Q6600 first OC attempt

[Robscure]

I just OC'd on my own for the first time... but I cheated because I used someone's pre-chosen configs for my board and cpu...

It seems to be working at the moment, and hasn't passed 70c.

Here is a screenshot:



How does this look? Are you able to tell from this screenshot if it's alright and stable, etc?

What should I do next? Is there any other testing or verification or anything I should do?

Thanks

[PeterStoba]

Nice work. The voltage and fsb/multi would make me think it was stable. Prime it for a few hours and it should be fine. What are your temps like?

[Hawker1986]

What program is that youre using to monitor the temps?

Also what cooler are you using on the CPU, seems that 70oC is low for that voltage in CPU-Z on air.

Hawker

[Badbonji]

Good overclock, if you want you can always raise the FSB to get a bit more out of it if the chip allows at that voltage, or try to lower it at the same clock speed.

[Robscure]

Nice work. The voltage and fsb/multi would make me think it was stable. Prime it for a few hours and it should be fine. What are your temps like?

Temperatures are 35-40 without load....

40-60 while having a lot of background programs running (video games and music minimized... like how I've got CoD4 running in the background and EVE and WMP while I'm posting)

and 60-70 while on heavy load... while playing EVE / CoD4 at the same time... with WMP running...

What program is that youre using to monitor the temps?

Also what cooler are you using on the CPU, seems that 70oC is low for that voltage in CPU-Z on air.

Hawker

The program I'm running to monitor my temps is "Core Temp"

I'm using the Noctua NH-U12P and it is AMAZING. Like you said, how is it staying at 70 on high load? Because of this fan... And I swear I can't even hear it unless it's dead silent in the room, and then it's much quieter than any other fan still... so... 10/10 performance 10/10 noise.... perfect fan imho.

Good overclock, if you want you can always raise the FSB to get a bit more out of it if the chip allows at that voltage, or try to lower it at the same clock speed.

The FSB is 400... I'm not sure if I want to mess around with it any more since it's running smooth and stable @ 3.6ghz, which I think is what most people settle for with the Q6600. I've heard it gets up to 4ghz, but that's nearing red-line on air, from what I've read. I'm just interested in stable and good performance, not trying to break records or anything heh

Thanks for the feedback.

And thanks to Moogle for all of is help

[Badbonji]

Ok fair enough, I guess I get too carried away with trying for the limit of things

Done any benchmarks yet? (3dmark 06 / vantage etc...) to compare with an old score, I always like to see how my overclock pulls away from stock to make it seem like it is worth it in the end

[Golden Dragoon]

I am currently at 3.4@1.31v on my Q6600, 62-64C load temps 24h prime95 stable however after looking at abit's EQ software I am seeing PWM temps of 84C @ load, which seems a bit high at 3.6/1.35v it gets to 92C and 3.77/1.4v it reaches a scorching 101C, I am going to see about popping the little hs off of the pwm's when I transfer over to a new case, lap it and put as5 on it and use a spare 40mm fan on it to try and reduce temps.

[Singh400]

Nice. I'd use RealTemp for monitoring temps. And I would use IntelBurnTest to push my CPU to the max.

[xirokx]

try and oc for longer....

also montior your temps

are you overclocking your ram

what speed is the cpu currently overclocked to?

[Golden Dragoon]

I got fed up of 80+ C temps on my pwm, so decided to sort it out before I change cases, I basicly used some velcro pads I had sitting about, and fixed a 60mm fan from an old heatsink onto the io shield of my case (It already had quite a few vent holes on it, so didn't have to mod it) I am running it at 50&#37; speed as it is quite loud at 100%, but even at 50 it has dropped my temps down to <65C at 3.4, so I may bump it up to 3.6 or 3.77 again and see what the temps are then, as previously it was far too high (the pwm's are apparently rated to 127C, but as they have no thermal diode built in, I am assuming that the actual temps of them is 10-15% higher than what is reported)

Edit: not prime95 stable at 3.77 1.35v dropped down to 3.6/1.35, so far so good (it was p95 stable at this even with the high pwm temps so looking good) pwm temp is currently at 70C, so that has to be good for long term reliability, I may try again at 3.77@1.4 if I feel like I need to push it to the limit, though my motherboard will not go above 419mhz with all my ram in, with 2 dimms removed and it will post and boot at 450mhz and 1.4v, though windows will crash if I try to do anything. more than moving the mouse about lol, could prehaps work at that speed at more voltage, but I am not optimistic.

[Zadock]

My Q6600 has been sat comfortably at ~3.0GHz for months now with no problems. Not found any need to push it further yet.

I have the same motherboard as Golden Dragoon and I had similar temps when I tried to push it higher, also had errors on prime. I may have another play sometime soon, maybe tweak the voltages. I'd be interested to see how far you can push it on the IP35-e Dragoon.

[Golden Dragoon]

I am pretty much sticking to 3.6@1.35v for now, when I get my new case I will sort out my wc loop better, and arrange a proper solution to my fan mounting (prob replace with an 80mm and work out a way of mounting it better), plus I will pop off the pwm heatsink and lap\as5 it before putting it back on, that will hopefully drop temps a bit more as I don't want to push the pwm more than 70C if I can help it.

[EarlGrey]

@robscure,
The voltage seems a little high there, and reaching 70C after a couple of minutes using coretemp is a little high too.
I would seriously think about reducing your voltage, and thus temps, even if it means reducing the speed.

I have been running a Q6600 at 3.4GHz at 1.32 volts for over a year, and after a couple of recent crashes retested it under Prime95 and it failed to complete many iterations.

I have just hoovered the inside of my case, even though there was suprisingly little dust (all caught in the case fan grills - Lian Li FTW) and lowered it to 3.2GHz@1.29V, all seems fine again.

Just a little word of caution. You must run Prime95 for hours before you can conclude anything - unless when you use your PC you never play any game for more than a few minutes (unlikely ). When I was building mine, the rule of thumb was to keep your temps to 60 not 70 degrees. If this is your first oc then I would suggest that it would be prudent to try and lower those temps a bit.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on.

[Robscure]

@robscure,
The voltage seems a little high there, and reaching 70C after a couple of minutes using coretemp is a little high too......

Thanks for all of the feedback, everyone.

EarlyGrey,

I've been playing WoW, EVE, Fallout 3, Crysis, all at max graphics for hours and hours, without running into any sort of errors, difficulties, or anything at all out of the ordinary.

The max my temp ever gets is 70, and that's when it's at load with Crysis running full blast.

[Robscure]

Okay, I just ran Prime95 for 7 hours. Max temperature reached was 74. The PC runs quiet and cool with no errors.

[EarlGrey]

Well, it's great that you have a seriously good chip there, that is stable under quite a high stress. But you did mention that this was your first overclock... Should we set a reminder to come back to this page in 6 months and see if the chip is still running happily at those speeds and temps?

It's just a word of caution.