First Time Overclock Questions

kiltman67 · 26 Oct 2007 at 23:55

I'm heavily considering doing my first overclock on my E6300 but have a couple of questions about stability testing.

Firstly, can someone recommend a good test I can use? I've read the sticky guide which says that there aren't many stability tests for dual core CPUs, but I'm aware the post is also over a year old so I'm guessing there's been some progress.

Secondly, how long should the test last? I read somewhere that 10 hours was a rule of thumb, but if I'm going to run a test after every clock change that would take days to do.

ChrisD. · 26 Oct 2007 at 23:58

Latest Prime 95 will do both cores. Some say 8 hours for ultimate stability, however nothing will stress your CPU as much as Prime. If it runs for an hour without fail for me and doesn't crash when gaming/benchmarking then I'm happy.

kiltman67 · 28 Oct 2007 at 03:58

Thanks for the reply.

When it comes to actually doing it should I always be going up in small increments or is it safe to make a jump if it's not particularly large?

I ask because I have a particular target in mind (2.2GHz), my cooling isn't stock (Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7) and I've seen people get much higher speeds.

In case it's relevant, my RAM is DDR2 PC5300 667MHz

jabski · 28 Oct 2007 at 05:31

if you want to get 2.2ghz you need to run the cpu at 314 x 7 (max multi on a E6300). Your ram will be fine to handle this as it is rated at 667 where as 314x2 = 628 so run the ram at 1:1 daul channel. The artic freezer should keep the e6300 cool so no problem there.
I would try 314 x 7 at stock volts (1.35 i beleave).
If its not stable try 1.375 volts. That should be fine for 2.2GHz
Which motherboard do you have ?? This could play a part in weather your system will be stable ??
Use core temp to check your temps

hope this helps

kiltman67 · 28 Oct 2007 at 15:33

Thanks for the information.

I have an ASRock ConRoeXFire-eSATA2. I'm not sure if this will be good for overclocking, though, as I've heard that with some ASRock motherboards it's not easily done.

kiltman67 · 28 Oct 2007 at 19:55

I have another more general question.

Does anybody know of any guides to overclocking to particular targets? I've read through a few different guides but they've all been more exploratory and orientated towards pushing your CPU as hard as possible. End result is you never quite know which steps are relevant and which are not.