i hear ya...same thing with me. i keep saying "once i hit x.xx ghz im going to stop." then i hit it and want to see what i can get to next. lol. im surprised at your temps. i have the golden orb which i dont think is quite as good a cooler yet my max temps run around 37c...
I'm running the scythe passive, only the p180's case fans (which are admittedly well places) to cool it. It's running 37c now idling at 2.1, once I chuck the fan on I expect to drop an appreciable bit. The 62c was with two instances of Prime95's torture test running, the CPU was at 100% for a good hour before I took the reading!
ahh...passive...you got an asus board right? im not real up to date on what fans fit well on that board...my golden orb was a tight fit on the ds3...i cant get prime to run on my comp...not sure if its where im dlin from or what...
Excellent guide there. I'll like to point some stuff out though. Firstly, for the higher end of things, you should mention the Asus P5W64 Pro and ASUS P5WDG2 WS Pro, they both cost £150+, but looking from the reports from the xtremesystems forums, they overclock like crazy. Also, the DQ6? Apparently it isn't such a good overclocker - again practically noone hitting high overclocks use that on the xtremesystems forums. Okay, I'm not saying whatever the guys at xtremesystems forums says is right, but they tend to do hardcore overclocking and push their silicon to the limits.
This may sound really .... well, lazy I guess. But for us n00b overclockers, a list of the kinda settings you'd need to get a certain clock speed would be kind of useful. By this I mean what fsb/multiplier/etc would be required to get a certain GHz Value. I don't know if it is that simple, probably isn't but I was kind of thinking out loud there, this seemed the relevant place to post
Cheers matey, Obviously if its major hassle don't worry about it, its just nice to know what works as stock and what requires Vmods n stuff i guess (in general, i know its board specific but there are some speeds which can obtained across the board I assume).
Easy as pie. FSB x Multiplier is the GHz value you'll have at the end for example 200(fsb) * 12 = 2400 MHz, 2.4GHz 220 * 12 = 2640MHz, 2.64GHz So simply apply the calculations to what ever chip your overclocking. The calculations are pretty much universal, dropping the multiplier can jelp achieve greater overclocks, for example.. 280 * 10 = 2.8GHz 400 * 7 = 2.8GHz So for an E6600 = 2.4GHz 2400/9 = 265 FSB 300 * 9 = 2.7GHz 350 * 9 = 3.15GHz look, we've easily reached 3Ghz already with no effort at all! From here on you might need to raise the vCore a bit to keep it from BSODing everytime you boot your PC. Only increase it by a little each time until you can boot again! Also be careful if you drop the multiplier too low as your Northbridge frequency will increase! 450 * 7 = 3.15GHz 475 * 7 = 3.33GHz 500 * 7 = 3.5GHz I would probably stop there with even a really good CPU cooler, i'd probably be using watercooling at 3.33GHz to ensure it doesn't get too hot. Any higher than 4GHz really belongs to the phase cooling people to be honest. It just aint gonna be cool enough otherwise, it's just gonna sizzle into a gloop on your motherboard. Now, don't take my exact calculations on this as I haven't got a conroe chip, I simply divided the speed of an E6600 by it's stock multiplier to get an FSB speed! So i'm not 100%, but from my calculation i'm sure you'll be roughly able to follow them! If iv'e made any mistakes OC'ing God's out there feel free to correct me!! I'm a slight noob myself!
I see what your doing there, makes pretty good sense to me. For the simplest and most stable OC's I assume just increasing the fsb is the way to go? But of course this will limit the eventual top speed right? I'm looking forward to seeing at I can get the Q6600 to without changing vCore lol
yes, increasing the FSB is the safest way to go for starters, but believe me, you will feel the urge to go further Now I think the safest stable OC you'll get frim JUST raising the FSB, is about 3GHz, If you look at my ickle calculations you can see that between 300, and 350 (with the default multiplier which is 9) will give you a value between 2.7 and 3.15! Play around and post up what you get, CPU-Z will give you the best information! And a good way to test for stability without running Orthos for an hour, is to play agame for a good 15 minutes, as this will stress the CPU in the same way, only at constantly different levels! If the PC crashes, you don't need to worry, your hardware hasnt gone boom as your BIOS will turn your PC off before said events can happen! This could mean one of 2 things! 1. You need to loosen the memory timings! or 2. You need to raise the vCore Now since you don't want to adjust the vCore yet, then i suggest testing at 350 first, if all seems well, you can drop it if temps are too high, or you can try and push further!
Just bunged that together. Green = clocks which should be possible with GOOD air/watercooling, assuming a decent cpu etc. (Stable clocks) Red = Not realistic unless you're lucky. Black = Possible, but again pushing things. Probably not possible without "extreme" cooling. It's only a rough guide, especially on the mobo/ram front. You might find certain ram (ie the crucial anniversary which is 5300 will hit 600 FSB) and mobo's will run beyond the "norm" Considered adding voltages etc, however these tend to vary quite a bit cpu-cpu, mobo to mobo and with cooling. Overdosed's guides gives an overview of that however General core2 overclocking tips (+ link to "generic" guide here )
Does this mean If you get a E6300 and if you get DDR2 4200, it will not have any slower performance then DDR2 6200, without overclocking anything? Or am I wrong?
If running a 1:1 memory divider (ie memory running at the same speed as the FSB) then you'd get the same performance assuming the memory timings are the same. The advantage of faster ram is that you can run it on an upclock divider, to run the ram above the base FSB. ie FSB = 266, run ram @ 400 FSB
Highland3r: Just to show my n00bness as well... What is the point in running your memory at 400FSB if your CPU is only at 266? And I'd also say thanks for that table. It'll help when doing the price/performance research. Not that I'll have the money any time soon to build a new computer. It stinks being 3 generations behind.
Gives you increased memory bandwidth compared to running memory at 266 (this is assuming you don't have shocking latencies at 400 FSB and nice tight ones at 266)
OK, cheers. I'll have to do more looking into RAM timings and such. I've only ever done CPU overclocking on Athlons. Those were the days.
hey highlander...lil help here...noticing some instabilities and figured i am missing some steps on what i should be doing...ive run cpu-z and here are my timings... http://www.geocities.com/triggerman28/cpu-z.JPG now, this ram is rated to run at 4-4-4-12 1t. ive lowered the divider as ive oc'ed the fsb for the cpu since i seem to hit walls at around 2.4 ghz and 2.8 ghz...that always seems to help. however, as u can see by the link, im getting real loose timings on my ram now. i tried forcing 4-4-4-12 in the bios and even upped the voltage +.1 volts. this resulted in the board shutting down, then powering up for a few seconds, then shutting down, etc...i hit reset then powered down manually, then booted up manually, and i was able to get to bios. weird thing is, the screen right before going to bios showed that my fsb was at 266 now, but when i get into the bios, everything was the same (ie 420 fsb, mem timings and voltage still where i set it). so i upped voltage to +.2. but it did same thing, so i reset mem timings to auto, voltage to normal, and took a screen shot of cpu-z for the link above. any thoughts on what i can do or what i am doing wrong to get these timings back...
