Quad Core Thread: Overclocking, Cooling, Motherboards, Troubleshooting & General Info

[Harkin]

After a couple of hours on orthos it was 60c on every core and the pwm's were between 80c~85c,
Overclocked the memory aswell to 1134mhz.

.

Sorry to bring this up from so long ago, but how did you measure the temps on the pwm's?

[Clunk]

I think on the Quad GT, there is a sensor.

If you have a fan controller with a temp sensor on it, you could just stick the probe on the side of the ram.

[Harkin]

I think on the Quad GT, there is a sensor.

If you have a fan controller with a temp sensor on it, you could just stick the probe on the side of the ram.

Well its the Pwm's I really want to check. Oww so its Mb dependant, right got it now. I do have 2 sensors that came with this Antec P160 case I am using, but as for its accuracy it cud me miles off who knows..

I just wanted to gauge how much headroom I wud have to overclock a Q6600 on this same setup, as the E6850 seems to run fine at 3.6Ghz. But its not a quad and afaik the pwms get really hot when Oc a quad and I wouldnt be using Wc just good old air

[Harkin]

Or I could just touch the Pwm heatsink, and if I hear a sizzling noise then I cud conclude that its too hot

[Clunk]

I'm not sure why yours would get hotter than everyone elses...but they do get hot.

If you are worried, dig out the P5K thread and have a look at the thermalright coolers that I fitted to mine.

[Harkin]

I'm not sure why yours would get hotter than everyone elses...but they do get hot.

If you are worried, dig out the P5K thread and have a look at the thermalright coolers that I fitted to mine.

O right, I thought that if you were gonna Oc a quad to lets say 3.0Ghz or a bit more, then you would have to have Wc on the Pwm's and perhaps the Nb.. Yeah the HR-09's are good but iirc they didnt fit properly without you using a clamp type thing.

If the standard cooling on the Mosfets can withstand a Oc'ed quad then its fine Tbh. Is that also true for the Nb?

[Harkin]

SadikP or Phil_P, I see you both use and recommend a Thermalright 120-Extreme which I intend to use to OC a Q6600 GO. Do u guys use just air cooling throughout? And do you have the normal heatsinks on the Mosfets and NB or do you have aftermarket coolers on there?

And what stable OC have you guys reached? Sorry bout all the questions but you 2 seem to have been succesful with a similar setup
Thanks

[Clunk]

O right, I thought that if you were gonna Oc a quad to lets say 3.0Ghz or a bit more, then you would have to have Wc on the Pwm's and perhaps the Nb.. Yeah the HR-09's are good but iirc they didnt fit properly without you using a clamp type thing.

If the standard cooling on the Mosfets can withstand a Oc'ed quad then its fine Tbh. Is that also true for the Nb?

I havent used the stock coolers for the mosfets or the NB, but many other people have done.

Looking at them, I would say that they should do the job ok, but I wouldnt want to use them for anything that required major voltages.

[fat jez]

My CPU is overclocked and watercooled, but everything else is cooled with good old fashioned air. My Vcore is a bit over 1.4 (registers as 1.38V in speedfan, which is possibly questionable).

Anyway, my mosfets and north/southbridge are quite happy. The MOSFETs do get hot (you don't want to put a finger on them), but everything is stable.

Cheers,
Stephen

[Harkin]

My CPU is overclocked and watercooled, but everything else is cooled with good old fashioned air. My Vcore is a bit over 1.4 (registers as 1.38V in speedfan, which is possibly questionable).

Anyway, my mosfets and north/southbridge are quite happy. The MOSFETs do get hot (you don't want to put a finger on them), but everything is stable.

