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

[cdawall]

Yes exactly I admit I'm no expert on the particulars of bandwidth versus signal timing versus ham sandwiches. I just know they qualified the statement and said you may not get a full 3.0 performance essentially and that results vary whatever the actual "results" are I have no idea they don't say. Yeah, I can honestly say I have clocked the heck out of every cpu at some point and gone for max clocks and usually do a lot of stress testing with very high memory mhz and I usually keep my cpu running at the highest stable clock I'm comfortable with; that said I've never noticed any degradation in a single cpu from fx-55 to core 2 duo e8600 to this ES 3960x equivalent...only thing that has degraded or died on me is a few sticks of memory and one or two motherboards just quit working which I believe was the motherboard or some circuitry on it just died.

I have degraded tons of CPU's my Phenom II 945 wouldn't even run stock clocks at stock voltage after running about a year at 1.55v

 

[Kanan]

I interpreted it as such, that it means essentially that PCI-E 3.0 - at all - is not gueranteed to work, but if it works it works with the expected speed.

Btw I have another theory on that 3930K, maybe your motherboard degraded, I think it's more likely. My friend had the same problem with his i5 2500K after a few years, and I checked his MB - it's simply not the best. He was always touching the limits of his MB.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

I have degraded tons of CPU's my Phenom II 945 wouldn't even run stock clocks at stock voltage after running about a year at 1.55v

well 1.55 volts is a lot....even on my old cpus that were like 90nm I think I didn't use that or barely did. So yeah if you really push them 24/7 for months/years I know it must happen at some point. However as I said every cpu I have still would work and all were overclocked significantly till the last day of their use. So I think it's just silicon lottery luck as well as certain voltages you push, it isn't just the cpu's main voltage but pll and pushing the memory controller or other aspects on the older cpus where the memory controller was on the motherboard. I would actually agree with Kanan with my own experience every time I had a system croak it was always the memory and/or motherboard that had issues. Every time I put a cpu I have in a known working mobo it always worked as it should. Only makes sense there's so many connections and weak points on a motherboard and all those transistor boxes and things that can pop and burn out etc and you can't even see it or know when it happens till it simply doesn't work or works at half speed etc. Cpus are complex but all neatly placed on a small square of solid metal with circuitry mostly hidden inside, seems only common sense they are more hardy and require a lot of abuse till they fail, and even then rarely do they just "stop" like other components do they just degrade.

 

[cdawall]

I am a go big or go home kind of guy. My Xeon X3440 went the same way, smoked the mini itx board it was on as well. I don't really keep stuff long enough to care if it degrades.

 

[Kanan]

The question still is, if your mainboards degraded or the CPUs on it. You can't be sure without testing, that it's silicon degradation indeed. What I heard of it is simply, that it takes a while and only happens if you really abuse the hardware with high voltages and / or high clocks. Jayz (from Jayz2cents youtube) had a degradation issue with his Titan X'es that went down from 1520~ stable down to 1420 stable, he stated that it must be silicon degradation. I think GPUs suffer more from this, they are simply under higher pressure. CPUs aren't really running at 100% all the time, even with extreme overclocks it doesn't mean they are really that hard pushed, compared to GPU's that run on 100% basically all the time when gaming. Also GPUs are way more complex, there's simply more to fail on it.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

I am a go big or go home kind of guy. My Xeon X3440 went the same way, smoked the mini itx board it was on as well. I don't really keep stuff long enough to care if it degrades.

