HP Z440 Workstation (212B) for E5-1660v3

[Adam23]

Hi guys,

at the beginning sorry if I created this thread in a wrong section.

I received used HP workstation with E5-1660V3 (multiplier unlocked) but I cannot overclock it neither in BIOS nor in XTU/ThrottleStop. Cores multipliers are always greyed and I cannot change it.

What I got from HP forum is that the fault is on motherboard that not supports overclocking. Do you know if it can be changed with BIOS modification? 

Motherboard - 212B / 761514-001 

[Manoa]

you need to downdate BIOS to something old, I've tested 2.31, 2.48, 2.50, 2.54 they all prevent core clock changes (but voltages allow (all, I think), also allow uncore clock (up to x34), the BIOS that did allow core clock change is 1.62 and it's the only one I found. this is all in throttlestop, used last beta 9.2.2, just go to FIVR to change the parameters. the attachment is a 7zip file so open it in 7zip. update the BIOS from the BIOS itself, for some reason my system freezes when I flash it from windows with the HP utils. create an empty directory in your flash drive "\Hewlett-Packard\BIOS\New" and put the BIN file in there for the BIOS to find it. you should know that old BIOS does not have spectre/meltdown/whatever speculative execution mitigations.

I have a very hot Xeon E5 1650 v3 it hits 70 C on stock on distilled, I gave it an extra 200 mhz on all cores and it smoked the new BIOSes in cinebench 11.5 (11.60 vs 12.35)
I think I can increase another 100 mhz without overheating and staying stable for long term, will probably score around 13, way way better than any of the new BIOSes I tested, core clock is king.
the uncore OC does give some performance but the limit of up to x34 doesn't allow to take full advantage of the memory, also RDIMM is naturally slow so don't expect much, there is no software program I could find that gives control over memory clock/timings all I've got is what the BIOS optimizes by itself so it gave me a 2133-15-15-15-35 (the RDIMM's are 3200-24-22-22-52) so you wanna buy fast (3200 mhz) RDIMM's to get the BIOS to optimize the timings (you can't get the clocks but the BIOS will auto-optimize the timings based on the memory's clocks)

totally forgot: throttlestop will only start working after the system comes back from S3 (suspend to RAM) at least once

[Complextime]

I am struggeling with exact the same problem. I have downdated my bios to the M60 v1.62 as provided in this tread and at startup I can see the firmware is M60 v1.62.
Now is the problem that XTU greys out immediately after setting the slider and at Throttlestop I can slide to the values I want and save but after rebooting everything stands back to normal.
Have I done something wrong or forgot something?

I also have the TDP current limit warning but that can be due to powermanagement when on idle (my core voltage and clock speed are jumping al over the place at idle)?

[Manoa]

it's normal, this is full software performance control, there is no reason for it to stay over reboot :x
do not start TS before going the computer to sleep (suspend/standby) at least once after booting
the performance settings are not accessible by TS without a suspend to ram cycle (it is a BIOS "bug" that allows TS to control performance parameters)

1. boot
2. suspend to ram
3. start TS

when you make sure to each time start TS in exactly this way, your TS settings will be saved/restored correctly each time