothing throttled and I was honestly a bit surprised. However, next time I'll let them run at 100% RPM again, for the sake of longevity, to not risk reducing "life time" of anything, especially VRMs on both CPU/GPU.

Thanks again, your noted support and well wishes are just additional help to simply posting here with me which again by itself is very good therapy, so thanks for both! Yeah, Ryzen unless someone hands it to me or I get a 6 figure job suddenly isn't happening for me lol. Just the amount of work and sweat hours not to mention money I spent on this setup (literally buying the mobo 2x with first one getting damaged by me with cooler) is why I am pretty wedded to this x79 setup and it would take close to a miracle to get me to sell it off and put all the money and effort to install a new mobo/with cooler memory etc; especially considering the ddr3 I have I couldn't even reuse in anything now it's all ddr4! No thanks lol. So Ryzen, at least initially for me will just be good for competition and to follow for fun but x79 is stayin' for me for a while lol. Yeah, 5 ghz and all leaked things are only heresay at the moment, but there is enough facts we have seen that it appears Ryzen will be good, just not sure how good. Also your VRM probably won't need cooling if you don't use high voltage on FSB, PLL, VCCSA etc which is only neccesary for very high CPU OC and for memory OC's and Bclock OC's, none of which you are doing 24/7. So it is kinda cool it works out yours sounds pretty well cooled anyway but you probably hardly needed it at least with how you've OC'd so far. Yes, your vrm's probably were a bit hot but no way to know unless you had readings or touched them as you gamed lol. But yes this whole platform heat is the primary enemy, just the nature of the beast.

 

[Kanan]

Same here I'm "wedded" to X79 for the next years or until it's not bearable anymore lol.

Yeah no memory OC atm. I have tested my memory a few days ago with aida 64 extreme and it resulted in about DDR4 3600 speed, so the quad channel scaling is for real, quite useless to overclock it at this moment. I'd rather fiddle around with 5ghz+ on the CPU but I need a water cooler for that first.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Unbelievable. I wasn't happy with temps on cpu/gpu and took case apart, my rad was pretty dusty just from short time in the old case which was a dust haven so I got it all back together...added two fans to back of it for push/pull and temps are the same. Kinda crappy thermal compound I reapplied it was last bit I had left several years old that I am annoyed with but can live with....however did the same thing with my GPU since I was taking it out anyway and now it instantly hits 95 degrees and throttles to almost 2d speed so yeah no idea wtf that is all about. I was having issues getting screws back in well so figured it was that and I tried cranking down made no difference...then I removed a plate that was semi in the way so making sure that wasn't impeding the contact. I have no paste so I just got it nice and tight and even with no paste it shouldn't behave that crazily but yeah same thing....so now I'm wondering if somehow in removing cooler and reapplying I damaged something? I don't know...as I said bad paste or no paste I can't imagine it hitting temps like that so fast when before it was a gradual uptick in temps quickly up to 50's and 60's but took seconds..now it's the instant I start a test and it hits 3d clocks and 3d voltage. Not happy. Anyway I only have Best Buy anywhere near me so I'll head there and hopefully they have some decent paste and least I can rule that out but seems like something else is going on and I'm not liking the feel of it.

 

[Kanan]

The only thing I can think of is, that the cooler is not attached properly to the GPU, thus resulting in bad cooling.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah, I just tried it and the heatpipes are cool, so in a way that's encouraging in that I'm not sure how but just seems the core has pitifully bad contact with the cooler base but have swapped it out several times before and nothing so out of whack as this...I mean it literally just goes in about 2 seconds from 38 degrees 2d speed temps to 80 then 95 once 3d clocks kick in and voltage kicks up. I mean card otherwise is working I'm typing here and in 2d clocks it appears to function etc just can't fathom how suddenly cooler is making such bad contact...Anyway I just ordered some "Insignia" thermal compound which was the only one Best Buy had in stock so It is ready for pickup tomorrow at of course not the closest store which is 12 miles but 24 miles or so which isn't so bad I guess and probably do me good for a road trip. I've swapped so many gpus/cpus that the 3-4 containers of paste I have are finally gone I never thought I'd use them all but with so much reapplying of paste I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. So I'll go out and grab that tomorrow and be careful applying it and make sure I crank screws tight and then if it isn't massively better I know something else is going on.

