Conroe E6600 overclocking help/ newbie

[Constantinos]

Hi,

To anyone who can help me please, I am totally new to overclocking and obviously need some sound advice on overclocking, my system which, consist of the following build:

Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6

Conroe E6600

2 x PC5300 Elixer 1 gig each stick

2 sata harddrives

GT 7600 graphics card

and a good fsp 450w power supply

all this is contained in a Shark Thermaltake air cooled box.

I have read the beginners guide to overclocking and I'm afraid to say I am still a little misted, especially with some of the terminology such as "stock"!

I have cranked up the FSP as far as it will go to where by it will boot into windows without any problems, it is currently running at a core speed of 2700MHz, multiplier x9 and bus speed of 300 MHz and rated FSP 1200 MHz.

Obviously would like to squeeze some more juice out of it, however not quite sure where to go from here, so would be very gratefull and interested to any advice as to the next steps to tweaking/ overclocking.

Constantine

 

[Virdi]

Stock means - Standard - i.e. 'Stock Volts' means at standard / default voltage

When you get into windows... You really need to test for stability - By running a 'Stress Testing' application - i.e. something like Prime 95.

Ideally you need to run 2 instances of Prime - in order to stress both cores of the CPU etc... and get them to 100% CPU load.

At this point, u need to keep an eye on your CPU temps. You basically, don't want to go over 60 Degrees C. (this is when you need a better CPU Cooler)

Run Prime for a couple of hours and if it does not 'halt' or crash the PC - Just up that FSB a little more - around 5-10 FSB at a time and then stress test again...

When Prime fails or the PC crashes - You need to up the VCore (do one step at a time) This is the Voltage that goes to the CPU.

Note - Your ram is only rated to 333Mhz - So once you go past 333 FSB - Your Ram may not be able to cope... So you can either get faster Ram or you can try to up the voltage to your RAM also... this is known as 'VDimm' - Again, only up this one step at a time.

Elixxer Ram is budget.... so you will probably better off getting faster Ram.

I would also recommend that you are running the latest version of Bios - for your motherboard.

I hope this helps.

 

[Constantinos]

Stress test

Thank you very much for your reply Virdi, this has helped no end. I am currently doing a "blend stress test cpu and ram" with "SP2004" since I couldn't quite work out how "prime95" is supposed to run! Plus the beta version of SP2004 has dual core functionality in one instance! Is this type of test ok, if so how long should I run it for?

Ok have edited this post since the stress test was successful + no crashes,
however I upped the FSP by 5, didn't like it very much, couldn't boot into windows! I am also curious as to whether I need to increase the voltage to the ram at the same time as making any other adjustments?

Regards

Constantine

Ps. If I have to change ram what do you recommend?

 

[Virdi]

Take the ram voltage up so that in total it's running around 2.1v - But as I mentioned - u do need better RAM.

try to also keep an eye on the Ram, and if it starts to get hot make sure you have a fan over it...

Then if the stress test crashes or fails - then try more VCore...