Yeah I hear you, I again have not been shy I pushed my core 2 duos to 5 ghz and forced them to endure torture on air to benchmark at that level and definitely have smoked a few memory modules pushing them too far and had a couple mobo's I know probably quit due to being pushed overclocking. I'm simply saying the cpu has NEVER let me down or been a weak point for me...hell this ES I've had since late 2012! Better yet, it was in the first motherboard that had a couple bent pins to start and some issues I think as a returned board on Newegg but it worked, THEN I compounded it by crushing more pins ( I believe) with uneven pressure crookedly mounting the nh d14 cooler to it; Now I bring all that up only to highlight this one fact, when I took the ES 3960x I'm using now still out of that board, literally one of the pins on the board had melted at the tip and had a glob of black metal on the end of it (due to being crushed by cooler or some other electrical issue not sure why) but point is that failed contact point left one of the contact pads on the CPU black and corroded and despite that event plus however much shorting or other improper current occurred due to that obviously bad contact the CPU works no differently than it did on day one. Actually that isn't true, it now reads a full 16 gig of memory and works better on this board than it ever did on other board, granted that's because the board has less issues but point is I've done nothing but torture and push cpus usually for at least a few years straight with many, many hours logged and never has a cpu degraded in a way I even could tell by how it behaved or voltages needed. From day one to last day I used it every cpu needed same voltage to do the same thing as when I first used it, so to me CPU's almost seem bulletproof and I truly am amazed at how well they are made truth be told. There is a reason the top CPU of any given time is almost always the most expensive piece of your system more likely than not.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

The question still is, if your mainboards degraded or the CPUs on it. You can't be sure without testing, that it's silicon degradation indeed. What I heard of it is simply, that it takes a while and only happens if you really abuse the hardware with high voltages and / or high clocks. Jayz (from Jayz2cents youtube) had a degradation issue with his Titan X'es that went down from 1520~ stable down to 1420 stable, he stated that it must be silicon degradation. I think GPUs suffer more from this, they are simply under higher pressure. CPUs aren't really running at 100% all the time, even with extreme overclocks it doesn't mean they are really that hard pushed, compared to GPU's that run on 100% basically all the time when gaming. Also GPUs are way more complex, there's simply more to fail on it.

Yep, exactly right and parrots my point about a motherboard vs a cpu, so much more real estate on a motherboard and so many more connections and things happening, and many more fragile components that can physically break off or bend or can fry and malfunction from abuse and even just hard reasonable usage.

However again NEVER had a GPU fail....well except when you literally have it spark for a full second or two brushing the circuitry with a metal clip, but I'm not sure if I did that equivalent to a cpu while it's running if it would live or at least not be damaged. Also the GPU itself is probably fine, it's probably things on the board like memory and/or other circuitry needed to make complex connections across the whole board that I toasted.

 

[Kanan]

The thing with Jayz Titan X'es is maybe the average joe reference nvidia card that's simply not suited for high overclocking over long periods of time. But that's always the problem with Titan X'es you have that average joe card from nvidia that isn't really made for overclocking.

I had 2-3 GPUs fail, the 3rd one is kinda mystery. 7800 GT simply went bad after playing too much with it, after 2 years extreme game usage (and overclocked to the limit all the time). GTX 260 216 (XFX Black) failed under strange circumstances because the CPU had a malfunction under too high overclocks and kicked the GPU - weirdest thing ever. HD 5970, the PLX bridge went bad, and / or PCI-E lanes went bad, it wasn't able to do more than 4x (GPU1) / 2x (GPU2) mode after 1 1/2 years. Was pushed to the limit too with overclocks, though.

 

[cdawall]

Yeah I hear you, I again have not been shy I pushed my core 2 duos to 5 ghz and forced them to endure torture on air to benchmark at that level and definitely have smoked a few memory modules pushing them too far and had a couple mobo's I know probably quit due to being pushed overclocking. I'm simply saying the cpu has NEVER let me down or been a weak point for me...hell this ES I've had since late 2012! Better yet, it was in the first motherboard that had a couple bent pins to start and some issues I think as a returned board on Newegg but it worked, THEN I compounded it by crushing more pins ( I believe) with uneven pressure crookedly mounting the nh d14 cooler to it; Now I bring all that up only to highlight this one fact, when I took the ES 3960x I'm using now still out of that board, literally one of the pins on the board had melted at the tip and had a glob of black metal on the end of it (due to being crushed by cooler or some other electrical issue not sure why) but point is that failed contact point left one of the contact pads on the CPU black and corroded and despite that event plus however much shorting or other improper current occurred due to that obviously bad contact the CPU works no differently than it did on day one. Actually that isn't true, it now reads a full 16 gig of memory and works better on this board than it ever did on other board, granted that's because the board has less issues but point is I've done nothing but torture and push cpus usually for at least a few years straight with many, many hours logged and never has a cpu degraded in a way I even could tell by how it behaved or voltages needed. From day one to last day I used it every cpu needed same voltage to do the same thing as when I first used it, so to me CPU's almost seem bulletproof and I truly am amazed at how well they are made truth be told. There is a reason the top CPU of any given time is almost always the most expensive piece of your system more likely than not.