 

[Kanan]

Yeah maybe it is the cooler paste after all, because if you're sure the cooler is attached properly it is the only way the cooling can still be bad. Maybe don't remove the GPU cooler so often lol. I did that only a few times in my life, one time it was a broken cooler, so I had to replace it with Arctic one suited for HD 2600 XT. And second was when I was baking the GTX 570 and had to remove the cooler in order to do that. That's it. I find removing the GPU cooler, cleaning and reapplying TIM overrated, but maybe that's just me, being lucky with my GPUs.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah, up till the last several years I never even unattached a gpu cooler, and most of my gpus were stock models with the high rpm internal fan that exhausts out the back of the card but does a mediocre job and is loud and whiny at best...Till I got this system or maybe slightly before is when I started getting more acquainted with GPU's and why custom models are better and started playing around with cooler swapping. This however is pretty odd I really can't figure out how it's so bad even if it made marginal contact but at any rate I will go pickup my paste sometime today and considering my Arctic silver 5 I was using was about 8 years old and almost dried solid when I got to bottom of it kinda was time. I did also use the last bit of the paste that came with my dh14 cooler by Noctua but no idea how good that stuff is and even that tube has been open a couple years. Anyway least I'll have paste even if it's not the best I can get and it'll certainly be good enough where if cooler is on right it shouldn't even be possible to get temps I had....Those are temps I'd expect if you forgot to put fans on your cooler or if you turned card on with no cooler lol.

 

[Kanan]

The problem with Arctic Silver is, it needs "burn in" time, whereas more usual TIM doesn't. The NT-H1 you mentioned too, for example, doesn't need a burn in time, it's way better. So it maybe needed some time to be better, but could very well be that you're right too and the TIM is just old now. Anyway, good luck with the card.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

ADD ON TO ORIGINAL POST BELOW

Behold, my first real go with the 3930k that I actually got with this mobo when I had to replace the one I borked. I didn't think the CPU was good for much other than being a backup but not only was it handy to get newest bios not compatible with ES chips but also I was having very little luck getting things stable using most of my mem on memtest OR Intelburntest since I put this system back together just recently in new case.

Also had some weird glitches with crashing programs and thought windows was broken or something in build wasn't right....however when I just put the new CPU in along with GPU back in both with new thermal paste I then ran this test with 12 gigs of memory (which tests every stick I have once you factor in how much is already used for windows/idle/other stuff) however I could only get 10 gig worth of memory to pass...no matter how I tinkered with settings in memory.

So I kinda was thankful I had this handle little program because that told me essentially 1 of my (4) 4 gigabyte sticks of memory must be bad because every time I got multiple errors very quickly on only 1 of the tests so I kinda was bummed thinking one memory slot is bad or more likely I got a bad or just less capable stick of ram that couldn't do what the others could. However understanding that only way to figure out what the issue was is to get my hands on ram and see first if they are all seated correctly with all the moving of cords I've done and how easy it would be to bump the memory latches and unseat a stick just enough so it shows in bios properly but is failing in windows. One time I booted up recently I was in triple channel so one stick wasn't registering and that was yesterday I believe and when I tested max memory it was one time they all passed but that's cause 1 stick wasn't registering.

That is part of what made me suspect a stick was failing or badly seated etc...last stick of ram towards front of casing with HDD cages etc I barely touched the clip that holds it in and it popped half out. So I was hopeful as I popped it back in and felt it firmly click in place....The screenshot above is me getting all 12gigs=all of ram to work after I did that! Something so simple and slightly off was causing instability, failed tests, and programs hanging and half working. Never overlook the simple and obvious!