Cheers,
Stephen

Righto, looks like I'll be paying Scan a visit next week then. Im gettin a Antec P182 with 2x120mm fans front and 2x120mm fans at the back so should be more than enough fresh air flowing over the board for a quad

[D-BEAR]

Well the sweety spot for mine is 3.4ghz 1.375v in bios primed it for 6hrs with round error checking enabled....did try it first @ 3.5ghz 1.45ghz in bios.....failed after 2 and a half hours guess it needs a bit more vcore....but @ 3.4ghz with the board vdroop it is within intel's max and i am happy with my o/c atm.... low vore, great temps and air cooled what more can you ask for and all on my old Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 (rev. 1.0)...so no need to buy a new board which i thought i would have been buying.

Oh well...could'nt leave it alone...so better make that 3.5ghz 1.45v.

[mrk]

Apart from gaining higher benchmark scores does anyone actually benefit from overclocking even a Q6600? I got mine this week and it EATS everything - Mediacoder transcodes a full video in under 15 minutes flat and the average encode rate is 130fps when encoding to XViD @ 800kbps. Games are similar - I'm pushing 200fps average in Source alone on an 8800GTS.

Bioshock runs 50-70fps in DX10 mode (I don't play in dx9 mode )

I'm just wondering, it runs cool anyway at around 43 degrees on the stock cooler with the fan set to 50% power and rises to 45-50~ per core under full load. I also get 10,300 in 3dmark06 with a small OC on the gfx card.

I just find it a bit bizarre that people want to overclock these things like crazy when these chips rip apart everything to begin with! my philosophy on the matter is to have the quietest system possible but powerful and the stock cooler seems to do the trick and if in a years time Quad Core can do with a bit of an OC as the next gen gfx cards really push for it then this possibility is there! but only if it's needed of course.

[Clunk]

Each to their own If it can go faster, without too much fuss, then why not? 10 mins (ish) is better than 15 mins right?

I will try mediacoder tomorrow while overclocked and see how it goes.

Bioshock runs well on this, I was expecting it to be a bit ropey, but so far, no problems at all.

[mrk]

Each to their own If it can go faster, without too much fuss, then why not? 10 mins (ish) is better than 15 mins right?

I will try mediacoder tomorrow while overclocked and see how it goes.

Bioshock runs well on this, I was expecting it to be a bit ropey, but so far, no problems at all.

Be sure to get the optimisation pack for Intel (enables SSE3 etc) too for mediacoder

[mroz]

Apart from gaining higher benchmark scores does anyone actually benefit from overclocking even a Q6600? I got mine this week and it EATS everything - Mediacoder transcodes a full video in under 15 minutes flat and the average encode rate is 130fps when encoding to XViD @ 800kbps.

Try encoding to h.264, say x264 via Megui. If you want a laugh use a profile such as HQSlower (which is far from being OTT as far as settings go)) & encode some 1080p material. Then come back & tell us your framerate

On my current old Athlon XP 3200+, HQSlow with SD material gets me about 6fps 2nd pass. I doubt a stock Q6600 will do more than about five or six times this rate, which allowing for the remaining encoding tasks is still only round about realtime. Higher quality with hi def material will be painfully slow but at least usable.

Now try using the machine to do a few other things at the same time. Still not see a reason to overclock?

[mrk]

Try encoding to h.264, say x264 via Megui. If you want a laugh use a profile such as HQSlower (which is far from being OTT as far as settings go)) & encode some 1080p material. Then come back & tell us your framerate

On my current old Athlon XP 3200+, HQSlow with SD material gets me about 6fps 2nd pass. I doubt a stock Q6600 will do more than about five or six times this rate, which allowing for the remaining encoding tasks is still only round about realtime. Higher quality with hi def material will be painfully slow but at least usable.

Now try using the machine to do a few other things at the same time. Still not see a reason to overclock?

And in which everyday scenario are you going to be encoding video at such high resolutions? gaming and benchmarking is one thing but using 1080p as an excuse for overclocking ? no chance of convincing there lol.

I'm not against it but using such a thing as an excuse like that is totally off because it's not an everyday scenario that 90% of the people here are going to be doing (if at all).