The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

I looked at those too but seeing that RedRob doesn't have a water cooling system atm I opted for the "air" cooled ones.

.....gm

Hey btw Sophy did you see the Antec 1200 for sale at buy.com? $139.99 delivered. link

 

ok fellas. i tried messing around with the multi to gain a higher fsb and get the mem up to 900mhz

i first tried to take the OC to 3.92ghz 436x9 putting the mem at 872mhz with the 266strapping also putting the mem volts back to 2.2v
didnt work. wouldnt even post...so i tried messing with the cpu multi

with this F9 bios i now have the option of -/+ .05 so i droped the mulit down to 8.5 and went for 450x 8.5 back to my 3.82ghz and mem at 900mhz on 2.2v and 266mhz strapping...CPU was fine mem would stay stable...
so i got it back to 3.8ghz and mem at 846mhz...gonna take it up to 3.9ghz put a little more vcore to it and see what i get.

 

So Rob, how did things go? I suspect that you are probably looking for more than you current hardware is going to deliver. A memory upgrade would at least take stress off of that particular area so that you can determine the actual limits of your processor.

 

Your 100% right Soph.i can get 4.0ghz stable as you have seen. but to get higher or even higher fsb with my Mem now isnt not gonna happen. at least with what i know i cant. so im back to 3.8ghz stable and runing very well.tbh trying to get 3.9ghz stable was harder than 4.0ghz....

so until next year(6 months or so) 3.8ghz is where its at for me and my E8400 and setup. i am more than happy with what i have done with my very first build...might loking into some more mem. 4gb(only be able to recognise 3.5 or of it) and maybe another GPU.. little better than my 7600gt.

 

hey, i just built my new pc and everything. and i never OC before. i have a gigabyte ep-dsl motherboard and q6600 cpu. my question is that if you set the vcore too high on the bios, does anything bad happen? beside you wasting power? and if you do, is it a lot of power?

 

Well, your CPU will go pop, and yes, you waste loads of power. Upping the vcore to the safe limits of 65nm chips can almost double their heat output.

 

I have an asus p5n-d and a q6600. right now I have overclocked it to 2.64 using the AI program that came with asus mobo. If I try to go any higher Vista will not start. Is this a power issue or a windows issue. My temp at 2.64 is only 36c on both CPU and case. Any suggestions on how I can push it more. I would like to get to 2.8 - 3.0.

 

Do it in the BIOS, software overclocking is rubbish.

 

ok should i reset bios to default before i tinker again.

 

To play safe. id clear CMOS, pop the battery out for a few minutes and start from new in the bios and try the OC from there.

 

what vcore should i put for my q6600 if i want 3.0ghz? right now i think i set it to 1.3v.

 

take it away sam. you got the Q6600. i wouldnt know. what is the max for the Q6600? 1.5v?

 

There are Q6600s and there are Q6600s though, I need 1.4V ish to get 3Ghz stable, and max out at 3.3Ghz on 1.5V, which is as high as I'm willing to go.

 

so you got yours up to 3.3ghz sam? sweet. is it stable there? bet your lovin that aint ya?

 

I haven't properly tested that yet. It's at 3.24 normally. 3.3 works, but it's not stress tested. 3.42 is fine for most things, but fails a burntest...

 

do you just use prime95 to check if its stable? ive been using the q6600 at 3.0ghz for a few days, but i have had 100% cpu load.

my idle temp right now is around 40-45C. full load around 50-57C. is that good temps?

according to cpu-z, i set my core voltage to 1.264. i thought i set the vcore to 1.3 in the bios though.

 

If you get a Q6600 to 3.2 GHz then you are getting the performance of a Core 2 extreme. With all the nonsense floating across the Internet it becomes so easy to become entrapped by it and wonder if there's something wrong with ones stuff. As if one is missing some hidden secret that has somehow eluded them when others had so easily found it. Right now the Q6600 is less than $200 when overclocked essentially makes it the most powerful CPU ever to exist at that price.

 

so then a Q9650 @4.0ghz makes you king of the night time world then...lol

so jealous soph.... i gotta save my pennies

 

I use IntelBurnTest, as it seems pretty accurate at testing stability within a short period. Systems that can pass prime95 for hours could still potentially fail that test, and I'd rather not wait hours for a stability check...
Your CPU voltage will be lower than you set it due to vdroop, the undervolt effect caused by your motherboard's power regulators. You have got a good chip if it's stable at such a low voltage at 3Ghz, as my CPU was only stable at 3.15Ghz with 1.408 in CPUZ, 1.45 in BIOS. I've set 1.475V with loadline calibration (reduces vdroop effect) just to get 3.24Ghz stable.

 

I was originally wait because I thought that the prices would come down a little but they've actually gone up by another $20, so I guess waiting would not have been wise.

I actually was able to overclock it to 4.15 GHz but at that speed my memory was way out of spec and required voltage increases. I'd considered purchasing some new RAM (1200 MHz) that would be within spec but then I remembered the advice that I often pass around about a smart overclock versus one just to impress. However I can say that if anyone is looking for a Quad core chip that will run stable at 4 GHz, this is the one that will do it.