E6600 Overclocking on air (nothing great but a few questions)

Andrew G · 2 Feb 2008 at 01:33

Hi guys n gals

I have been reading the overclocking bit here for the last week soaking up some info. And tonight I started to clock my E6600 I have got as fair as 3200Mhz x9 bus 360 FSB 1440 @ 1.3v. Using Prime I have Idel 32 oc and load 62 oc which is getting to a place i am uncomfortable with. I see you guys are getting an easy 3400/3600 on air and cannot see how you do it (i know I am jealous). I am in my bedroom which although not tiny, tiny is the box room of the house. if I walk out to get a beer or take a No.1 when I walk back you can feel the heat.

When I Prime it @ 3200Mhz it hits 62 oc but if I just do the normal CoD4 gaming it shuffles around the 48 oc 52 oc range.

So to the question:

Although Prime rips the CPU a new one to see if it is stable, if you can get it stable at say 68 oc chances of it hitting that temp in real PC useage such as gaming and surfing the web, is seemily thin? :confused:

System is:

680i SLI (MSI P6N)
E6600
Ballistix 800Mhz
Ninja Sythe with 120mm fan attached
900 Gamer case (all fans high)

Rroff · 2 Feb 2008 at 01:47

Should be getting more like 55C tops on air at 3.2gig when running prime/orthos...

You don't have the best of boards for overclocking tho unless you put in time tweaking you will hit a ceiling around 380 FSB...

Once you get to about 3.4gig on an E6600 you need to push the voltage up more and more for smaller and smaller MHz gains and have to increase the chipset and bus voltages too... all adding to the heat.

SGWills · 2 Feb 2008 at 01:48

Andrew G said:
So to the question:

Although Prime rips the CPU a new one to see if it is stable, if you can get it stable at say 68 oc chances of it hitting that temp in real PC useage such as gaming and surfing the web, is seemily thin?

as you said prime will put the cpu through a good work out to see if it is stable IF the cpu is to reach a certain amount of use-age, 68oc isnt low and isnt high and imo you could squeese a bit more out of that chip

but it all boils down to how comfortable you are with the temps given, i think the most i saw my E6420 hit when clocked and 3.2/3.4 (which is 60% overclocked) was mid 70's to early 80's but i was happy with that because the inside of my case was pleasent and wasnt like an oven.

so to answer your question, unlikely the cpu will hit full use-age unless your doing some mega multi tasking, so get that FSB up

Andrew G · 2 Feb 2008 at 02:03

Thanks for replies, so to achieve 3400 would take a stab at 1.375 vcore or just stick it to 1.4? Also so far apart from the CPU core volts I have left the rest on auto, should I increase the CPU FSB volts aswell?

Rroff · 2 Feb 2008 at 02:21

Auto will rise the volts as the motherboard thinks fit - but usually the difference between whats actually needed and what the motherboard gives it gets wider and wider the more you push it...

You could probably run that CPU for years on end with it spiking to ~70C during orthos/prime as it won't get that hot under normal useage and from my experience the E6600 will take a beating and then some...

I know of people running them on 1.6 volts on air to get 3.8gig and the CPU has lasted ~2 years and was still working when they upgraded to a quad core... but I really wouldn't reccomend doing that personally...

Rroff · 2 Feb 2008 at 02:30

http://aten-hosted.com/images/orthos3200.jpg

Thats mine after 25 minutes or so - spikes to 50C at the most, usually 45-48C while running orthos... thats on an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro which is generally regarded as a fairly mainstream cooler but if you know what your doing IMO its just as good as the high end ones.

I usually run it at 3.6 on a higher vcore - hits about 55C usually during orthos with the odd spike to 58-59C.

Rroff · 2 Feb 2008 at 02:37

Anyhow to the point... as that HSF usually has a decent finish - either you don't have good contact between the HSF and the IHS, you need better thermal paste or the IHS on your CPU has a concave top...

My bet is on the CPU's heat spreader not having a flat finish as my other E6600 is in the same boat and a right pain to cool.

Andrew G · 2 Feb 2008 at 02:54

I seem to have hit a brick wall just keeps blue screening at 380bus have tried, I have not lapped the HS or the CPU so you may be right as I am worries about ill fitment after the rubbing/sanding process.

I got a decent brand of thermal gloop on although not Artic Silver 5, although from what I read vegimite makes as good a thermal gloop as the vast majority of the exspensive market brands.

3400Mhz x 9 bus 380 fsb 1520 @ 135, 1.375 and 1.4 are all BSoD or just a black screen on the 1.4 after starting Prime and CPU 0 fails, saying hardwear failure.

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

Also gone down to 3300Mhz same thing though.

setter · 2 Feb 2008 at 03:28

on my 680i i have to use a voltage of 1.525 in bios to be stable @3.6ghz fsb 1600 (4x400 ) running with memory unlinked @4,4,4,10 800mhz my load temps reach 58-60'c when running orthos, ive found that upping the north bridge chipset voltage helps a bit as well. (the 680i can be a problematic board to work with but if you take your time it can pay of) mine has been running at this speed for weeks now without a single problem and im a noob overclocker

Andrew G · 2 Feb 2008 at 20:09

I found that PDF by nVidia about overclocking the 680i says in there safe overclocking voltages are:

CPU core 1.58750V
CPU FSB 1,5
Memory 2.3v
nForce SPP 1.5v

ALSO would i get this error:

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file

if I am under vaulted?

spooksta · 3 Feb 2008 at 09:09

I can get 3.4ghz on my E6600 passively cooled. Not tried to push anymore yet. Idle is 32c, Gaming is 50-53c depending on the game COD4/ETQW. Orthos is 65c. My system temps around 25c
Ram 378 * 9
Id say its your contact between chip and HS also.
We have same HS and same case
My fans are on medium-low and i have no fan on the Ninja.

Non overclock temps
Idle 27c Gaming 48c

Rackerz · 3 Feb 2008 at 10:47

Andrew G said:
I found that PDF by nVidia about overclocking the 680i says in there safe overclocking voltages are:

CPU core 1.58750V
CPU FSB 1,5
Memory 2.3v
nForce SPP 1.5v

ALSO would i get this error:

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file

if I am under vaulted?

When I get that error it usually means my E6600 is under vaulted.

Andrew G · 3 Feb 2008 at 17:36

Rackerz said:
When I get that error it usually means my E6600 is under vaulted.

Cool beans, time to tourtor it some more then muhahaha /evil

Andrew G · 3 Feb 2008 at 17:44

spooksta said:
I can get 3.4ghz on my E6600 passively cooled. Not tried to push anymore yet. Idle is 32c, Gaming is 50-53c depending on the game COD4/ETQW. Orthos is 65c. My system temps around 25c
Ram 378 * 9
Id say its your contact between chip and HS also.
We have same HS and same case
My fans are on medium-low and i have no fan on the Ninja.

Non overclock temps
Idle 27c Gaming 48c

Personally, Orthus and Prime stable is all well and good but in reality you will very rarely see your system hit the temps that those stress prog's produce maybe a handful of summer days, which I will probably be down the pub in the beer garden anyway

, so I am currently running @ 3.2 setting from above but all fans are low, I get 33 IDLE and high 40's low 50's when gaming on COD 4 et al. Where as Prime would put me in the low 60's.

I think the ninja HS has too few fins and the fins that it does have are too big, needs to be more like a car rad for greater surface area, so i might move to a Tuniq Tower or more likely Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme when i order the bits for my brothers build in the next few weeks. I will have to lap it and see if it was really worth the hassle /nod