That 945 had been through hell. I think it still holds all of the records on HWBOT for that CPU. Highest it saw was 1.72v under cold water.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

That 945 had been through hell. I think it still holds all of the records on HWBOT for that CPU. Highest it saw was 1.72v under cold water.

Nice, I haven't tried extreme cooling though at one point I was considering it, haven't even done water yet yeah 1.72 volts for any cpu I can think of is basically like dropping it into a blue flame and waiting for the thing to melt.

 

[cdawall]

Nice, I haven't tried extreme cooling though at one point I was considering it, haven't even done water yet yeah 1.72 volts for any cpu I can think of is basically like dropping it into a blue flame and waiting for the thing to melt.

I have a habit of breaking things.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

I have a habit of breaking things.

I wasn't going to comment but, I guess to poke fun at myself especially of late I am a breaker of things as well...One motherboard and one video card toast just with this last system I've had since 2012. And technically at the least one pci e slot on this replacement board is toast...Anyway I will eventually get to pushing my memory a bit more and posting some results but again I encourage and hope I see some results from you guys who say you have similar x79 systems posted here.

 

[cdawall]

I wasn't going to comment but, I guess to poke fun at myself especially of late I am a breaker of things as well...One motherboard and one video card toast just with this last system I've had since 2012. And technically at the least one pci e slot on this replacement board is toast...Anyway I will eventually get to pushing my memory a bit more and posting some results but again I encourage and hope I see some results from you guys who say you have similar x79 systems posted here.

As long as I have one working system I could care less about "toys" I have already pushed my AMD tyan 2P board to a breaking point overclocking

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Well, I get what you're saying mine is finally working as it should so I hate to mess with it and get it unstable or screw up settings etc but I don't care even if they're older results etc if people have screenies etc to share that'd be great. I started this thread as a place for these older systems and the owners of them to have a place to post and discuss them etc, because I looked around on this site and many others and almost any thread involving the RIVE or x79 in general the last activity on them was 2015 at the newest, many died off in 2014 or even earlier.

 

[Kanan]

I wasn't going to comment but, I guess to poke fun at myself especially of late I am a breaker of things as well...One motherboard and one video card toast just with this last system I've had since 2012. And technically at the least one pci e slot on this replacement board is toast...Anyway I will eventually get to pushing my memory a bit more and posting some results but again I encourage and hope I see some results from you guys who say you have similar x79 systems posted here.

If you want to hear some stories about "breaking things":
I had a absolutely new and expensive Athlon 1200 TB when I was ~14-15. Broke the die with a Thermaltake Mini Superorb, I hate that thing still until now - also the outer fan didn't work from the start - really a fucking thing.
After that I RMA'd it and didn't get a replacement. I ordered a Athlon 1333 TB then. Everything was setup and okay, but I simply shorted it - both mainboard + cpu were gone. Both succesfully RMA'd. Then I didn't want that crappy ALi Magik Chipset with SDR/DDR combo and told them to give me a MSI K7T VIA 266 (4 DDR + Raid 0/1) and 2x512 MB DDR200 instead . CPU came back a new one. I installed everything and it was okay. Until then 3 months were gone and I only had a measly Pentium 166 MMX for the 3 months. So imagine, I was young, very eager to play and my hardware was shit + the 3 months. That was a hellish time. But when I setup that rig, it was heaven. At the same time I got broadband internet for the first time in my life, DSL 768kbit's. I switched from 56k analog. The jump in pc power + ping in counterstrike was fantastic, my ping went up from 200-250 to 40.