BELOW IS ORIGINAL POST

Yeah, I shortly after posting this to you found the ONLY place within 20 miles of me that had paste in stock which was best buy and had some put aside for me, I went yesterday to pick it up and it was a best buy I never had been in since I have one that is about half the distance but is part of a mall and never has been that into PC stuff was mostly movies and such...this place had appliances and pretty much anything you could think of that had any tech in it, was pretty nice store wish it were closer but long story short I picked up the paste I put aside and got another tube as well of another brand just to have plenty since the stuff I had as I said was ancient and was crusty the last bits I pushed out of tube. Anyway one tube is by "Insignia" who I don't know much about but I have seen they make cpu fans and other stuff so I'm sure it's adequate if not great and that is one online I had put aside and when there I picked up another tube of Thermaltake tg-7 which I'm assuming is pretty decent stuff just from knowing the brand and on that tube they list all the specs etc.

Well definitely was the paste, I did put the Accelero cooler back on the card just to see if maybe the contact face was bad on the MSI gaming cooler and I strapped 3 fans to it and yeah coolest temps I've ever seen on card with new fans plus the Insignia paste. I also used it on the CPU for that was hotter than I'd like with last bits of that old paste I used on it and I now have the 3930k and the newest bios chip I ordered online a while back in place and everything working slick. Much better bios, many more options, more refined and boots faster and more reliably. Still need to see what settings work with the new CPU but it boots with 2400 mhz mem no problem and at 4.6 ghz so not sure it will do as well as 3960 ES but if it's even close it's still better just due to being more stable with bios and maybe better than ES being final retail version less the 3 mb of cache and I think you sacrifice some pci-e lanes but otherwise identical part.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

However....won't pass intelburntest one time lol. Then I went to Aida64 to check out memory bandwidth etc....literally like 32k for read when it should be and was 56-62k for the 3960 at similar settings. Not sure what that's all about, I guess it's mostly working but that still bugs me and I'll see what is stable tomorrow and if it keeps giving scores like that I know something isn't right still somewhere. Might even pop ES back in lol.

 

[Kanan]

Don't forget to flash the old bios back if you plan to go back to the ES!

Glad your GPU is in good shape again. 3930K has full lanes btw. (all of SB-E / IB-E, it's just Haswell-E 5820K and BW-E 6800K which are reduced).

Maybe memory sticks aren't working correctly, I guess you'll figure that one out too. I think the 3960X ES is better, but if you need the newer/better bios etc. you should stay with the 3930K.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah, newer bios definitely is more mature, I think it's literally 2 years newer lol, last bios is 2014 one I had with ES was 2012. Thanks, yes I wouldn't forget the ES needs the old chip already been there couple years ago when I first tried and had no idea why nothing worked after flashed to new but old bios would work etc. I have 4-5 bios chips now, I ordered 2 when I was initially having issues not realizing chip simply wouldn't work with newer bios and board came with 2 plus I ordered 1 more with newest bios on it so I'm well insured against a bad flash on a chip etc which is a nice thing. Also nice to have 2 cpus because other than just the fun of playing around seeing how they perform differently you can have a backup if one gets really tired or abused and degrades or just dies. Anyway it is kinda weird...even just before I put the 3930k in and the new bios chip I got like 60k read speeds with ES they just weren't stable I'm thinking now due to that ram being set in improperly, but just now I booted with XMP settings with memory with CAS 8 timings and 1600 speed etc which according to the example on Aida64 should get me about 55k read speeds in quad channel at stock cpu speeds....I got 19k. Thanks for the lane correction on 3930k I wasn't worried about it but nice to get it straight I've read about the x99 cpu's and that's probably where I got that from. What matters most to me is wtf is up with this horrible bandwidth, my score atm literally puts me in the midst of dual channel and some triple channel x58 setups. I'm kind of at a loss for how it could be so bad especially when it shows all 4 sticks register, and it shows quad channel...I honestly don't think it's the sticks I never have had this cpu in long enough to even do benchmarks till now I just had it on one day to make sure it worked so I'm almost more suspecting the memory controller on this thing is not working right. Only other thing if my settings are all correct which I think they are is if the bios somehow has a flaw or issue that is gimping the scores. Just silly, this platform is definitely the most fickle and quirky I've ever worked with, as I believe Random Murderer said SB-E is a huge challenge I'd like to have his non-challenge of using IB-E as he put it because it was almost too easy. I'll take too easy at this point lol. Well I'll play around a little more see what the flaw in the slaw is.

