Overclocking my Q6600 soon

[MiPeNiS]

Here is the cpu-id. With Core Temp I have seen the temps in the 80's on load (playing a game on full settings) without a ceiling fan on. Here is what about 2 hours does with the side of the case open. by the way the core speed switches between 2005.5 and 3008.8 max.

[gwai lo]

What's your ambient temperature? As in what's your room temperature?

At 3 GHz on stock cooling, I wouldn't think it's out of the ordinary to see up to 80?C at load..unless you live in a meat locker (hence the reason for asking about your ambient temperature). As for the core dropping frequency, it's Speedstep or State C1E...it's a normal function to conserve power.

Anyway, at this point I'm not really sure what you're asking about..

[MiPeNiS]

Just trying to clarify is the temp was understandable on stock cooling. Also, wanted to see if I should look into after market cooling.

[+shift. MVC]

And in order to figure out whether or not that temperature is acceptable, we will have to know your ambient temperature, ie. the temperature in your room.

Because what you need to understand is that if your room temperature is 25C, then that is directly proportionate to your CPU temperature at idle and load. The higher your ambient temperature, your CPU temperature and case temperature will be proportionately higher.

[Mannlich]

Just trying to clarify is the temp was understandable on stock cooling. Also, wanted to see if I should look into after market cooling.

You definitely should look into aftermarket cooling. Is it really taking you 1.4+ volts to get to 3.0ghz on a G0 Q6600? That seems extremely high. I have mine at 3.51ghz on less than that.

[gwai lo]

Looks like the autoOC at work really..

[SuperKid]

I gone through hell with overclocking on my nforce 680i sli and infact i bought my cooler for nothing i am now running stock because basically, all i got was my power kept cutting out on crysis that was due to my overclocking! all i wanted was 3.2ghz or 3.4ghz but i couldn't do it it would just crash, bsod, freeze, lockup, power cut out i would love to give it another go but im not entirely sure.

I would just use 3.0ghz at auto voltages tbh i think that works with 1333mhz fsb. but 3.4ghz would be nice, i recon i hit a major wall after 1333mhz fsb because anything over it would crash, bsod, fail prime95, error at me, moan complain do whatever it wanted! really annoying tbh when really i have the headroom to get to 3.4ghz easily with the cooler i have! i even tried like 1.5voltage on just 3.4ghz and everything people suggested me before.

Really if anyone would like to guide me on msn feel free to PM me or at least help me in anyway i would give it a go.

[Mannlich]

The 680i is not a great board for overclocking a quad core chip. I had an EVGA 680i that I used to OC My Q6600, and had all sorts of problems. As soon as I put the Q6600 in an intel P35 chipset, overclocking was a breeze. I can remember having a hard time getting my chip to anything above 3.0ghz. Even there, it took quite a bit of voltage to the NB/FSB.

[Nagisan]

Recently got my hands in a ASUS P5KC LGA 775 Intel P35 motherboard and swapped it out in place of my 650i I was running previously.

For some reason it doesnt like my ram at 1000Mhz, I had to turn my ram down to around 950Mhz to even boot properly.....it booted fine at 1000Mhz on the 650i (and was prime stable for 8+ hours). Beyond that, I am maxing out at around 3Ghz only, I cant even get it to boot properly at 3.2Ghz.

Any suggestions? Right now I am running all stock voltages, what sort of voltages can this Mobo handle? Thats one thing I never looked at was upping the mobo voltage, and I know that can be a factor since a higher FSB might need more voltage, but I never learned how much voltage is safe to run on the mobo.

Any tips to voltages and things I can try to get it stable at a higher speed would be awesome.

[Mannlich]

Recently got my hands in a ASUS P5KC LGA 775 Intel P35 motherboard and swapped it out in place of my 650i I was running previously.

For some reason it doesnt like my ram at 1000Mhz, I had to turn my ram down to around 950Mhz to even boot properly.....it booted fine at 1000Mhz on the 650i (and was prime stable for 8+ hours). Beyond that, I am maxing out at around 3Ghz only, I cant even get it to boot properly at 3.2Ghz.

Any suggestions? Right now I am running all stock voltages, what sort of voltages can this Mobo handle? Thats one thing I never looked at was upping the mobo voltage, and I know that can be a factor since a higher FSB might need more voltage, but I never learned how much voltage is safe to run on the mobo.

Any tips to voltages and things I can try to get it stable at a higher speed would be awesome.

This sounds you probably left all of your voltages on AUTO on the 650i board -- which doesn't mean stock. A lot of times, when left on auto, the motherboard adjusts the voltages automatically for what setting you put in -- often over compensating on voltage and giving too much. With your P35 board, you should set the voltages manually. This is usually better because you'll get a stable overclock on less voltage.

What kind of hardware are you running in the motherboard. Do you have a Q6600 in there? What kind of ram is it. My P35 board overclocks my Q6600 to 3.51ghz at about 1.4v.

[Nagisan]

What kind of hardware are you running in the motherboard. Do you have a Q6600 in there? What kind of ram is it. My P35 board overclocks my Q6600 to 3.51ghz at about 1.4v.

Q6600 (same as first post, G0 stepping)

2x 2GB g.skill DDR2-1000 (PC8000, rated to run at 5-5-5-15, worked fine at those timings and 1000mhz on my 650i)

Sapphire 4850 TOXIC

SeaSonic 700W PSU (click for full details)

If you need any other details let me know, I'll try setting the CPU voltage to 1.4v, but what should I set my mobo to and should I manually set my ram to 2.1v instead of leaving it on auto?

Edited September 14, 2008 by mwpeck

[Mannlich]

My P35 defaults ram voltage to 1.8v. Check in the bios and see what the Vdimm is and increase it as necessary to get it to 2.1v. What overclock did you have on the 650i board? I run my Q6600 at 390fsb for the 3.51ghz. Also, you have to account for vdroop when setting in the voltage. For example, my reported voltage is 1.40v, but in BIOS, I actually have it set at 1.45v. Fire up CPU-Z and see what the reported voltage is.

[Nagisan]

On my 650i I was at 355fsb for a 3.2ghz stable overclock, I also took my voltage all the way up to 1.5v to make sure that wasnt the issue.

Also, I just remembered, when I swapped to the P35 board, I actually upgraded to a Q6700, the only difference from what I can tell is the 6700 has a 10x multiplier instead of a 9x.

EDIT:

Ok, now I'm running at 3.5Ghz, 350fsb, I turned my memory down to 875Mhz (it was either 875Mhz or 1050, and anything over ~970 seems unstable on this board) and I was at least able to boot, will be doing a quick torture test with prime to see if its somewhat stable, I think an extra 500Mhz on the processors more than make up for the <100mhz loss on the ram.

EIDT2:

Ok, it fails prime95 in a matter of seconds.....turns out my bios voltage is way off what I am actually getting. I had it set to 1.4v and I was getting like 1.336v.....right now I have it set to 1.5v and I am getting 1.424v idle, if I go under load it drops down to 1.336v yet again. Am I really getting that high of a voltage drop on my processor or is something wrong? How safe is it to go much higher than 1.5v to try to get 1.4v under load? I dont want to damage the processor by setting the bios voltage too high, but I dont think I will get far with a 1.3v under load.

Edited September 14, 2008 by mwpeck

[Nagisan]

Edit time wore off.

Ok, I turned the Bios cpu vcore up to 1.55v, it put it up around 1.45v idle, and drops down to between 1.37-1.38 (1.76 or so to be exact) under prime95 testing. Its up to ~5 minutes of prime95 and no failures yet (before it failed in less than 10 seconds), I'll run it overnight to test it out and if it fails I'll try bumping it up a little higher and see if it works. It seems my Bios vcore setting is off by 0.1v as the idle voltage is around 0.1v lower in windows than the Bios says.

[Mannlich]

You should try updating the bios on the board. Also, does this board have an option for loadline calibration? If it does, I leave that enabled. It helps to reduce vdroop drastically on ASUS boards. Give that a shot -- you shouldn't have to set your vcore nearly as high with LLC enabled.

[Nagisan]

Well, I attempted updating the BIOS, and being that I dont have a flash driver or floppy drive, I decided to try it from within Windows.

It seemed to go fine, but the last step (verifying) it failed. I was unable to install the original bios, because the Asus program couldnt recognize the MOBO and therefore wouldnt load. Long story short, I just ordered another P35 chipset MOBO, the Gigabyte EP35 (same one mentioned in your sig with your E6600). From what I can recall, the Asus board didnt have anything called Loadline Calibration or LLC.

One question, I know its a different Mobo, but being the same chipset and all, will I have to reinstall windows? I was thinking I will probably have to reinstall the network drivers and what not, but would I have to completely reinstall?

[gwai lo]

Why don't you just email Asus support instead of dropping money on another board?

You may be able to get away with the same chipset drivers, but you'll probably get some odd bugs here and there from other software conflicts.

Asus' Loadline Calibration may be voltage damper, at least that's what it is on my board. I believe we both have AMI bioses.

[Nagisan]

I need the computer up and running as quickly as possible, it would probably take longer to contact Asus and get a replacement chip than it would to order a new board considering newegg is literally an hour from where I live, I will have the new board tomorrow at the latest (possibly today if it ships fast enough), I use the computer for some work and I need it up and running ASAP. I have a feeling, even with how good Asus' support may be, it would take a few days to get anything from them.

Would I at least be able to get into the OS to back up some files? I have both school and work files that need backed up, worse case I can lose the school files (they are on different OS's) as I already submitted them (online schooling) and could download them from my school dropbox. But I would like to not even have to worry about losing anything if possible.

[Mannlich]

Why didn't you just go out and buy a flash drive? They are dirt cheap. You could have at least flashed the BIOS and given it a shot.

[biko]

Sorry for the double post (cant edit my last one), got it to 3.4Ghz stable, I'm pretty happy with that as its still 400Mhz above the previously highest processor I had (when I had my FX, it ran at 3Ghz), and its quad to boot. That being said if anyone knows what would have caused the hard locks at higher speeds, let me know, I dont plan on pushing it higher unless I can find for certain whats causing the locks. Core temps at this O/C vary from 38?C to 46?C, rather low IMO, but then again I am running water cooling.

Well, like I said, if anyone has any thoughts on the hard locks, let me know, otherwise I'm happy sitting at 3.4Ghz.......I have a feeling the hard locks are from the MOBO FSB, its an nVidia 650i chipset which has a rated max FSB of 1333 Mhz, I'm running it stable at 1512 Mhz.

What are your settings? FSB, Clock, Voltages, Divider, and any other settings you changed?

[Nagisan]

Why didn't you just go out and buy a flash drive? They are dirt cheap. You could have at least flashed the BIOS and given it a shot.

It was sort of a spur of the moment thing, I usually have some sitting around but I was unable to find them. I have successfully flashed BIOS's before and havnt had any problems so I didnt think much of backing it up at the time.

[Nagisan]

Ok, up and running on my EP35-DS3l......I am only at 3.3Ghz right now, I tried 3.5 and I cannot boot, I think the problem is voltages. I have the voltage set to 1.45v in the Bios, but both the Bios and CPU-Z are reading it at the stock 1.25v.....anyone with this board have any tips on how to override the stock voltages? I went up to 1.5v but it still didnt turn it above stock.

[Mannlich]

Make sure you set the voltage controls to manual. Also, have you updated the board to the latest bios? I would make sure to do that.

[Nagisan]

It is set to manual (cant change them with it on auto), I found a few people who said resetting you CMOS worked, but I tried that and it didnt work. Its running the F4 Bios right now, I'm slightly worried about updating it BUT from what I read this motherboard has a backup bios that, if the first one fails, it copies the backup onto the main bios, then reboots and should reboot normally, right?

EDIT: Also, I disabled all 3 power-based settings (C1E, then the other two it has below it) but that didnt help either.

[Mannlich]

It is set to manual (cant change them with it on auto), I found a few people who said resetting you CMOS worked, but I tried that and it didnt work. Its running the F4 Bios right now, I'm slightly worried about updating it BUT from what I read this motherboard has a backup bios that, if the first one fails, it copies the backup onto the main bios, then reboots and should reboot normally, right?

EDIT: Also, I disabled all 3 power-based settings (C1E, then the other two it has below it) but that didnt help either.

True -- the motherboard does have a backup BIOS. It is a nice feature to have, but I've never needed it. I would go ahead and upate. I run the F6a BIOS on mine.