C2D Overclocking Guide for Beginners

[Areku]

My next job would be to take out the board, take off the northbridge heatsink and check if it is making contact. Quite often on these boards, they arent. Clean off the old thermal stuff, and apply some new. If the cooler isnt sitting flat, you'll have to bend the heatpipe slightly until it sits flat.

Can you tell me if you are able to run orthos overnight at stock settings?

I will have to try and do that tonight. I hate having to take motherboards out, so much hassle.

I was able to run Orthos for about an hour or longer when it was at stock speeds when I didnt have the case fans in. I never tested it to see if it ran overnight though. You think I should try that before taking the board out?

[Clunk]

Umm yes, from the second line of the guide "I will assume that your pc is stable at stock speeds, overnight with Orthos before you start. I will also assume that you have some kind of aftermarket CPU cooler and decent case air flow and ventilation. The stock Intel coolers are fine for running at stock speeds, but they aren’t too great for overclocking.
"

[Harkin]

A bit dissapointing about the commando, made by ROG and looks awesome, but im glad I know now.
I was looking at your Pc Specs and noticed you use watercooling. After loads of thought last night, Ive decide I want to try watercooling, less space taken up and probably less dust in my case and less noise from fewer fans. Im not a complete nub when it comes to PC's, built this one Im using now without any help, studyin computers at college, so I think I cud handle some watercooling. Just 1 thing though, like I said I orederd the CM Stacker 832 over the weekend, is this a good case for watercooling?( its huuuuge), same size as the Stacker 830 but with a bigger PSU bay. Also, cud you point me out to a good thread/forum about W/C, I think I might just copy your specs(W/C bits) if you dont mind as they seem like good quality parts.

[Clunk]

You will be better off making a thread about this in the hardware section, it'll get more replies

I havent used a stacker, so have no idea how it is for water cooling, but I'm sure others have tried it.

[Harkin]

Ok thnx, posted up a new thread

Just about the P5B, there seems to be 2 models I can get:
Asus P5B Deluxe WIFI
Asus P5B DLX/WIFI-AP
AP seeming to be the only difference, which is best for OC?
Thanx again Clunk
Oh yeah Im not going to need SLI as Im getting a 8800gtx OC version

[Harkin]

Think I found the answer
Asus P5B Deluxe WIFI- Crossfire
P5B DLX/WIFI-AP-SLI
Don't need SLI so i guess its the 1st one then

[Acksaw]

Thanks for this, just got my X6800 another 500mhz =]

[Areku]

Ok so im running back at stock speeds now and am running Orthos. 2 hours 30min so far and it is going well but I think I will leave it running a bit longer to make sure.

So considering that Orthos runs fine at stock speeds, do you think I will still need to check the whole Northbridge cooler etc?

Could that then mean I have a dud chip and that its overclocking potential is next to nothing?

Cheers for the advice so far Clunk.

[Clunk]

Give it 12 hours if you can, just to be on the safe side.

It is possible that you have a chip that isnt a good overclocker, but theres a few things we can still try.

Another thing that it could be, while we are speculating, is that your chip might require more voltage than the auto setting gives it. My 4300 is like that, but higher up the fsb range.

Did you say you updated to the latest bios? Latest chipset drivers etc?

[Areku]

Latest BIOS yes as far as I am aware. I was worried that I would get a motherboard which didnt support the 4300 out of the box but it seemed to be fine on the original BIOS.

As for chipset drivers I dont think I have looked at those yet. Could that really cause an issue though?

The only concern I have about adding more volts through the CPU is that wont it get a lot warmer? It gets quite hot as it is when it is overclocked but that may be due to the thermal paste or lack of perhpas?

[Clunk]

Latest BIOS yes as far as I am aware. I was worried that I would get a motherboard which didnt support the 4300 out of the box but it seemed to be fine on the original BIOS. Just update it to the latest one on the website, extract it to a usb drive and run the ez flash from the bios and it should pick it up right away.

As for chipset drivers I dont think I have looked at those yet. Could that really cause an issue though? More likely to be the bios, but worth updating them anyway. Just google 965 chipset drivers.

The only concern I have about adding more volts through the CPU is that wont it get a lot warmer? It gets quite hot as it is when it is overclocked but that may be due to the thermal paste or lack of perhpas?

Update the bios first and we can come back to this bit
.

[Areku]

Orthos passed for 12hours 47mins no probs and the temps didnt go anywhere above 57 I believe for stock settings.

The BIOS is the latest already so I shall have a look at updating the chipset drivers and start again tonight when I get in.

[Clunk]

If its the bios that came shipped with the board, its not the latest bios. What version is installed?

[Areku]

What I meant was that the bios that came shipped worked fine with the E4300. But as soon as I got everything working I updated the bios already.

I think I have 1004 installed. Not in front of machine now to verify.

[GDB2222]

On the scyth heatsinks, just make sure that your case is deep enough to accomodate them, otherwise you wont be able to gt the side on

If you have to get your Dremel out, do you cut a hole in the side of the case, or do you take the top off the heatsink? Which is cooler?

[Areku]

Ok so I managed to get a bit of time tonight to have a look at this. I went back a few pages and re-looked at the memtest advice you gave.

You did say to test the memory out at 300/600 which I thought I did but then thinking back I couldnt have because I think when I had the crash I put it all back to default (late night).

So I ran it again tonight, although I left the CPU at stock and just put in the memory timings and put the memory voltage to its preffered setting of 1.9v. After about 7mins it came up with about 180 errors. Im guessing this could be the problem? In which case does that mean I am completely unable to overclock?

Luckily I am one with much patience

EDIT - Ok so I fed it some more volts (1.95v) and it seems to be ok past 7mins. This is only with the memory timings put in which I seemed to have errors on before so maybe it was just a volt issue. Ill let this run and see how it is in the morning. If that works out fine then ill run memtest with the cpu overclocked.