The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

hi im new to overclocking but i have read all over the internet that if you overclock the cpu you are reducing its life because of heat and volatge ect. if i overclocked my new core i7 920 chip and kept the voltage the same with liquid cooling and the temperature is the same as if i didnt overclock it then will it last as long as if i didnt overclock it

thanks for any help

 

you will definately need to raise your core voltage to overclock to any decent range, otherwise using water cooling is a waste - you might as well just use the stock cooler. I had an e6750 running 1ghz over it's stock speed and well over-volted, still runs fine after 18months I've just replaced it with a new pc though.

 

rubixcube,
I have to say that you were lucky! I had my E6750 to just over 4GHz over-volted to 1.57v for about 10 minutes, and it ruined the chip! It took 9 months for it to slowly fail, but fail it did! LOL!! Not a bad OC though 1.34gHz worth! After 10 minutes of running 4GHz, it would never go above 3.55GHz again, but I had to keep raising the voltage every month or so to keep it stable. When I started having memory problems and corrupt files at 1.5v, I knew it was time to RMA the chip. The replacement ran at 3.8GHz at 1.44v with no effort at all.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Not necessarily, "over 1GHz+" could easily be 3.75Ghz, done at 1.5V which should be safe.

 

Sam,
It all depends on the luck of the draw with the CPU. The E6750 I got as a replacement from Intel ran at much lower voltages than the original did, and it took a good deal less than 1.5v to get to 3.8GHz, at 1.44v. It got to 3.4GHz before I had to add any voltage at all!

Russ

 

Even with water cooling any decent overclock will most likely make it run hotter then normal anyway. If you're worried about damaging the cpu or reducing it's life span you can always put off overclocking for a while; a i7 920 is a pretty fast cpu at stock and shouldn't have too much problems keeping up (for now).

 

Even if you didn't watercool it, it would last as long, provided you kept the voltage the same or similar (you can increase it a little bit) In fact, it would last longer if you didn't, as watercooling is a pain to set up and usualy leaks whether your fault or not.

 

When done right [water cooling] shouldn't leak as long as it's maintained properly. Also not every one finds WC a pain to set up/design. When I was considering WC'ing I was having a lot of fun designing the loop(s) and was looking foreword to putting it all together.

 

It's not difficult to design, but in practice, it's surprisingly problematic. For instance, even the best assembled system doesn't account for a faulty radiator, tubes, or pump that leak (I've seen all three, all with high grade components, and all with knowledgable system builders)

 

True, but I'd consider that comparable to getting a faulty stick of ram; there isn't much you can do about it. I failed to mention that I put things like rads and pumps on the outside (I don't see the point of trying to cram stuff into the case) so if they leak it isn't a big deal. Tubing shouldn't ever be faulty (granted it isn't cheap junk), unless you pinch it or bend it too sharply there should never be problems with it.

That's just my opinion though. Chances are something will go wrong eventually but it's like that with everything. By the way I feel as if we've had this discussion on WC before.

 

Is it worth me buying a new heatsink?

My Stock Athlon X2 6000+ heatsink is becoming increasingly clogged with dust and its pushing my temps up (I can't be arsed to clean it) if I bought a Zalman or something else for around £35 how fast would I be able to get it. I'm looking for a rough figure.

I've googled it but all I found is info on the old 95nm chips and mines a 65nm Brisbane.

 

Buy a Freezer 64 Pro, every bit as good as a £45 Zalman, but less than half the price.

 

That's a right bargain and it isn't an absolute pain to fit like the Zalman

I'm gonna order it.... When I have some money.... And have bought FUEL...

 

Also agreed with Sam on the Freezer 64 Pro. It's been the baseline upgrade cooler for AMDs for years. And, really, it shows no signs of losing that status. I know someone running a stock 940 BE just fine with one. Runs cool and everything.

As far as how high can you take the CPU... 3.2-3.3 seems about average for the Brisbane core X2s. Some have seen 3.4-3.5 with a good sample. I remember seeing one lucky guy hitting 3.6GHz 24/7 stable with a 5000+ BE. Really lucky to get that though. Mine wouldn't go past 3.25.

 

I remember seeing one lucky guy hitting 3.6GHz 24/7 stable with a 5000+ BE. Really lucky to get that though. Mine wouldn't go past 3.25.

My 5000+ be only went to about 3.25 on my old mobo, put it in my mates mobo to see if it was my mobo, and it hit 3.4 no worries with only 1.4v, where as on my mobo it takes 1.425v to get it stable at 3.2 with freezer pro running full whack, backed it down to 3.1 and doesnt go over 45ºc even after a whole night on cod 4, whats with the freezer pro on pwm. Its as much down to mobo chipset with the brisbanes i think. with luck he may reach 3.4ghz =)

 

I had my 6000+ up to 3.32GHz (its 3.1GHz stock) on the stock heatsink on stock voltages and it was fine. But then it started to age and it didn't like it any more. I think swapping from XP to 7 may have been a factor also.

 

It will have been, Windows Vista & 7 are more sensitive to overclocks than XP.

 

LOL! Took the words right out of my mouth I can get higher clocks on XP, than windows 7. 3.5ghz seems to be the sweet spot for now, on windows 7. Which is not too shabby. Im content. My encode times are excellent, my gaming is good, everything is very streamlined. No complaints here.

 

The normal OC settings of my Q9450@3.2 run fine with XP but hung forever at the opening screen at boot with win7RC

 

How long did you use win7 before noticing any decrease in performance. Im using win7 64bit on my machine and have the Q9400 @ 3.6ghz and i havent had a problem at all as of yet. Been running for about a month id say like this.