So that was a bit of "fun" I had.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Great! Nice to hear and honestly you got me beat, just I did my worst when I should have known better. Anyway I actually was looking for benchmarks and oc'ing etc not the horror stories lol. Still I really don't care what people post in here if it's fun and entertaining so that's all good as well! When I get some time I'll be stupid and see what I can get this setup to do with memory etc, just I have issues unless I way underclock it because it runs hot on that one core no matter what because I have to really crank the pll and other voltages and it does 2400 mhz easy but once beyond that or if you tighten timings it really has to work hard to do so.

 

[Kanan]

I just had to rise voltage of my CPU to 1.31 V because it crashed in GTA V. Sometimes it's stable sometimes not, now I'm on the safe side I hope, don't want to raise it any higher.

Well I don't know, maybe get a proper 6 core CPU non-ES version, if you can't get around that malfunctioning CPU package or thermal diode or whatever it is that fucks the temperatures up. I'm not really bought on ES CPUs, sometimes they are good, other times they are partly good and even other times they are simply bad after a short while (actually this info is based on what @cadaveca told me one time).

 

[dalekdukesboy]

I just had to rise voltage of my CPU to 1.31 V because it crashed in GTA V. Sometimes it's stable sometimes not, now I'm on the safe side I hope, don't want to raise it any higher.

Well I don't know, maybe get a proper 6 core CPU non-ES version, if you can't get around that malfunctioning CPU package or thermal diode or whatever it is that fucks the temperatures up. I'm not really bought on ES CPUs, sometimes they are good, other times they are partly good and even other times they are simply bad after a short while (actually this info is based on what @cadaveca told me one time).

Yes, but minus that one "issue" this thing is rock solid, I used the retail 3930k or whatever the model below 3960x is and even the owner told me it needed far higher voltages than my cpu to get the same result, and also have no idea if the memory controller is as good, and it's very likely it's the same and probably worse. Most of these Sandy Bridges have issues with 2400 mhz at all, or fuss and yell at you for crazy voltages to do so. This ES as I said is very strong, I finally paired it with some really good memory that I gambled on with great timings and 1.35 volts at 1600 mhz and figured the stuff would overclock like mad as all the reviewers claimed, and it does! Also most modules especially with the x79 platform need significant voltages to get 2400 mhz and beyond, even if on say z77 or other platforms that are much more memory friendly being only dual channel need less voltage...I can run 2400 mhz with these modules @ 1.49 volts, that is insanely low for ddr3 at that speed and this platform. So yes the diode is annoying but it probably is "close" to being accurate at the high end because when it is around 80 degrees the other diodes are at least dipping into the 70's...so it may be a few degrees high but in reality probably only by a few degrees. I'm just unfortunate the tjmax on this cpu is relatively low at 82 degrees so it's not hard to hit that with that one core. Keep in mind however I'm only using a dh 14 air cooler and the least I run the cpu at is 4.1 ghz. The cpu does just fine @ 4.5 ghz with this cooler even on intel burntest which is way more heat than any real life application will ever use/get. So if I did get a retail version I'd get the ivy bridge e and then I'd have even better memory overclocks like Dave who had his at 2800 mhz which Sandy just won't do. But for what it is I think this ES is about as good as they come for Sandy Bridge...I only need 1.33 volts to be perfectly stable at 4.5 ghz AND 2400 mhz memory, that's pretty much the most I can hope for with air cooling on this platform.


As for your CPU I will say somewhat jokingly see I told you so. I knew you were scraping bare bottom of voltage for what 6 cores needs at that speed, still very good though! Also as I said I have abused the snot out of this ES for 4 years straight so again, minus the bios nuisance and the one bad diode which can happen even in retail samples I really couldn't ask for much more from it.