 

[Kanan]

Well maybe IB-E IMC is better but the mess is the platform X79 not the cpus, if at all, I mean I'm pretty happy, never had any problems. I think problems with the platform start as soon as you start to play around with overclocking, more like special overclocking, not the simple one I'm doing increasing multiplier and voltage and set everything else to auto lol. But I very very much doubt X99 is any better there and you can't compare E platform to the consumer one.

If you change the cpu and bandwidth goes down its almost clear to me that the 3930k must be defective. Didn't you say you got it cheap somewhere? Sounds to me like IMC isn't working correctly and this is something you can't correct, unless it's a software failure of windows 7 which I very much doubt at this point. But you can install a second windows and try it out of course, to be sure.

Edit: another possibility is the bios. You could try a older version.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Exactly, I'm going to actually put the older bios chip back in with the 3930k and see what it does. I got the board and the cpu for 400'ish? on Ebay when my other board croaked totally when I tried to bend back the cpu pins my cooler crushed and I could get no more than triple channel memory, so I got the rive4 and the cpu they were a pair. I already thought about the bios that is what I'm about to do and see what happens, use the same bios as the ES was using see if that changes things...if it gives essentially identical numbers I'll know it points to the cpu more than likely, if not, then I'd be fairly disappointed the newest bios would be so horrible with performance. Regardless, I did run IBT and got several runs passed with 1600 mhz and cas 8 and gigaflops are high. Well, I switched to old bios chip and now even with pretty crappy basic timing/settings @ 1600 mhz the memory read is 43k or so which is right around where it should be next to the standard result for 1600 mhz and x79 platform in Aida. So bios itself has issue or that particular flash of it at least....how weird. But it was kinda what I expected that was more likely to me than the chip having such issues but at any rate seems like if I can find a glitch with this system I find it or it finds me lol. I'll try to flash it myself and see what happens at some point. Not like I'm worried about screwing it up I got several chips to play with.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

I guess it was just a funky flash or some issue with settings etc because I used the cap converter to flash to newer bios's that were made for windows 8 at the time and I flashed the old bios from April 12, 2012 to the new .cap version versus the old .rom version I believe it is but anyway regardless it gives you an August 12th 2012 bios which must be the first one to use that .CAP format and it works fine, and I did the Aida test and it's 47k or so even with same loose timings and 1600 mhz so it's actually better than the old bios from April 2012 so again it seems that was just a badly flashed bios perhaps. Now the real test I'm going to flash to that same newest bios I had which sucked eggs at first with memory bandwidth and we'll see how good the bios is and how bad the flashing job done by guy I bought chip from was done...learning process...never stops here lol.

 

[Kanan]

I guess it was just a funky flash or some issue with settings etc because I used the cap converter to flash to newer bios's that were made for windows 8 at the time and I flashed the old bios from April 12, 2012 to the new .cap version versus the old .rom version I believe it is but anyway regardless it gives you an August 12th 2012 bios which must be the first one to use that .CAP format and it works fine, and I did the Aida test and it's 47k or so even with same loose timings and 1600 mhz so it's actually better than the old bios from April 2012 so again it seems that was just a badly flashed bios perhaps. Now the real test I'm going to flash to that same newest bios I had which sucked eggs at first with memory bandwidth and we'll see how good the bios is and how bad the flashing job done by guy I bought chip from was done...learning process...never stops here lol.

