P5N32-E SLI Plus

[Sumgai]

Okay,

A good friend of mine recently put together a system with this motherboard, an E6700 CPU, 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2-800, and a Zalman 9500 cooler. He wanted to jump on the Vista bandwagon and so I've been unable to help him out with that aspect. (That, and the fact that I'm in FL and he's in Japan) He had some RAM issues when he first got it up and running, and apparently that's common in these boards. From what I've read, it's basically a stripped-down version of the striker extreme. He had to adjust his voltage up to 2.085 with the timings at 4-4-4-12 (found here) and hasn't had a BSOD since.

That brings us to the issue he has now. He wants to OC to 3.0 or higher, and we've found various sites where people have had his exact same combination up to 3.7 running stable. The trouble is, he's having a hard time getting it to push past the 2.89 mark. The problem seems to lie in the RAM. The settings he used to make the board stable in the first place seem to be bottle-necking the OC process, and when he bumps it up, even by 10ths of a volt, the system becomes unstable once again. I'm kinda at a loss and really don't want to steer him wrong. I'm not exactly a seasoned vet in the overclocking arena and I know my limits.

Thanks in advance guys.

[Pete]

A little off topic but why is it that it seems like this motherboard (striker related boards) have issues. I know another issue is with a couple different PSU's from various companies not being compatible with this board because of minimum load issues.

[gvblake22]

So it becomes unstable when the RAM voltage is increased to anything past 2.085V?

[Sumgai]

*Update*

I haven't talked to him about the details of what he did to solve the issue, but he told me today that he's now got it running at 3.2ghz steady and stable.

[Capper]

Most often its simply an overlooked setting in the BIOS thats the culprit. Glad to hear you managed to get it worked out

[Yellowhello]

You know, I've had OC problems with this board too. Sumgai, ask your Japanese friend what BIOS revision he's using to get 3.2GHz stable.

[Sumgai]

He's running version 0602, and as an update, he's now running at 3.5

[Yellowhello]

Cool, I think I have version 05xx. Think I'll update BIOS, pronto.

[Sumgai]

yellow-

Man I just looked at your specs, and you have the EXACT same system he built, with the exception of the CPU. He spent a bit extra on the 6700, although I asked him why not the 6600...

Just figured you'd like to know that if you ever upgrade your proc, your setup is capable of a safe, stable 3.5ghz. Good luck!

[Yellowhello]

Sumgai, can you ask your friend how he overclocked his system? I've been having trouble. Any special settings in the BIOS maybe? Anything will help.