C2D Overclocking Guide for Beginners

[aidanjt]

Its a good start anyway. I found that high fsbs like that need some extra voltage to the NB to work stably in most cases.

Just a case of tweaking it till its right.

I notice you have the P5B-E, does it only have 2.1v vdimm? and doesnt your ram need more than 2.1v?

Funny enough, the voltages for vdimm and vcore can go up to silly levels, but yeah, I have my RAM set to 2.15v atm due to the underclock. The BIOS also has really really neat voltage markers, so when you go over safe volts it marks them purple, when you go into red, well, use your imagination.

[Clunk]

No worries, mate.

Yea, and I've tried to OC through the Bios but same result, need to clear cmos once over 315fsb.

Now I'm running at 312 x 9, set through Bios. DDR2V at 1.90, and 1.60 for MCH1.5V.

Could it be the memory timing? It's now running at 4-4-4-12-16 according to CPU-Z.

Its most likely your ram, its PC2-5300, which isnt ideal for overclocking.

[Clunk]

Funny enough, the voltages for vdimm and vcore can go up to silly levels, but yeah, I have my RAM set to 2.15v atm due to the underclock. The BIOS also has really really neat voltage markers, so when you go over safe volts it marks them purple, when you go into red, well, use your imagination.

Ah, ok, I wasnt sure if it was the E model or the vanilla one that had 2.1v vidimm.

4ghz next then?

[aidanjt]

Yeah, maybe if I get a watercooling loop
I'm gonna sit at 3.2Ghz at least 'til I pay this thing off lol.

[Defenestration]

Is there an easy way to tell if it's the CPU or RAM or mobo that's struggling with an overclock ?

[aidanjt]

Sure, if it doesn't start. That's the first give away. TAT can tell you if you've pushed the CPU too far, Orthos ensures electrical/ram stability.

[Clunk]

Added some Abit Quad GT bios shots, so hopefully that will help a few people. Thanks to Daza for the screenshots.

[Clunk]

Is there an easy way to tell if it's the CPU or RAM or mobo that's struggling with an overclock ?

This is why I recommend to keep the ram at 1:1 and use a minimum of pc2-6400 for overclocking. That way, you have a theoretical overclock of 3.6ghz on the cpu (e6600) before you even start to overclock the ram. Ram doesnt overclock like CPUs, so its always best to have some headroom in the ram department. Another cause of overclocking failure is that the Northbridge is too stressed, you can either feed it a touch more voltage, or get better cooling, or both

[Harkin]

What is a good NB cooler for the P5B Deluxe? I was lookin at gettin the Thermalright HR-05 but according to the TR site it isnt compatible with P5B Deluxe. Any other that are good, without Wc ofcourse, that comes later

[aidanjt]

Well Orthos has been running for 3 hours so far with no problems, the CPU is holding at 45/46C over both cores, and 53C at the Tjunction, with the NB at 34C, all on air, I'm fairly sure a new 500W PSU, reseating the NB with AS5 and adding some ramsinks to the VRMs will help a great deal since those loaded temps aren't really too high. I'm more than happy with the results so far, and FEAR timedemo ran at a minimum of 44 FPS.

[daza]

What is a good NB cooler for the P5B Deluxe? I was lookin at gettin the Thermalright HR-05 but according to the TR site it isnt compatible with P5B Deluxe. Any other that are good, without Wc ofcourse, that comes later

Chuck a 60mm fan on this and heat isnt an issue.

[Clunk]

What is a good NB cooler for the P5B Deluxe? I was lookin at gettin the Thermalright HR-05 but according to the TR site it isnt compatible with P5B Deluxe. Any other that are good, without Wc ofcourse, that comes later

The HR-05 does fit on the NB and SB of the P5B. Im not sure why it says it isnt compatible. Email thermalright and check, theres a nice bloke called hank that replies really quickly.

[Clunk]

Well Orthos has been running for 3 hours so far with no problems, the CPU is holding at 45/46C over both cores, and 53C at the Tjunction, with the NB at 34C, all on air, I'm fairly sure a new 500W PSU, reseating the NB with AS5 and adding some ramsinks to the VRMs will help a great deal since those loaded temps aren't really too high. I'm more than happy with the results so far, and FEAR timedemo ran at a minimum of 44 FPS.

I would be surprised if a new PSU improved your overclock, unless the current one is a bit flaky of course.

The best thing you can do for your board is dump the heatpipes and get a half decent aftermarket NB cooler. Chances are that the heatpipe thing doesnt sit flat on the NB anyway

[aidanjt]

Actually there's no dodgy heatpipes on this board, though the mosfets are bare as you can see from here:



It's a fairly nice, well laid out motherboard, plus it wasn't silly priced like most of the heatpipe models. You can see the specifications here, and my current FSB clock speaks for itself.

The PSU is decent but it's also 4 years old and it's had a P4E sucking the life out of it since I bought it lol. Plus it's not as efficent as modern designs, and the excess cabling isn't very attractive inside the Antec 900

[Clunk]

Ah, I see what you mean. I wonder why they chose to put those hooks for the NB cooler on the E version

[Harkin]

Chuck a 60mm fan on this and heat isnt an issue.

If the Bloke from TR says the HR-05 wont work i'll check that out, thx

The HR-05 does fit on the NB and SB of the P5B. Im not sure why it says it isnt compatible. Email thermalright and check, theres a nice bloke called hank that replies really quickly.

Cool i'll send an email now, didnt u have a HR-05 on your NB iirc? weird how they wud say its not compatible then..