Hey guys, Purchased a new PC recently and have been reading up on the benefits/dangers of overclocking your CPU. My current setup is: Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 (2.4ghz) Asus P5k-vm MB 2 x 250gb hardrives 6gb DDR2 6400 (Only have 4gb installed since I'm running XP for now). In my reading, I'm getting conflicting info... Some forums/articles claim that this can be done safely and easily (go into BIOS, change FSB speed from 266 to 333... done).. and others who have 3 page how-to's, changing voltages, multipliers.. monitoring temps with what I imagine is extra purchased equipment). The former method seems pretty shady, I'd imagine it much more complicated to do safely. In my reading, my set up can be OC'd to 3.0ghz very safely and easily. I'm just looking for a little bump in performance without purchasing any extra cooling systems/monitors etc... So... easy? worth it? Can any of you help??
Ok... so I changed the FSB speed from 266 to 333.. and changed nothing else. I'm going to monitor and see if the PC heats up.. Hoping to get some input from you guys. Not really sure wether it did anything. In system info, it tells me: Q6600 @ 2.4ghz 3.0ghz, 3.25Gb of Ram I looked back in BIOS and it still says 2.4ghz... Not sure if I'm messing up or not???
Humm...What kind of CPU cooling do you have? A stock heatsink/fan will probably not be adequate. If you want to get serious on your OC'ingm you will want to get a liquid cooled setup. You will also need to monitor your CPU temps. It is not very safe to just UP the FSB speeds without some sort of temp monitoring.
Thats what I'm getting from my research... Its my understanding that only going from 2.4 to 3.0, does not increase temps that much. If I was gonna try to get silly with it, an get 3.4+.. it would start to get hot. Do you think(going by my numbers up there), that my shit actually changed? I'm mean, it still says 2.4 by the processer type.. then 3.0 on the next line next to the ram. PC case still feels cool to the touch.. Are there any other factors I should change? (other than getting proper cooling)??? Thx for ur help btw..
I would recommend the water cooling as well. I never over clock my cpu's without going water cooled. Check out Thermaltake Water Kit, good starter kit, for a decent price. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106077 You can always check out www.frozencpu.com for more stuff.
Yes, cool it off... you can count the number of times a system overheats and then finally will not start up again. also get yourself some apps/hardware that monitor real time temp. running a modded machine without gauges is like running a modded car without gauges
definitely get a cpu cooler and a temperature monitoring program. you can go water cooling but some of the tower coolers made will be sufficient for what you want to do. I have a fairly aggressive overclock. My stock speed was 2.33 and I have it oc'd to 3.4. I have the Tuniq Tower in my setup. It works great and is relatively inexpensive plus you dont have to worry about water leaking in your system. I have tried both and noticed very little difference between water cooling and the TT. TT review http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2906&p=1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835154001 TT compared to some other cpu coolers As far as programs to monitor temps you can use speedfan which is free http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php and core temp which is also free http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ To really stress test your system to make sure it is stable I would use Orthos which again is free get it here http://www.overclock.net/downloads/138142-orthos.html While overclocking go in small steps. If you already have achieved 3.0 try going to 3.1 then 3.2 and so on until you get to a point where your system wont post then up the voltage a little. By little I mean like increasing your voltage by .01 increments. Careful though, the more you up the juice the hotter it will run and the risk get higher of frying something. Just remember to keep things cool. I would not recommend overclocking to anyone till they get a good cpu cooler. The Q6600 is a great quad though and you might not even need to increase the voltage at all.
Ok... been running at 3.0ghz overclocked from 2.4 all day... I've used two different temp monitoring tools.. HWmonitor & Coretemp... Core 0: 52 degrees Celc. Core 1: 50 degrees Core 2: 44 degrees Core 3: 49 degrees Core Voltage: 1.3.... stock was 1.1v All are well within limits.. Admittedly, I'm not stressing the system too much.. The most I've tried today at the same time is burning a movie, and having 2 NBA camecasts(2 IE sessions).. Temps have remained similar to above. I don't have any games that will stress the system to really check.. I'll run the stress test shortly and report back... Long story short, if I need additional cooling as all of you guys are saying, I'm going to revert back to stock for now(no money for PC mods)
download and run a stress test using Prime95. Let it go for a couple of hours and see if it errors. If it does, then you need to change some setting. Gives you a great time to monitor temps as it's going to get hot! If it passes then you have a stable system.
^^ Ok, so I ran Prime95 for about 4 hours, using Coretemp to monitor temps... I'm confused... Temps went up but then stableized at 70, 70, 67, 67 or so... The stress testing was all fine, passing on everything except for core 4. Core 4 received a fatal error after 27 minutes and shut itself down. The other 3 cores were fine. As soon as I shut Prime95 down, all temps returned to the high 40's... I've reverted to stock for now, until I can get more info. What do you guys think? As stated CPUVolt is at 1.3(1.1 stock).. are there other factors I could change to make this more stable? Is 70+ too hot? Since all temps lowered to high 40's.. Could I leave it like this unless I put some crazy game in? Also, I've installed CPU-Z to help monitor things.. and it tells me my multiplier is set to 6X.. I thought is was supposed to be 9X by default for my system.. Does this sound right?
Well nothing is really going to stress it as much as prime95 or orthos but those temps are way too high for my liking. My pc idles around 29C and max temps I have ever seen are 52C using orthos (same as prime95).Do you know what stepping q6600 you have? is it a G0 or B3? be very careful. Intel says 71C is maximum acceptable TCase temp for the G0 and 62.2C for the B3. you are right at the limits of the G0 stepped quad. get a cooler dude or back it off until you get one! Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q6600 Processor Specifications: sSpec Number:SLACR CPU Speed:2.40 GHz PCG:05A Bus Speed:1066 MHz Bus/Core Ratio:9 L2 Cache Size:8 MB L2 Cache Speed:2.4 GHz Package Type:LGA775 Manufacturing Technology:65 nm Core Stepping:G0 CPUID String:06FBh Thermal Design Power:95W Thermal Specification:71°C VID Voltage Range:0.85V – 1.5V G0 specs - http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLACR B3 specs - http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL9UM
^^ Good info.. No idea which version I have, and cant check until the am(back on night shift ) But, yeah... those temps are right near max even if I have the G0 model. And, to be honest, I didn't notice any performance benefits OC'ing 2.4 to 3.0 anyways.. Like I said, I don't have any good games to see the difference right now. I just figured, if I can have better performance for free.. why not do it??? Do you think, even though Prime95 had a failure.. I could leave it OC'd as long as I don't stress it too much? I monitored temps just surfing and burning movies at the same time and it stays in the mid 40's for all cores....
and to think I have water cooling on my rig but have not OC'ed my system yet...I must live in your opposite world or something.
Well most of the other guys have already helped you out with most everything and I concur with what they have said and pointed out to you. I run a Q9550 with water cooling and DD2 Dominator ram on a evga 780i ultra sli ftw board. There are couple other things to keep in mind, how good the RAM you have and how hot your Northbridge gets. If that thing overheats, your CPU and RAM could be below thresh hold but the system will get unstable. Run this free demo for some testing, I did and it's easy. http://downloads.guru3d.com/X3-Terran-Conflict-Rolling-Demo-Benchmark-download-2115.html My cores are also in the low 30s and never gets higher than like 55-58C under load.