ocaholic - Board

Tale:
Okay so I had a GA-Z77X-UD5H here with me, some Ivy Bridges, Liquid Nitrogen (LN2), good memory modules, and a lot of overclocking skills. Why not participate to the Gigabyte Z77 OC Contest ? Would have been a non-sense!

So I did 4 times around 8 hours of overclocking.
The first time was on air just to test the ability of my first processor and tweak the operating system as well as the bios to be sure everything is working fine.

During the second session I did max my processor under liquid nitrogen for the CPU Frequency stage where I did 6.692 GHz (I had around the same frequency using the Maximus V Gene)
Then I did some WPrime runs where I managed to get WorldWide #3 in both WPrime 32M and 1024M, not bad at all! This Gigabyte board seemed to be solid.
After that 2 stages remain: SuperPI 32M and Memory Clock, but unfortunately I ran into a lot of troubles when I tried to start benching SuperPi 32M, I guess there was a bit too much condensation/water on my motherboard (honestly I only did a quick insulation, nothing serious).
Then I gave up for SuperPi and ran out of Liquid Nitrogen so decided to quickly do a score for the Memory Frequency stage where I managed to do quick 1'400 MHz with the processor at around -60°C (very hot :p) and random BIOS settings for memory.

Comes here the third session I don't want to talk about because I ran into so many trouble that after 7 hours had an headache because of behing too angry I gave up. I only managed a very low SuperPi 32M run (still a score is) able to rank me 5th (nothing according to what this processor was capable of) and first for the memory clock stage (only 1 MHz over splmann's score).
So this ranked me overall first with 30 points (1rst in WPrime stage, 1rst in memory clock stage, 5th in cpu frequency stage and 5th for SuperPi Score).
The competition was ending in 5 hours, I was leading with 2 points margin, didn't want to waste more time.

The Rage

Well something happened that I didn't see at first, the competition timer wasn't synchronized with the date of the end of the competition therefore some people stopped to compete on the 29th of june while I did know the competition ended on the 30th so I benched and therefore submited my score the 30th (advertising banned, stages and competition main page were all saying end 30th June, anyway...). So to fix this issue, HWBot (hoster of the competition) added one more week. With one more week my score may be not safe any more, I have to bench again ...



I didn't have Liquid Nitrogen anymore and didn't want to compete anymore then my teammate splmann invited me "Hey I have 50L of Liquid Nitrogen, wanna come?" Guess what I replied ?
So yeah I joined him and we both overclocked in his garage for the competition, splmann was using his UD3H while I was on my UD5H trying a new processor.
We had a lot of fun, really a lot. And I managed some very decent score for the CPU Frequency and Memory Frequency Stage.

GIGABYTE!!!


Till here all seems fine ? Well it's because I didn't talk a lot about Overclocking facts on Gigabyte's Motheroards. To be honest I did hate Gigabyte's BIOS/Motherboard but now no more.
I explain myself: The BIOS never wanted to do what I wanted to, aka fail to set settings, bad cold boot bugs, clearing cmos all the time, too lazy to test other BIOS (there are more than 20 actaully for thie motherboard that you can find here). There was four possibilities causing so many issues: Myself (probability: 0%), my processor (probability: 60 %), my insulation (probability: 80 %), the Motherboard/BIOS (probability: 100 %).

Even when loading exact same settings than before nothing wanted to work anymore, BIOS settings working randomly, really it was a pain, me screaming on the motherboard and heating it up to clear the cold boot (when processor is too cold and with wrong BIOS settings it won't booth), sometimes cold boot was at -140°C, sometimes -80°C and without changing bios settings.
Okay you got it, it wasn't fun. Memory overclocking was also a pain, even if you copy paste the Memory settings from the Asus Maximus V Gene on the Gigabyte, they just won't work.

During the Overclocking Session with splmann we started to scream "GIGABYTE" everytime something went wrong or whatever (every 10 secondes ), we even started to make songs and were singing (PS: we weren't drunk at all, no alcohol, only ice tea). Even when we lost wifi connectivity on his Sony laptop we blamed Gigabyte. (too bad we didn't record ourself)


The Solution:

I had two options:

1 - Set the motherboard on fire (TaPaKaH would have loved that)


2 - Find a way to tame the motherboard/BIOS.



Guess what? I found the way


Tips and Tricks for Extreme Overclocking on Gigabyte Z77 Motherboards:

Test Setup:
Intel Ivy Bridge I7 3770K
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Motherboard
BIOS: F8C
Corsair Dominator GTX6 Memory
Liquid Nitrogen
Ocaholic Besi Memory LN2 Freezer Corsair Edition



First of I invite you to read this very interessant article made by sin0822 Ivy Bridge Overclocking Guide - Air, Water, LN2. To know the basis and how to set up your BIOS for a good start.

