Overclocking Specifics

All defect-free mainboards work fine in nominal mode. If any sort of problems show, they get even worse during overclocking. However, in case of DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 everything got off to a good start. With the multiplier lowered to 12, DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 worked just fine with the base frequency increased from the nominal 133 to 215 MHz. as we have already mentioned, it doesn’t support XMP (eXtreme Memory Profile) that records advanced memory settings in the modules SPD: frequency, timings and voltages. However, it doesn’t at all mean that the board works poorly with the memory subsystem. You can usually select the corresponding profile in the mainboard BIOS and all settings that need to be adjusted to increase the working memory frequency will be changed automatically. DFI mainboard also allows us to set the frequency of our Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX modules to their nominal value of 1866 MHz. However, you will need to adjust all frequencies, timings and voltages manually.

Moreover, DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6 mainboard could only deal with high memory frequency when the CPU was working in its nominal mode: during overclocking we had to lower the memory speed. In this respect, DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 is way better than its sister. S we will see later one from the screenshots, it could easily increase the memory frequency even during CPU overclocking. However, two peculiarities of DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 mainboard did step in during our overclocking experiments and had a pretty negative effect. I am talking about the specific implementation of Intel Turbo Boost technology and increased CPU core voltage when we try to change the former with the “Set VR Current Limit Max” parameter.

Let’s take a look at specific examples here. We managed to increase the base frequency to 181 MHz without touching the processor voltage. In this case the memory could work stably at frequencies over 1800 MHz with 8-8-8-22-1T timings, just like on other good mainboards. In idle mode, the processor clock multiplier and core voltage lower.

Under maximum processor workload created by eight computational threads of LinX program, the multiplier doesn’t change and remains at its nominal value of 20.

This time the CPU is overclocked, its heat dissipation and power consumption have increased compared to the nominal mode. Therefore, only when the number of computational threads in LinX program dropped down to two the board let the multiplier be increased to 21.

The funny thing is that we could sometimes see the multiplier increase to 22, although even in the nominal CPU mode it appeared fairly rarely.

Only with the help of “Set VR Current Limit Max” parameter we can get the processor clock frequency multiplier to increase to 21 under heavy load. But take a look how greatly increased the CPU Vcore! The screenshot below shows that it is at 1.28 V and the maximum voltage we registered was 1.3 V. Although in fact, we didn’t increase it in the mainboard BIOS and it was supposed to equal 1.225 V or even lower under serious workload.

Formally, the BIOS of DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 mainboard doesn’t have a special parameter preventing the voltage from dropping under heavy load. As they claim, the “Power Saving” parameter in the “Voltage Setting” sub-section is responsible for it.

In reality, there is no noticeable effect from changing the “Power Saving” parameter or the next parameter called “Super VID”. The voltage continued dropping under load, but as soon as “Set VR Current Limit Max” parameter was enabled started to increase clearly. We have already seen many times that the mainboard increase the voltage quite significantly instead of maintaining it at a certain level under heavy load. For example, one of the latest mainboards we reviewed, Intel DX58SO, was exactly like that. Looks like DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 is also not free from this problem.

It is interesting that there is a special parameter preventing the voltage from dropping under load, as described in the previous versions of documentation on the features of DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6 BIOS. The picture from the second version of the mainboard manual shows “Vcore Droop (LoadLine) Scale” parameter, the third from the top:

In our recent Intel DX58SO mainboard review we mentioned that all mainboards capable of keeping processor core voltage from dropping under heavy load have only two possible choices: either to prevent it from dropping or not. Intel DX58SO mainboard supports three possible settings. It can be set to prevent the voltage from dropping, not to prevent it from dropping and to partially prevent. It is funny, but “Vcore Droop (LoadLine) Scale” parameter on DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 also supported three possible settings: 100, 75 and 50%. Looks like DFI engineers, just like Intel engineers, are very well familiar with the problem of voltage increase under heavy load that is where these strange interim values come from. The difference from the Intel board is that there is simply no specific parameter for preventing the voltage drop in the DFI mainboards BIOS anymore. DFI boards select the appropriate modes on their own, but they always increase the CPU Vcore instead of maintaining it on the set level.

So, what do we get here? Overclocking by raising the base frequency to 181 MHz is a success on DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 mainboard, but it will always lose to Gigabyte GA-X58-Extreme and other similar solutions because it is unable to increase the clock multiplier to 21 under heavy load. We tried reaching higher CPU frequencies, just like we did with Intel DX58SO, but we failed because the processor Vcore dropped too much under heavy load. Of course, we could increase the core voltage in the BIOS beforehand, but in this case Intel processor power-saving technologies would stop working and we lost even that small advantage that we had. If we enabled “Set VR Current Limit Max” parameter, the voltage increased so much that the cooling system failed and the board again wouldn’t reach higher frequencies. That is why we can conclude that more or less optimal overclocking result on DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 can only be achieved at 181 MHz base frequency, although in this case there are two possible outcomes. We can increase the clock frequency multiplier to 21 under heavy load and in the board will consume more power because of the increased processor core voltage, or we can leave the multiplier at its nominal value and the board will run slower in heavy-duty applications because of that, but its power consumption will be lower.

The specifics of the mainboard behavior during overclocking, availability and operability of certain features and technologies – all these are extremely important factors that should in the end determine if this particular mainboard meets your needs or not. To make it easier for you to draw the final conclusions basing on what we have just discussed, we summed up everything we know about DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6 mainboard behavior during processor overclocking in a table below: