C2D Overclocking Guide for Beginners

[sswats]

Do you mean the temperature is high for 1.45v or 1.45 is high for speed of 3ghz

I will try reseating the HSF next. How much is minimal as5? does the compund need to spread across the whole heat spreader of the cPU, or just across the middle?


I have tested a speed of 330fsb at 1.4v and that was reasonably stable for 1 hour (just doing some initial testing before doing the 12 hour stretch).

But at 335fsb I have to boost it to 1.45 otherwise it lasts less than 5 minutes on load.

[Clunk]

I was meaning that the temp seemed a bit high for 1.45v.

If you put a dot of AS5 in the centre of the cpu, when you clamp the heatsink down, itll spread itself. What you dont want is for it to be oozing out of the sides. When you take off the heatsink, there should be an almost see through, almost circular layer on both the heatsink and the cpu, any more is too much, any less is not enough. try it a few times until you get it right, you really only need a bit

Did you disable all the cpu settings, like speedstep, vanderpool etc? There will be some settings in those bios shots I did from the p5b that correspond with stuff in your bios. Try adding a bit of voltage to the northbridge. Also, take off the northbridge heatsink and clean it and apply some as5 while youre at it

[sswats]

no luck.

reseated it 3 times, still the same temperatures.
I put the NB voltage upto +0.3v. still same.

The settings are all as specified in this guide yet still the same temperatures and no stability at anything above 330fsb.

[Clunk]

It could be that your cpu needs a lot more volts than usual, some do unfortunately and it is luck of the draw.

What are your temps idle and under load at stock settings?

Edit: and you never said what ram you have, maybe that is at its limit or needs some settings changing?

[sswats]

stock setting temps are 33 idle, 49 load.

I have 2gb of Geil Ultra DDR. when trying to overclock i run it at 5-5-5-15 at 2.2v (tried 2.3v too), and at 335fsb its running at 837mhz, which I have been told is well within its capabilities.

I'll keep tinkering. may get lucky.

[Clunk]

There is your problem right there.

You need to set the ram to 1:1.

read back in this thread at the posts just before yours where defenestration was asking about the same thing....save me retyping it all again. Its all in the guide as well

[Defenestration]

If you have the GeIL PC6400C4 ULL RAM, then you should set DRAM voltage to 2.1 (at least that's what mine recommends on the label on the RAM stick). You should also manually change the timings to 4-4-4-12 (again assuming you have the RAM I mentioned) .

[GDB2222]

Sorry to ask stupid question, but is the 4300 the 'obvious' one to go for from the point of view of overclocking? It's got a multiplier of 9, and just putting the FSB at 266 gives it the same clock speed as a stock E6600.

Can you reasonably expect to overclock this chip to a FSB of 300 using the standard cooler and so on? In fact, without going bananas about this, and using standard hardware, what is a reasonable FSB to aim for that will give a stable system? (This is for a normal situation. I appreciate that you may occasionally come across components that will not overclock as much as usual.)

Finally, I can't see much point in spending a shedload of money on a motherboard in order to overclock the CPU. So what do you brains recommend as a good value for money motherboard that will allow a bit of overclocking without costing the earth?

[GDB2222]

Just to follow up on the previous posting, an E4300 costs £98, whereas an E6700 costs £329.

If I can overclock the cheaper processor to nearly the same performance, I will be well happy. If I up the FSB on the E4300 to 300, then I should be on the same CPU clock speed as the standard E6700. The FSB will be at 1200, which is slightly faster than the E6700's 1066. I will have less cache, but I would hope for similar levels of performance.

Having got to that level, I am not interested in an extra few percent more. I should notice the 50% extra performance, but not the small increments after that.

What I will notice is a less stable system, so I only want to overclock up to a level where I am still getting a system that is as stable as the stock E6700 or E6600.

[GDB2222]

Finally, if I am building a system from scratch for this purpose, can you good people suggest some components please? Please bear in mind that I am looking for a reasonable performance hike, without spending too much money, rather than the best possible performance at gold-plated prices.

CPU: E4300, is that a sensible buy?

Motherboard: ?

RAM: DDR2 5400 seems to have a max memory speed of 2 x 667, which is well in excess of the 1200 I was aiming for. Is that overkill? Should I just get DDR2 4200 and hope for the best?

Cooler: I would prefer to use the stock cooler if possible. Given the sorts of levels of o/c I am thinking about is that feasible? I would happily change the cooler if that will give me more stability.

PSU: Nothing too fancy. Any suggestions? I guess this depends on the graphics card, which will probably be an Nvidia 7600GT.

[Clunk]

Originally Posted by GDB2222

Sorry to ask stupid question, but is the 4300 the 'obvious' one to go for from the point of view of overclocking? It's got a multiplier of 9, and just putting the FSB at 266 gives it the same clock speed as a stock E6600.

Can you reasonably expect to overclock this chip to a FSB of 300 using the standard cooler and so on? In fact, without going bananas about this, and using standard hardware, what is a reasonable FSB to aim for that will give a stable system? (This is for a normal situation. I appreciate that you may occasionally come across components that will not overclock as much as usual.)

Finally, I can't see much point in spending a shedload of money on a motherboard in order to overclock the CPU. So what do you brains recommend as a good value for money motherboard that will allow a bit of overclocking without costing the earth?

Everything that you have asked is in the guide.

Originally Posted by GDB2222

Just to follow up on the previous posting, an E4300 costs £98, whereas an E6700 costs £329.

If I can overclock the cheaper processor to nearly the same performance, I will be well happy. If I up the FSB on the E4300 to 300, then I should be on the same CPU clock speed as the standard E6700. The FSB will be at 1200, which is slightly faster than the E6700's 1066. I will have less cache, but I would hope for similar levels of performance.

Having got to that level, I am not interested in an extra few percent more. I should notice the 50% extra performance, but not the small increments after that.

What I will notice is a less stable system, so I only want to overclock up to a level where I am still getting a system that is as stable as the stock E6700 or E6600.

Not sure what you are asking

Originally Posted by GDB2222

Finally, if I am building a system from scratch for this purpose, can you good people suggest some components please? Please bear in mind that I am looking for a reasonable performance hike, without spending too much money, rather than the best possible performance at gold-plated prices.

CPU: E4300, is that a sensible buy?

Motherboard: ?

RAM: DDR2 5400 seems to have a max memory speed of 2 x 667, which is well in excess of the 1200 I was aiming for. Is that overkill? Should I just get DDR2 4200 and hope for the best?

Cooler: I would prefer to use the stock cooler if possible. Given the sorts of levels of o/c I am thinking about is that feasible? I would happily change the cooler if that will give me more stability.

PSU: Nothing too fancy. Any suggestions? I guess this depends on the graphics card, which will probably be an Nvidia 7600GT.

This needs to go in the general hardware section.

[sswats]

Originally Posted by Clunk

There is your problem right there.

You need to set the ram to 1:1.

read back in this thread at the posts just before yours where defenestration was asking about the same thing....save me retyping it all again. Its all in the guide as well

I'm a bit confused now.

I get the ratios, but my ram works at 850mhz easy. I tried upping the ratio with a low fsb and the ram works great.

but when i up the fsb and lower the ratio so the ram is about 835mhz the whole system is unstable, and my previous tests made me think it wasn't the ram.

Or do you mean 1:1 will be more stable generally. that means i have to up the fsb all the way to 375, and reduce the multiplier to 8 to get 3ghz AND a good ram speed.
will that work? or is there a better way?

[Clunk]

Forget how fast your ram should run for now. Some dividers are not stable at certain fsb speeds.

Set it to 1:1 tp start, so that you start off with 266/533 and as you up the fsb, the ram will up itself. Find out how far you can go like this first before worrying about your ram running at its maximum speed.

What is the rated speed for your ram by the way?

[sswats]

Its 6400 ram, so 800Mhz.

Ok I'll try that.
Thanks.

[Clunk]

Well thats what is happening. You are setting the ram to 800mhz then overclocking the cpu and when you do that, the ram speed also increases, but as the ram started off at 800mhz and is only rated at 800mhz, it doesnt have anywhere to go, and the system becomes unstable, whereas, if you start with the ram at 1:1, you can get a 3.6ghz overclock out of the cpu before you even start to overclock the ram (thats if the cpu can go that far of course).

[Areku]

Ok so I have my system up and running at the moment but im waiting on a few case fans before I start my overclocking session.

Ive been running TAT and the other temp monitoring apps which you mentioned just to see what temps id hit without any case fans.

Clunk on your guide you said

Originally Posted by Clunk

Leave Orthos running. Keep an eye on the temps, I would say for a relatively modest overclock like this, we don’t want to be hitting 55c, and I would hope that the temps would be much less than this.

When you mention the 55c temps, which application are you referring to on that one, TAT or Core Temp?

As you said the temperatures vary from each application. This made me look around and I found this guide on C2D temps:

Core 2 Duo Temperature Guide

So pretty much in that guide it says TAT runs 15c warmer than most other apps due to how it reads the processor. My E4300 is running at around 50c idle 60c load on TAT, 33c idle 49c load on Core Temp. I am hoping with the case fans that these may come down a bit.

So are these temps ok for a system with no case fans but running a Arctic Freezer pro 7?