Once you disabled everything you don't need (SATA6, LAN, Audio.... Power savind stuff) set up the CPU settings and the advanced power settings you will not need to touch them anymore.

The only thing you will have to touch will be the bus clock, memory multiplier, cpu multiplier and memory timings, that's all.

Tip to avoid dead BIOS

First of all make sure that the backup an main BIOS are the same. During my 32 hours of overclocking I managed to kill 3 times the main BIOS.
Killing the BIOS means no more able to boot the motherboard and you lost your OC profiles.

So to not lose your BIOS profiles here is the tip:
(before you kill the BIOS)
boot on the main BIOS, load one profile, use the BIOS switch, save the profile, BIOS switch again and you are back to the main BIOS.

This way you can store all your profiles into the main as weel as the backup BIOS so when your main BIOS dies you can recover all your profiles:
Step by Step when the main BIOS is dead:
- Boot on the backup BIOS
- Start Q-Flash
- Change the BIOS switch position from Backup to Main
- Flash the BIOS from your USB drive
- Reboot

Restore your OC profiles step by step:
- Boot into the backup BIOS
- Load an OC Profile
- (1) Change the BIOS switch position from Backup to Main
- Save to Profile
- Change the BIOS switch position from Main to Backup
- Load another Profile and repeat the steps from (1)


Tip to avoid BIOS to fail to apply settings:

When you fail to set your BIOS settings at very low temperature because of Gigabyte or just because your processor/memory can't do it then you will have no other choice than to clear the cmos which means you will be affected by the Cold Boot Bug of your processor.
aka if you are at -197°C you have to heat up to like -140-150°C (for me processors) => waste of LN2.

Solution: Set BIOS settings you are 100 % sure it will never fail to boot even at -197°C on the Backup BIOS so you will not have to warm up the CPU.
Step by Step:
- BIOS or you failed
- Don't clear_cmos
- Shut down the power supply
- Change the BIOS switch position from Main to Backup
- Power on the Power supply
- Motherboard must boot otherwise you failed your Cold Boot Free settings
- While in the Backup BIOS change the BIOS switch position from Backup to Main
- Start to enjoy overclocking again and ajust right your settings or tryother settings

Cold Boot Free Settings:

- Bus frequency: 106 MHz
- Memory divider: 16x
- Memory settings: Auto
- CPu voltage: not much needed I used 1.5v
- PLL that your Processor like, mines liked default 1.8v, but some processors like from 1.7v to 2.0v.

In the case you did a CLR_CMOS and the BIOS fails to apply your saved profile


This means your are around the Cold Boot Bug temperature of your processor because you managed to get into the BIOS and you loaded an OC profile. When you save and exit the postcode stays blank, system running or hard reboot of the motherboard then postcode stuck to 15 or goes from 15 to blank here is the tip:

- CLR_CMOS again
- Go into BIOS
- set 106mhz bus, 16x memory divider and that's all
- Save/apply settings ^ and exit BIOS
- The BIOS will apply settings fine and it will make the motherboard boot, now you can load your OC profile and it will work fine.

Doesn't boot after Hardreset, crash, shutdown or whatever

aka postcode: blank or stuck at 15 => Boot on your Backup BIOS which is set to Cold Boot Free settings then switch to Main BIOS


When do I know if it will fail to boot or will actually manage to boot after 1-2 tries ?

If the postcode succeed more than the primary code 15 then it should boot,
If it is stuck at 15 or blanck:
< -150°C: Boot from the backup BIOS set to Cold Boot free
> -150°C: Boot from the backup BIOS set to Cold Boot free or CLR_CMOS


Problems with CPU Voltage?

You set 1.9v in the BIOS and you have 1.68v shown by CPUZ ? It's not a reading error, the voltage is actaully 1.68, open Gigabyte Tweak Launcher and set vCore to 1.9v.

Some tips for memory settings:

loading XMP profile will help you a lot if you have issues


For very high Memory frequency (not talking about high performance)
tCL: <= 11, 12 and up doesn't work
tRRD: 7 for Hynix based memory
tRRD: 9 for PSC

My settings:
tCL: 11
tRCD: 15
tRP: 15
tRAS: 50
tRRD: 7 or 9
CMD: 3T
Everything else in Auto.

To reach very high memory Frequency I didn't see any improvement loosing all the subtimings than using the Auto ones



Conclusion:


I had a really really hard time at the beginning but then I found out thoses tips/tricks that ALWAYS worked in my case - I even did them on the UD3H from splmann and it worked like a charm - then I really enjoyed to bench Ivy Bridge on a Gigabyte Motherboard.

So Yesterday I managed to bench almost 9 hours on a row with the processor always at -197°C. Never had to warm it up

PS: for the insulation I only used Toiler Paper Worked well

Some pics from the Session in splmann's Garage:
Took with iphone 3G I didn't have the camera sorry fo bad quality:

reserved: some scores

Dedicated to all using Gigabyte Z77 boards :D