Been playing with my overclock

[Nick1881]

Hope no one mis-reads that title lol.

Anyway I have had my Q6600 running at 400x9 3.6Ghz for a few months now, I could never get it stable passed this, I decided to overclock the ram to see if it was just my cpu, it happily went to 960Mhz so this got me thinking, maybe i could get more at 8x multi, so I tried 450x8 3.6Ghz, its worked put prime failed on 1 core and temps reached 72C. This is with 1.5v through the chip, my idle temps are between 42 and 49C.

Do my temps seem a little high? Am I doomed to never get higher clock?

Specs

Q6600
Gigabyte DS3 Rev 1
Crucial Ballistix 4 x 1Gb
Scythe ninja with Sharkoon SE2000 fan

Also I noticed when I change settings in my bios it doesnt post on the first try, carpy mobo?

Anyone got any idea's? Or have I reached my limit with my current air cooling?

I'm not greedy I swear

 

[w3bbo]

First off pay little attention to idle temps - they don't mean squat. Its load temps you should be concentrating on. 72c is a little toasty tho and above the recommended temp by intel so you may want to consider investing in better cooling. 450x8 is harder work for your motherboard than 400x9 despite it being the same clockspeed so stick to the 9x multi and slowly increase the fsb to see how high you can get it but keep temps below 71c.

When you change the settings, the northbridge strap may also be changing which sometimes causes a 'double boot' on some boards.

 

[Nick1881]

Thanks w3bbo, but even at 400x9 loads temps were reaching 70C, I think its the most I can get without better cooling. Cant really warrant spending more money just to get a few extra 100Mhz.

I tried upto 1.55v before to get 3.8 stable and it wouldnt have it.