Overclocking Xeon E5645

[EggySplat]

Hi,

 

Completely new to overclocking and wondering if someone can help with a n00b problem.  I have an unlocked Xeon E5645 with a large, decent air cooler and an X58 based motherboard and trying to do some overclocking on it. In the BIOS I've upped the bus speed to 180, the multiplier to the max of 18 and increased the voltage a little. The BIOS correctly reports the processor speed as 3240 MHz but, when booting to Windows, CPU-Z is showing that the CPU is back at a 133 MHz BCLK and multiplier of 18, to bring the speed back down to the stock 2.4 GHz.

 

In the BIOS I've disabled speedstep. Any idea what else I'm doing wrong?

 

It's 2:15am in Blighty as I write this and after battling with the thing for a while I'm going to get some shut eye but, any help would be appreciated

 

Kind regards

[Jurrunio]

reset CMOS and try again, sometimes the BIOS just get stuck with the old settings.

[unclewebb]

If an overclock is not stable, it is not unusual for the bios to reset the BCLK to its default value (133 MHz).

 

If you have only increased the voltage a little, you probably need to increase the voltage a little more.  X58 CPUs are pretty tough.  Start with too much voltage and if it boots up and is stable, then you can work your way down or overclock some more.  Make sure your memory is running at an appropriate speed.  Sometimes a BCLK of 200 MHz is a good speed to shoot for as it is exactly 1.5 times the default BCLK.  Personally I would enable Intel Turbo Boost so you can take advantage of the 19 multiplier.  Westmere CPUs love to overclock.

 

https://i.imgur.com/3XBqVgb.png

 

 

[EggySplat]

Thanks for the info. It's strange as the BIOS is telling me one thing, and Windows is telling me another.

 

I've tried going for 200MHz clock, and upped the voltage to 1.5 (the max that the BIOS allowed was 1.56). The BIOS is still telling me that I'm at 200 clock with 18 multiplier but Windows boots without a bat of an eyelid and CPU-Z is telling me that I have the 133 stock clock speed.

 

Rebooting and going back into BIOS and I'm back at 200 clock again in the BIOS.

 

It *is* just the clock speed and voltage I need to change in the BIOS isn't it? There's no other settings that I need to touch from optional defaults? Like I say, completely new to overclocking and followed a couple of tutorials.

 

Is it possible I have a BIOS / motherboard that's telling me one thing but doing another? Wouldn't surprise me with the 'good' fortune I have buying stuff