Funny things happen a lot on this platform, thats why its my absolute favourite platform out of the ones I owned so far. It's so complex and has so many options and great expansion opportunities. Funny is also, that the "fun buy" 3960X ended up as being pretty substantial for BF1 which I'm playing now. It regularly uses 6 cores and on one of the more extreme maps with a lot of destructibles, a lot of houses, it even uses all 12 threads. I had hard time believing it, but when I checked it again in Afterburner and not only via OSD, every "CPU" had high usage. That's just ... wow. I'm glad I have this CPU now, I guess the 3820 would had been a bottleneck for this game.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

However the new bios is doing wonders for my memory bandwidth...literally off the charts even though this isn't stable my old bios with ES best I ever got for Write was 35k or so never could figure out why but I read that sometimes this platform has a bug with that depending on bios and so forth. At any rate that is now practically doubled and is highest of the numbers rather than lowest, and read and copy being low to mid 60's is quite good. The IMC on this cpu definitely not as good won't boot at over 2450 mhz or so but that said the timings were loosened and numbers were far worse than this at over 2400 mhz so this is still significantly better with tweaked bios and 3930k I just have to dial in what is actually stable...only thing I miss is I had a nice old preset in old bios for 2400 mhz memory new one doesn't....every preset is for ivy-E starting with 2400 all the way up to 3000 mhz and settings are way off for Sandy-E! Just tells me how much different the focus was on memory with this 2014 bios vs. my 2012 one I was using forever. So now I just have to get my video card sorted out and I'll have a decently functioning platform I think.

Tell me about it, but in my bios flash case classic example of if you want something done right do it yourself it seems. My videocard now works btw but uses 120% power when I ran furmark and it was only at 1253 core and 1.03 volts (stock), so even though no fans are even plugged into GPU board it's suddenly using a ton of power to do little. So not sure if I've got a VGA bios problem or the card is just really tired and the few minutes I ran it when it was super hot just destroyed some resistors or stuff on the board so it now just wastes a ton of power at basically stock settings. I did get it to work in the first PCI-E slot amazingly but unless it was just bad contacts etc screen cut out when I stressed GPU and you'd see screen tearing and other visual "noise" as card was stressed and neither now are happening in 3rd pci-e slot. At any rate, GPU isn't right for whatever reason but my cpu etc is all working great, I even got it to boot at 125 mhz strap which annoyingly I couldn't get it to do before. It actually failed this time as well but I for kicks used one of the pre-set overclock options in the bios which sets board at 125 mhz and mild 4.2 ghz 2000 mhz memory and changes a few bios settings I normally changed myself...and it worked presto. Almost every setting is same as I'd have or I'd even have more voltage so I'm thinking it may be the memory mode which they set to auto and I usually set to 2 which is performance mode. Other than that not much difference, however I will change that and perhaps a few other settings if I see any that are different and isolate what it is I was doing that caused the board to fail to boot at all at 125 strap. So anyway glad your cpu is just enough for your game, I've not played a game in a week or two with stuff going on and only a couple I was playing anyway. But definitely a lot going on with x79 and sb-e and once I get this down best as I can I suppose most any other platform in the future will seem relatively easy.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Also on the whole memory thing I'm curious if anyone knows of a good way to isolate a "weak" stick of ram other than taking them all out put them in first slot etc that I've seen advised before. Because however I set things on the memtest with 2gig tests only 1 instance every time fails more often than not so I'm thinking of just taking out the one I am suspect of and maybe swap a couple around into same slot make sure it isn't a slot issue though I tend to doubt that. Anyway I'll play around a little more and see what I can come up with.

