Hi-

This has easily been the most useful forum in my catastrophic OCing journey, so i figured who better than to ask you guys?

Here's my new system:

Intel E2180 2GHz @ 2.2GHz (hardcore!)
ASUS P5VD2-VM
Palit 9600GT
Western Digital WD2500AAJS-0 250GB, 7200RPM
LG DVD-R
generic DDR3 RAM @ 667MHz

I'm not sure if this is the right section, tho im guessing it is mostly BIOS related

After much pain, i realised that the RAM timings could get me further than my 2.2-2.22GHz limit, but i ended up screwing up my hard drive -corrupt data. this happened twice whenever i tried to edit RAM timings. got it sorted and windows is now up & running again, but i wanna see if there's anything i should try before i admit defeat at this speed. Lets not beat around the bush-my board sucks, but i should at least be able to get 2.32 out of it. even a tweak of the RAM speed or even one timing by one step seems to make the hard disk seem like a foreign object.

that extra 100MHz will make all the difference! lol

any ideas much appreciated

Tampering with your ram timings screws up your HD? That's rather interesting.

You are also using DDR2, and not DDR3, since 667MHz is pitifully slow for DDR3 and the mobo doesn't support it. I'm guessing right now that it's the ram that's causing issues with your OC because it's not set to 1:1 fsb to ram ratio, read the OCing guide here for more details.

maybe its because you mess with the timing and hence confuse the data path any data passing through it gets shuffled and hence doesnt make sense to CPU so the data is seem as corrupted!

Thanks for the responses, & sorry about the delay.

DDR2, my bad-i guess my subconscious got bored with all the 2's in my setup.

Well, i've given up for a while now-tho having discovered someone online with the same setup (except with an E2160) and the EXACT same problem/limit i had, i know that the BSEL mod will/should work ok with this mobo, given that i don't have a random wrist spasm halfway through and snap the CPU.

Just one last quick question-obviously i'm gonna reset the BIOS before i try this (might disable speedstep), but i'm guessing i'll still get the same +0.22 limit with the mod? or will different rules apply? i doubt it, seeing as potentially i'm feeding the mobo a physically "faster" chip, but just in case should i bear anything in mind?

thanks again,

& btw Evil it later came to pass that this mobo has a concrete ratio-here's hoping BSEL will let me screw over corporate scum on a stingy budget!

I've had my harddrive become corrupted before due to a bad overclocked. But anyways, what stepping of processor did you get? Either way, it should be able to put out more than that. All the speedstep, C1E, and another one I can't remember should be disabled, it'll mess with the overclock pretty badly. Set your RAM timing as loose as possible and as low a multiplier as possible to start with. Or rather, go find a good overclocking guide which will guide you through it step by step.

hi, sorry been pretty busy between posts.

BSEL got me to 2.66, which i managed to pump up to 2.89 stably without changing any timings. this is a few MHz over my previous limit (it's too late to count just now!), & while i'm keen to tinker with it further i really can't risk losing all my data again, so unfortunately that's a big no for going anywhere near RAM timings. sadly the multiplier is fixed on this board, & i cant find a hacked BIOS kicking around.

i have all the speedstep, enhanced C1E etc. switched off, although in my case they don't make much noticeable difference (though i have heard of some big problems with it, so as to not discredit you there, kkm).

2.89 GHz from a 2GHz chip does the job-it's done away with the bottlenecks. while its not an exceptional OC, at least i proved the sceptics wrong over what can be done with a budget and severe boredom.

thanks again!