The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Geese. I've only seen a few xbox's run, and they didn't sound like that one. That one reminds me of a phaser overload, or a turbine engine.
"she's gonna blow captain"! LOL!
Sounds like a pretty powerful fan. I don't KNOW what a 360 sounds like. Probably never will. I prefer PC gaming, and MAYBE a PS3 one day. But that sure sounds bad!
You're obviously pretty into the Silent scheme of things.
<----Jealousy
I have much to learn Thanks for reminding me how wonderful youtube is LOL! It's absolutely wonderful what you can find on youtube. I especially love the tutorials, and of course things that make me laugh.

 

Russ, you are aware that Orthos is only dual threaded right? You need to run dual instances and set the affinity for each one to 2 of the cores. Likewise for a tri-core. Watch your processor usage. For me it only uses 2 cores and I need dual instances.

 

I ran into that using orthos as well. Rather than deal with that, I just switched to Prime 95. Should I still consider orthos for some reason?

 

Not really. I've just been using it so long. I find it represents real-world load temps closely. But really Prime 95 is the same. Orthos was just a mod of it for dual core, though I have no clue why. You can open as many instances of Prime as you want.

 

I'm about to try this, since I don't want to reformat:
http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/upgrade-the-windows-7-rc-to-retail/

Wish me luck

 

Good luck and godspeed

 

Estuansis,
I only used one instance because that's what I checked the temps with before, just to get a comparison. The same test the other day, which I posted, was 40-41C for the motherboard. Now it's 36C! I can also run OCCT, all 4 cores and check that too, but I really don't like the load it puts on the CPU at all. Very much overkill and too stressful IMO!

Russ

 

So far so good, gone through the install procedure, took about an hour extra roughly to move all the files etc, but everything's as it was, right down to the desktop wallpaper and position of the icons. Impressive stuff.

 

This all depends on the air to water cooling systems you compare. in gerneral, NO, water cooling is and has been the quieter option on a clock to clock comparison. Now addd in overclocks and take into account cheaper liquid cooling gear to high end air cooling and now things change. In general even some of the best air cooling solutions need to be cranked up to match the cooling efforts of middle of the line water cooling.

In my own personal experiences I have always chosen the low speed medium resitant water rig over high end air for quietness, yes, even over a THermalRight Ultra 120, the current top dog on air with dual 120's in a push pall set up. Where things get even better, you can almost passive a water cooled unit to match a moderate OC rig like lets say our nice and hot i7 920's to 4.21GHz with adding more Rads, larger diameter tubing, and increased resivors to an chambered insulated and cooled pump box. Bottom line is we go water for cooling effort now but can still be tweaked for quiet very easily with todays quality pumps and fans.

But on an average, if we're comparing apples to oranges, a off the shelf kit to a perfoamance build then o corse they are barely equal if not less efficient then high end air.

So yes, I do agree though, with several years of working with water and air both, it is costly up front but not too bad to keep it up from upgrade to upgrade when you invest in quality parts. It certainly is not for everyone.

Update I finally installed my new i7 930 today and will compare it to my recent or current i7 940 for the almost half the cost to see how nice this baby overclocks.

 

It's that initial cost hurdle I'm having a hard time jumping lol. By the time I have money for the WC system with high end parts it's time for new hardware instead.

----

My E6600 OC's a little bit now. Appears to be stable at 2.7Ghz, but not a Ghz higher (won't POST) even when raising the Vcore from 1.3 to 1.35. Considering what it recovered from though I'll take my 2.7Ghz and be happy lol.

 

Nuck: Hence the word good. In a large number of cases watercooled systems are indeed quieter than air cooled ones, but only typically because when watercooling is used, more thought is given to the cooling system in general. Unless you use a passive radiator, there is a minimum airflow requirement, often positioned in a location where fans are more noticeable (such as on the top of the case).
Most importantly, CPU cooling and case ventilation are often not the main causes of noise in a system, it's the other components, and while you can easily watercool the chipset to negate the need for noisy case ventilation, watercooling graphics cards can be a pain as you often need to find a full size block to avoid problems with VRM heat and the total heat output in the system can be quite substantial if both the CPU and GPU are cooled, raising the required component grade.
Watercooling is also of course, a risky investment. It has to be done properly to be safe, and it's this reason why I never recommend it to anyone, as the only people who should be watercooling are the people who have already done plenty of research of their own.

 

In general, most things will carry over with only exception being GPU blocks if you update so often. I have blocks if wanted that can carry over from 478 socket with only reason for update being to new technology out for higher performances, but yesterdays top end for less is well within todays low end affordable for what it can do in terms of water cooling blocks for chipsets CPU's tubing, and rads.

As for the E6600 OC, fill me in as I have been out of place here for some time. I can help troubleshoot your OC but need some basic specs to get starteed. Firstly, do you have a known better batch of CPU to work with? On the right mobo (good chipset) with right BIOS settings I have got few of these E6600 stable to 4.0GHz but it is a look of the draw as most will tell you here. 3.5 ~ 3.8GHz should be workable for even the lesser of the overclockers out there with a good strong system and cooling to back it up.

 

If I recall correctly, the consensus here is that the chip used to run at 3.2 or 3.4 on a regular basis, but was somehow damaged by overvolting which caused a reduction in the stable overclock.

 

The comment about my E6600 was mostly just a follow up on another post. It was running at 3.4Ghz stable until I returned to stock for summer, then it refused to be even remotely stable at anything past stock for a while. I appreciate you offer to help though, maybe we can coax her back up to 3.4 lol. I have a Asus Commando MB (NB: P965, SB: ICH8R) and arctic freezer 7 pro for cooling. The batch, L629F221, wasn't the one I really wanted but is still decent as far as I know. I'm thinking a small bump the NB voltage might help but it was never needed before so I'm not that hopeful.

 

The 965 is quite an old chipset, so it's possible it may need a voltage boost to reach higher FSB speeds. 3.4Ghz I believe is 378FSB, which is substantially beyond spec for the 965.

 

3.2 took about 355 so around 378 should be right. Had I known that I would have validated it like the 3.2ghz in my sig, wish I knew better back then lol.

EDIT:

Completely missed that post, sorry. As a clarification, the voltage was never set above 1.35, except for a short stint of 1.4v for about 2min at the very beginning of it's life. It continued to run at 3.4 and then 3.2 for about a year afterwords.

 

Ah, must have been someone else then. No worries.

 

Red_Maw,
I have a suggestion that I've seen work many times. Turn off your computer including the mains and power plug on the PSU. Remove the CMOS battery, and go have a cup of coffee. After about 10 minutes, put the battery back in and fire it up and start overclocking! I have no idea why it works, but I've done that with a couple of my computers, and it solved the problem. I couldn't reach frequencies that it ran well at before, and completely clearing the CMOS made it work right again. can't hurt to try! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Thanks Russ, I'll give that a try some time.

 

Red_Maw,
You're most welcome.

Russ