 

[Kanan]

However the new bios is doing wonders for my memory bandwidth...literally off the charts even though this isn't stable my old bios with ES best I ever got for Write was 35k or so never could figure out why but I read that sometimes this platform has a bug with that depending on bios and so forth. At any rate that is now practically doubled and is highest of the numbers rather than lowest, and read and copy being low to mid 60's is quite good. The IMC on this cpu definitely not as good won't boot at over 2450 mhz or so but that said the timings were loosened and numbers were far worse than this at over 2400 mhz so this is still significantly better with tweaked bios and 3930k I just have to dial in what is actually stable...only thing I miss is I had a nice old preset in old bios for 2400 mhz memory new one doesn't....every preset is for ivy-E starting with 2400 all the way up to 3000 mhz and settings are way off for Sandy-E! Just tells me how much different the focus was on memory with this 2014 bios vs. my 2012 one I was using forever. So now I just have to get my video card sorted out and I'll have a decently functioning platform I think.

View attachment 83589
Tell me about it, but in my bios flash case classic example of if you want something done right do it yourself it seems. My videocard now works btw but uses 120% power when I ran furmark and it was only at 1253 core and 1.03 volts (stock), so even though no fans are even plugged into GPU board it's suddenly using a ton of power to do little. So not sure if I've got a VGA bios problem or the card is just really tired and the few minutes I ran it when it was super hot just destroyed some resistors or stuff on the board so it now just wastes a ton of power at basically stock settings. I did get it to work in the first PCI-E slot amazingly but unless it was just bad contacts etc screen cut out when I stressed GPU and you'd see screen tearing and other visual "noise" as card was stressed and neither now are happening in 3rd pci-e slot. At any rate, GPU isn't right for whatever reason but my cpu etc is all working great, I even got it to boot at 125 mhz strap which annoyingly I couldn't get it to do before. It actually failed this time as well but I for kicks used one of the pre-set overclock options in the bios which sets board at 125 mhz and mild 4.2 ghz 2000 mhz memory and changes a few bios settings I normally changed myself...and it worked presto. Almost every setting is same as I'd have or I'd even have more voltage so I'm thinking it may be the memory mode which they set to auto and I usually set to 2 which is performance mode. Other than that not much difference, however I will change that and perhaps a few other settings if I see any that are different and isolate what it is I was doing that caused the board to fail to boot at all at 125 strap. So anyway glad your cpu is just enough for your game, I've not played a game in a week or two with stuff going on and only a couple I was playing anyway. But definitely a lot going on with x79 and sb-e and once I get this down best as I can I suppose most any other platform in the future will seem relatively easy.

What do you mean, you used it without fan plugged in? It sounds like you mishandled your GPU. What exactly did happen?

2400 MHz DDR3 is easily enough, your speeds are way higher than mine, and mine are easily enough for anything already. 1866 Quad = ~3600 double channel. Yours is at about 4800, thats a fucking lot. I wouldn't bother to overclock it any further. I'll probably never overclock the Ram, or just if it's needed, but somehow I doubt that will ever happen. I rather see the CPU being too slow and everything being replaced before that happens. And for benchmarks alone, I think Ram overclocking is the most boring thing ever. GPU + CPU is interesting. Back in the days when I overclocked my Athlon 64 X2 3800+ via FSB ram was overclocked by up to 80 MHz too, so the CPU could ran at 2800 MHz up from 2000 MHz. That was nice, because it was a 40% overclock on both. But first of all it was needed, else I would had ignored the Ram I guess. Ended up with continious usage at 2400 MHz / 240 MHz FSB and RAM. It was Kingston HyperX CL2 ram, nice stuff. The rig is laying behind me, worthless junk by now, I guess I'm keeping it because I'm too lazy or out of sentiment. CPU was the most expensive I ever bought, at about 300 bucks. I don't know if it ever payed off, I think the 2nd core was only in use for background tasks, which were mostly off anyway, so it was kinda useless I guess. My next CPUs after that were all at about 200 bucks or a tad short of that. I think that's a good price for a gamer CPU. First i7 wasn't really expensive at 200 bucks, all the same as the Phenom II 940 I got in the end. But mainboards were expensive (X platform) and DDR3 was brand new and expensive too, so I eneded up with another AMD. I tried to get the i7, because I was really impressed of the new Turbo boost technology, but I had to buy quickly and it was simply too much. But I never regret the Phenom II 940, a great CPU I used for almost 6 years. BF4 was the game that killed it. Needed more bandwith, DDR2 800 with CL4 wasn't up to it at all. My dad is still using it, and now he got a new GTX 1050 Ti coupled with it, ran pretty nice in Firestrike too: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/11161506

