First time overclock

[Squink]

I had a quick punt at overclocking my Q6600 G0 (with Tuniq Tower on a Gigabyte DS3R mobo with 4x1Gb OCZ RAM) this lunchtime, following the guide in the sticky for the board in the motherboards forum.

I wasn't quite sure what I was doing, so left the multiplier at 9x and moved the frequency from 333 to 366 (thinking this was a modest change). It appears this was a fairly significant bump from 2.4Ghz to 3.29Ghz. I played around with it for 40 mins or so (played a game, haven't run any testing tools yet) and nothing untoward happened except that my minimum frames had gone up.

If I wanted to settle on 3.2Ghz, what would be the 'standard' combination of multiplier and frequency (if such a thing exists)? Would it be wise for someone like me who doesn't have a clue to try for 3.4 or 3.6Ghz?

 

[Squink]

I decided I'd be happy with 3.2Ghz so set it to 8x400 at 1.45v. The temps went into the low 60s and Prime produced an error after 25 mins. I changed to 9x333 and lowered the volts to 1.4 (iirc). Temps are now topping out at 57C and it was Prime stable for 8 hours when I left for work this morning. Not exactly cutting edge but I'll probably keep the processor for 3 years, so I don't want to push it. Unfortunately when I attached the Tuniq tower I was a bit distracted and used some generic thermal paste which came in a similar-looking tube to the AS5 I had meant to use. I can't really be bothered to clean off the old stuff and reseat it all.

Still, I have no complaints at an easy 25% overclock (it will certainly do more in the right hands), especially since my previous CPU (a 3400+ Clawhammer) wouldn't overclock at all.