Overclocking old tech - worthwhile??

Mirrixx

Mirrixx

Mirrixx

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Joined
18 Jun 2011
Posts
27
Location
Newtownabbey
Hi,
My question...Is it worthwhile overclocking the CPU (whilst buying a CPU water cooler) & buying a SSD drive and PCI card. Total spend about £250.

I have a Intel E6600, std clock of 2.4(stock CPU cooler) on a Gigabyte N650SLI board, 8gb of DDR2 Kingston Hyper Blu, x2 WD Raptor (RAID) & 8800GTX - good in its day! (thro' small upgrades).

Just added another video card and SLI'd them.

Comments much appreciated....

Thx

Mark
 
Hi,
Thx for quick response...can u please clarify? Overclocking CPU ok - with existing stock cooler or just buy water one?

While typing/posting, j.col posted too..hence the amendment...yep read that....2006 advice!!!

TIA.

Mark

PS. Obviously, just new to forums, need to find out how to change my details :)
 
using the stock cooler will limit your overclock.
i would expect you to get up to around 3.0ghz ish with a stock cooler.
with a proper cooler you should get higher.
also your motherboard can have a major affect on how high you can overclock

edit.
even though 2006 the basics are still the same
 
True...It is just I have a dilemma.. obviously can't afford new i series system & am looking to extend life of current system :)
If I was to add just the water cooler (£50 or so), is this an acceptable spend for the increase in speed??? Or if adding SSD drive would be even better!!!
- Win 7 performance show everything at 6.9, 'cept hdd 5.9!!! (even with raptors raided!!)
graphics are a 7.3 when SLI :)
I use computer for games (MW2 & pending MW3 in Nov & for working with photos..FYI)
Regards,
Mark
 
Water cooling old tech is a waste of money as for one they dont get that hot and two if you upgrade its messing finding new back plates if they dont come with them.

Just get a new air cooler for around 15 quid.


That windows performance thing is a load of crap

Hello j.col lol
 
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hhmmm...k
General advice is don't buy new tech to put on old tech...
Perhaps new air CPU cooler and 'tweak' for now :)
Until I can get new PC...do like the 'dinosaur' range!
Mark
 
Getting a ssd will speed things up a little but those drives in raid are not that far off a ssd.

Get a arctic freezer or cooler or what ever there called there supposed to be good.

As i said before them chips dont get that hot so you can still clock quite high.

Get a new cooler set volts to 1.41 in bios and see how far you can up the mhz once you get as far as you can lower the volts if you can.

Check for stability with prime95

Check temps with coretemp or real temp

clock your cards with msi afterburn

cpu no more than 70c

cards around 80ish can go higher
 
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go Kooooweee's way, buy a cheapo cooler like a Hyper 212+ and then save up, and then sell the whole system.

for now i would overclock the E6600 until you can upgrade.

Hi Kooooweeee, welcome back mate ;):D
 
this is a very basic explanation of overclocking

its basic maths. your E6600 is rated at 1066mhz. you always divide this number by 4 so 1066/4= 266, this is your fsb. (or cpu frequency)
then your processor (cpu) has a multiplier of 9 (it may say cpu clock or ratio)
so 266 x 9 = 2394mhz or 2.4GHz, your stock speed

unlink your ram, so it stays at stock speeds, you can overclock the ram later

can you raise the fsb?

try rising it to 280
boot into windows
download realtemp and coretemp (google them)
install and run them
then download Intel Burn Test (ibt) and run it.
have a look in task manager and notice how much free ram is listed.

in ibt set threads to 2 (for 2 cores) and then click on custom ram and enter an amount just below the free amount.
eg. i have 2520mb free ram. so i enter 2500 into the custom ram.
run the test for 5 passes for now, and then at final speed you want, run for 50 passes,
(this is debateable, but a stable overclock is usually classed as 50 runs of IBT, but its personal preference)

or do an overnight run of prime95.

keep an eye on temps (do not let it go over 80.c) or in realtemp, notice the distance to tjmax, never let it go less than 20

if test runs fine, go back into bios, and change frequency (fsb) to 300 and repeat the tests.
keep doing this in 20mhz steps until windows will not boot. then just go back a step (remove 20 from the fsb) to the last stable frequency,
OR
just raise the cpu voltage a couple of levels. it should now boot.
its a balancing act, higher voltages will get you higher fsb, but it will also give you higher temps.
the E6600 is fine upto 1.5v
 
Hi,
Thx for all info & advice...will not be posting for a while as I will take in the advice info above & have purchased Zalman CNPS5X CPU Cooler, couldn't find other one....
Regards,
Mark
 
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