 

[dalekdukesboy]

no no, fans are not plugged into the physical GPU board, they are plugged into the motherboard fan ports silly. What I'm saying is the short time I had crap paste and possibly bad contact as well using the MSI gaming cooler may have been more than it could take. Also what is "exciting" to someone with benchmarking is purely subjective, considering most guys/gals plug in a PC or phone/tablet and majority of the public even those semi-tech savvy would find any OC'ing memory or GPU to be totally boring so I get what you're saying just realize we all have a "thing" so memory isn't yours got it. However to me every bit is fascinating, also I was just annoyed my #'s were so bad with new bios at first thinking it was a problem with something so part of my worry was there was a physical problem somewhere. Yeah btw I had an fx-55 Athlon I still have it in my spare room with an abit a8 motherboard actually. Anyway just no idea why my videocard works perfectly but is taking so much juice...it's cool as can be and fans are plugged into mobo so that's even several watts less so no idea how much use/abuse it had before I got it but could have been a lot or just a pretty weak chip. Forgot who said it but someone said the 980ti's fade fast when overclocked etc, from this one chip certainly feels that way...the 980 I had was great till I fu'd it up ran like a champ. Nice, yeah phenom etc not bad just wasn't same as what intel had...if you could afford it lol. Hopefully with new stuff that will all change soon.

 

[Kanan]

Who's the silly one? Your wording was pretty bad man. lol

Anyway, you heard that right. But 980ti only degraded if overclocked at highest possible frequency with high voltages (1480-1550mhz core over many months). Did the card start to be a power sucker after you modded it with the self made cooler or even before it? Was it like that from the beginning when you got it?

 

[dalekdukesboy]

No, it used more power than I'd like to start it is what it is, but no I only noticed the jump since I got a proper cooler on it, but before that it was thermal throttling itself with the bad cooler on it...This card from start only would boost to about 1450 and be stable which I had it at most of time I've had it so it was clocked high as it could go, was low asiic quality so in a way wasn't surprising. But anyway yeah just since it overheated I noticed, literally only ran seconds that way too but if it's just weak silicone is what it is I guess. Just have abused things far worse than that particularly cpu's but also gpu's and never had noticeable issues like that. It still works but I need like a 150% power limit now for OC'ing lol...

 

[Kanan]

No, it used more power than I'd like to start it is what it is, but no I only noticed the jump since I got a proper cooler on it, but before that it was thermal throttling itself with the bad cooler on it...This card from start only would boost to about 1450 and be stable which I had it at most of time I've had it so it was clocked high as it could go, was low asiic quality so in a way wasn't surprising. But anyway yeah just since it overheated I noticed, literally only ran seconds that way too but if it's just weak silicone is what it is I guess. Just have abused things far worse than that particularly cpu's but also gpu's and never had noticeable issues like that. It still works but I need like a 150% power limit now for OC'ing lol...

I would say the Asic is irrelevant, there's no evidence high or low plays a big role on whether your clocks are high or not.

I think the quality of that 980ti isn't the best because it's the cheap model of MSI. But generally 1450 is okay, not really good, but not really bad either. It's not like 1480 would help you get a lot higher fps, it wont. But 1480 is the average any 980ti or gm200 can do.

If you think your gpu is degraded or degrading I would not push it at the highest power settings and go with what's a good balance at 1400mhz or so, 50mhz won't make a big difference anyway, but you're risking your whole gpu if you push it too much.

Ps. I'd never risk the card by playing on insane power limits like 150%. Benchmarking a few minutes maybe okay but never hours of playing. For that 100-110% is the limit for what is healthy for the gpu. I never use more than 100% myself. A friend has a nice 980ti I think he uses it at 90-100% at 1430mhz or so.