=|[ None's ]|= wrote:

Wounder if there is normally a stability problem with 10-15% frquency overclocking

I notice from looking at my broken a7v8x, that my working a7v8x-x has less
substantial voltage regulating components (smaller, cheaper capacitors and
ICs) and a smaller poorly fitted heatsink on the Northbridge.
This makes me suspicious of its overclock capability.

I swapped and properly fitted the Northbridge heatsink from the bust a7v8x
and run my rig perhaps/almost stable at 350 fsb for a month or so, then
tried higher and got instability problems. Now my rig doesnt seem to run
stable at 333 fsb! I have it quite significantly underclocked at the moment
to 300 fsb since it started spontaneously rebooting after days or hours. I
was getting all sorts of weird bluescreens running at 333 or 266, though
memory tested fine with memtest overnight. I tested alot to find where the
problem was, including running apic or pic, turning of L1 and L2 caches,
temps reported 40c odd cpu and 31 to 34 southbridge, i tried turning off 1t
command rate on the mem, and... everything really.

Now it runs stable at 300 fsb with PCI down to 30 Mhz, 1.6v cpu at 1500
MHz, has been online for a week or so, doing lots of work and running
Folding @ Home. I love the way my rig runs even underclocked, the OS is
tweaked well - I cant feel the difference, it just puts out less DC work
units.

Ive got a little fan screwed onto the underside of a the copper based cpu
heatsink to keep hot air from blowing down over the board and its temps are
fine with the cpu running up to over 2000 Mhz, though its default is 1666
Mhz.

I think certainly the best overclock for the board is to run the cpu faster
(if its unlocked) After loads of fiddling, I dont think overclocking fsb
and pci is practical -intresting, addictive.. but one crash is takes so
much investigation and recovery that the speed boost cant justify.
My board seemed fine running at 300fsb with cpu at 2000 but i got a
spontaneous reboot after a day which is why I knocked that down to 1500.

Its so complex, I just updated the bios to 1008 since it apperently fixes
some problem with wireless mouses - which I have, so I could start a whole
new round of testing, the PSU might be flaky...

Wounder if there is normally a stability problem with 10-15% frquency overclocking

No idea :/

--
' gathering moss,
andy