The Official Budget-Conscious Dream Machine!

I'm considering an IFX-14 if I upgrade to a Q6600. Do you think is is necessary or wise?

 

I wouldn't think so. A Thermalright Ultra 120 is way more than enough for a Q6600 seeing as you can get one to 3.2GHz easily with an AC Freezer 7 Pro.

Also, the IFX-14's are famous for having badly curved contact surfaces. I hope you feel like a few hours of sanding.

 

Remember this is the 120A, not the Extreme. Yeah, I thought so, but wasn't sure.

 

The difference between the 120A and the Extreme are negligible if you ask me. It should still keep a Q6600 ice cold at 3GHz or so, which I'm guessing is your goal if you buy one.

 

I'm actually hoping for the 3.4 sort of area... Essentially, as far as I can get on around 1.4 volts.

 

1.4v being your goal for heat? I don't know. Maybe 3.2 to 3.4 I'm guessing. You should still be pretty happy with it even at 3GHz.

 

well, I can't really judge heat until I try it, I was thinking more of electronmigration. I'm willing to go up to maybe 1.42-1.43V something like that if I can.

 

As in power consumption?

I'd say you could still do 3.4GHz pretty easily. Especially seeing as it's just 2 E6600's slapped together.

 

No, as in electronmigration, frying the chip by giving it too much voltage.

 

for 65nm C2Q qith those types of coolers, IMO 1.525 is the sweet spot IICR for temps and OCability.

one guy has gotten his Q6600 to 4.0GHz on a P5K-E with a TRUE and 2 140mm DELTA fans sams favorite fans but it ran perfect. (albeit at 1.6 on the Vcore)

 

OH! lol

AFAIK, 1.5v seems to be about the safe limit. You could take it to 1.45v without problems. I've done it for months with a small heat increase but not much else.

At anything below 1.5, your main worry is keeping it cool. If you can keep it cool, which you Ultra 120 should do nicely, you need't worry about "frying" the chip.

 

Yeah, I'll probably pass on the 4Ghz thanks... haha, and the 1.5V, but 1.4ish and the mid threes I'm hoping for - essentially enough to give me a noticeable performance increase from my 3.2Ghz E4300 on two cores, whilst also having a quad core CPU, if you see what I mean.

 

eelctron migration really comes into play with a high VTT and PLL, not so much the Vcore

 

Even so, I'm not taking it high, especially as it looks like I might have to manually overclock. I'm hoping my mobo's hard limit of 368FSB won't affect the Q6600 too, if it does, maybe I'll have to resort to a BIOS flash.

 

Yeah. I'd think you could take it to just about anything you want with 1.42-1.43 or so. 3.4GHz is definitely an option.

 

Indeed, on auto my X38-DS4 seems to top out at 1.408V, and auto or otherwise, it won't let me go above 368mhz FSB, so I may have to look into that.

 

You honestly shouldn't be letting it stay on auto to begin with. The X38s are supposed to be awesome overclockers but no motherboard OCs well on auto. The auto values given are usually far below the limits of the board and the CPU.

And only 368MHz? That motherboard is known for routinely going over 450MHz(or is it a CPU limit?). Try a BIOS flash and see if that helps. I specifically looked for that feature in reviews, and the one I'm getting should be fine. If that's not the case, Gigabyte's lower end boards actually OC better than their higher end boards by a longshot.

As for voltage, anything in the 1.4-1.42v area should be perfectly safe if you use non conductive paste and keep it cool. I definitely prefer AS Ceramique for OCing over AS5. Even then, the Q9450 could do well over 3.4GHz at under 1.4v. So I would expect similar of a Q6600.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_q9450/3.htm

This shows the Q9450 on an X48 board. Notice the values they take it to.

Also

WTF happened?????

 

No idea, bugs perhaps? I saw a post from ket0la the other day, a name I havent' seen for ages, and less than an hour after he made the post, it had 'suspended permanently' under his name...
edit: Ah, I see now. Too bad, if you don't play to the rules, you're out.

Indeed, I was thinking BIOS related for the OC - trouble is, Gigabyte boards like the X38-DS4 don't store BIOSes - i.e. if they ever hang at POST due to an overclock, they revert back to F1 again, and you have to flash them again...

 

Try a new processor then before you blame the board. Some boards I've seen will limit voltage and FSB options per-processor. I think a Q6600 might have quite a bit more headroom.

 

I certainly will, I have no intention of slinging my X38-DS4 any time soon. One point of note though, my HD4870X2 has arrived, and only fits in the bottom slot due to the size of the southbridge heatsink - even then it's a tight fit against something else, I'm not able to screw the card in...
Worthy of note for anyone contemplating HD4870X2 Crossfire X with an X38-DS4 or X48-DS4, I think they have the same lay out/