Std. cooling overclocked E6420?

[thommo41]

A week into this C2D ownership, and on std. speeds, I have to say, that my AMD 64 x2 5600 (kept only for 2-3 weeks!!!) seemed a bit quicker if Im honest. Forgetting benchmarks for a minute, Im talking real world speeds, response in Windows apps and a couple of choice games. Anyway, dont want to start a mass debate...

I am obviously going to have to overclock this chip. It would be wrong not to, especially as it cost me all this money to migrate to C2D from AM2 AMD, just for better speeds and better (lower) temps (and stability!)...

From experience of people here, what OC'ing should I be looking at on standard cooling? The bundled HSF looks pretty good to me. If its really no use, what should I be buying that doesn't sound like a tornado taking off?

What speeds are people getting, stable with reasonable temps on standard fans? I mean FSB freqencies, what are we up to on average? I dont really want to play around with my Vcore just yet (bad experiences in the past!) so on standard voltages too if thats viable?

Thanks in advance, sorry to ask repetative questions! All the guides and tips in the world are all insignificant against actual real-world personal experience!

Alan

[staffsMike]

no ever listens to me that the 3800+ feels much faster than the e6300 stock..so i guess it's no different between those two.

Obviously once overclocking is brought to the equation it becomes a different story.

To get a half decent clock I wouldn't use the stock fan i'd get the arctic cooling freezer 7 pro ..it's very quiet and performs quite well compared to the very expensive stuff even though it's only £12. Also come reapplied with the best paste to use with it so you don't have to worry about that cost either.

[Clunk]

Click the guide in my sig, follow it from start to finish and the job's a good un .

If you do any video encoding, run something that you are familiar with, you will see an improvement at stock speeds.

The problem is, that most people that buy the lower end C2D chips, buy them with the intention of overclocking them as it is so easy to do.

The people that want to run at stock, usually go for an E6600 for that extra bit of grunt.

Heatsink wise, freezer pro for the lower end, and thermalright extreme 120 for the higher end.

The stock intel heatsinks are noisy and inefficient.

The speeds that you can reach, will depend on your individual hardware. Some CPUs need a lot of extra voltage, others dont.

Follow the guide, its all in there.

[thommo41]

Clunk, I had already read your guide, I was just interested in REAL experience with preferably my E6420 chip.

Maybe you can help me though...
I have it clocked to 2600Mhz (about 470ish up on std) and ORTHOS running after 5 minutes gets CPU temp up to 60DegC!!! If I run TAT at 100% on both cores, temps exceed 60DegC (my ASUS tool is set to bleep like mad, so I didn't run this for long at all!). I manually set my VCore to 1.4v (it moves marginally to 1.42 ish)

Is standard Intel cooling inadequate, even for this "moderate" overclocking? I would of hoped even standard cooling would carry this out?

And my RAM is Patriot PC2 6400 (800) 4-4-4-12, but it will only let me run at twice CPU freq, correct? So do I assume that unless I can get the CPU at 400FSB (3.2Ghz) then my RAM is effectively under-clocked??

Cheers all, loving this forum!

A

[Clunk]

Dunno, video encoding not real life enough?

TAT generates around 20% more heat than even orthos, so I wouldnt worry too much about that.

What is slightly worrying, is that you need 1.4v to hit 2.6ghz.

Overclocking and overvolting and using the stock cooler, is pretty obviously going to result in high temps and possible instability.

If you are intent on overclocking, you need to ditch the stock cooler, they just arent made for it.

Trust me, everything you are asking, and will need to know is in the guide, and if it isnt, come back here and let me know and I'll add it

[Zak33]

AMD's aren't so bandwidth dependant as Intels so youre lower bus speeds may be slowing you a tad....BUT it should be un-noticeable in daily windows life.

Can I ask if you're using the same Hard drive?

Onto overclocking.....does your chip need extra volts to go higher? and have you reapplied the thermal paste incase its on too thick/too thin?

[thommo41]

Using the same hard drive? Yes, physically. No, data wise. Its clean formatted, fresh XPP OS, if that's what you meant...

My chip is using these volts by itself, it must be. I set it in the BIOS to 1.325V and it runs at 1.4V - 1.43V. Am setting it back to auto in a moment...

Now, this is probably asking way too much of you guys, but I dont suppose you could advise on my BIOS settings if I take a pic could you? They differ quite a bit from your guide you see. Not alot, but enough!

Going to set all voltages to AUTO and see if anything at all changes...

A

[thommo41]

Set to AUTO, the VCore is 1.42V - 1.44V. Stupid PC
My motherboard has a 4pin and additional 4pin (8pin together) 12V rail socket. Out of fear, I connected only the 4pin from my PSU, as the other 4 were blanked off for safety. My AKASA has 2 4pin clips though on the wiring loom, shall I use the 2nd 4pin plug too? Make any difference anyone?

A

[badass]

mass debate...

*s********

EDIT. LOL that blanked bit there should read *-s-n-i-g-g-e-r-s-* without the hyphens

[Flewis]

not allowed to say s*******, its racist

[IAmATeaf]

not allowed to say s*******, its racist

Is it? I thought it was chocolate bar packed with peanuts

To the OP, is the BIOS correctly picking up your CPU, 1.4 is a tad high on AUTO.

[thommo41]

BIOS picking up E6420 which is correct. On standard FSB the voltage is as expected.
I posted a topic on here before, about fluctuating voltages. On std clocks, with AUTO, and all BIOS settings on default, the voltage moved about on its own, decreasing when it felt like it. Some sort of power saving / temperature lowering feature was the outcome, I just disabled pretty much everything in the BIOS that looked the culprit.

Any ideas why 1.42V+ is what this board chooses on AUTO? As I mentioned earlier, lowering it manually to 1.3xx results in 1.4V regardless.

PSU? Somebody must have an idea? I have had bad luck with CPU/mobo combinations for the last 4 years, everything I pair up ends up running too hot or has suspicious results when overclocking.

Stupid PCs... What do I do for a living? Network systems Engineer... Stupid PCs