 

[Kanan]

Yep sounds good besides that 1 core that is probably throtteling if you go too far. What does it mean "I'm "only" using a D14 cooler" - that is still one of the best air coolers and yours is tuned too. I don't think the D15 (the best air cooler) is really better, 1-2°C maybe - wow, doesn't blow my head now. Only thing better than a NH-D14 is a NH-D15 and some big aio water coolers, but we're talking only a few degrees here, not big differences. Next *BIG* thing is a compressor or water cooling with cold water. Maybe the latter is possible for you, else I don't see big tuning potencial.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yes but that's the point 1-2 degrees celsius IS a big deal when it's the difference between throttling and it just farting out on me or it being able to run benchmarks...and yes d14 was the best but d15 is better, and some AIO watercoolers in most tests I see beat that by a couple degrees or more...so yeah 4-5 degrees would be huge in my case, plus if I could put bigger fans than come with the units as tested I may get even more out of it. So yeah I didn't mean "only" like it wasn't a great cooler and all but it is NOT the best at this point. So yeah a "few degrees" isn't a big difference except 78 degrees vs 82 degrees let's say is my cpu working well with some space to breathe versus simply failing to pass tests altogether.

 

[Kanan]

Well then you maybe have to get another cooler, probably the expensive aio watercooler you mentioned.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah I'm researching it a bit and when I'm convinced I have the best option available picked that isn't a royal hassle and isn't crazy money I'll probably go for it, I also am tired of these huge air coolers and how much space they take up in my case as well.

 

[Kanan]

Yeah I'm researching it a bit and when I'm convinced I have the best option available picked that isn't a royal hassle and isn't crazy money I'll probably go for it, I also am tired of these huge air coolers and how much space they take up in my case as well.

Yeah, but at least they are reliable, I heard enough horror stories about water cooling. Also the space... I don't know about you, but I don't care about it, I don't need the space. Only RAM clearance comes to my mind, but I bought ones suited to it, so it's np at all. Also the NH-D14 is easy to remove and install, I did it 5 times or more after switching to the new case and it wasn't as hard as expected. Also water cooling takes up way more space, at least the ones you mentioned (2x120/2x140 or even more).

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah, but at least they are reliable, I heard enough horror stories about water cooling. Also the space... I don't know about you, but I don't care about it, I don't need the space. Only RAM clearance comes to my mind, but I bought ones suited to it, so it's np at all. Also the NH-D14 is easy to remove and install, I did it 5 times or more after switching to the new case and it wasn't as hard as expected. Also water cooling takes up way more space, at least the ones you mentioned (2x120/2x140 or even more).

Lol after all the problems I had you can't even DREAM of how many times I took that nh-d14 on and off this processor AND the new processor I got with the mobo to test it out etc...I had taken it on and off multiple times with old board due to issues or things I had to unplug/plug in I couldn't reach. That's really the crux of my problem of "space" with that tower, it freakin' blocks not just memory but tons of things on my board and also blocks my big fat hands from accessing a lot on the board and a tiny little waterblock with a hose would be heaven in comparison to work with. Heck, half the times i took the stupid cooler off was due to it blocking memory or something I needed to get to and simply couldn't because it was in the way. That said yes I love air coolers and they work and no risk other than misinstalling them or excess weight on your board etc which generally isn't a problem.

Also no the watercooling will not take up more space, because the huge 240 mm radiator ones I will get I will just have outside the case like I've seen a lot of people do, that's fine by me and who cares what it looks like if it does the job, but I will care that I can access and see my whole motherboard for once AND I won't have some stupid clip that shorts out on my motherboard either.

 

[Kanan]

I know that problem. I had a bent pin on my LGA2011 and had to take the D14 on and off multiple times due to Ram testing. At the very end I thought of the pins and simply corrected it carefully - Quad Channel then started to work again. Still I don't know how that happened, probably I was too fast deinstalling the i7 3820 I had before. I won't be so careless again, probably I took everything for granted too much. Well - AMD users won't have these problems, it's hard to bent or break pins if you remove a Athlon 64 for example. I never had the remotest problems there with pins.

PS. yes the excessive weight is a problem on LGA2011 with NH-D14 or D15, the cooler has to be taken off to transport the PC, unless you want to risk it. I'm only going as far as to risk it moving the PC a few inches or laying it on the ground, thats it - but I think I would not risk transportation over longer distances and/or in a car - the G forces are simply too much then, on the cooler and mainboard.