Overclocking the E8400

[McstylisT]

Hi all ,


Have a friend from who wishes to delve into some OC'ing with his E8400. I gave him the basics but i have no real experience with the E8400 itself.

Just hoping a few of you might have them or used them in the past.

He would be using the STOCK heat sink for the moment so would not expect massive returns for reasonable temps. He has been advised however to consider aftermarket cooling.

He also needs infoormation on voltage and what to look for at first attempts as a starting point.

His system is the following spec:

Antec 900 case
E8400 CPU
EVGA Nvidia 750i SLI ***
Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO
WD Caviar Black 1TB HDD
OCZ Reaper 4GB
OCZ 700 PSU
Windows 7 RC (64bit)


Appreciate any information. Many thanks

McstylisT

 

[McstylisT]

I'll take some screeines when i get home, i've got mine at 3.960 at the moment using an AF7 Pro cooler and a mild voltage bump.
100% load = 55Celcius
IDLE = mid 40's celcius.

That would be excellent. That would help him quite a lot. Thanks.

I also posted that cooler to him as a recommendation. I personally used it a while back with the Q6600 and Q9550. Worked fine.

a simple increase in fsb from 333 to 375 will get it to 3.38GHz and i dont think that will require any additional voltage or raise temps by too much

Interesting. That is the same as i was going to suggest to him myself. My old Q9550 was also 333fsb stock and 376 used to be around 3.2ghz for that.

I will pass this information on to him. Many thanks for posting.

Do you think that 3.38-3.4ghz is a reasonable OC using the STOCK cooler. ? Or do you think he could safely creep higher while he is obtaining a better cooler. ?

Thanks

McstylisT

 

[McstylisT]

Just uploading pics now one moment.

Had to bump the ram voltage as im running Geil PC6400 ULL quite OC'd
Also the Gigabyte X48 boards are a pain in the neck to OC not like the old DS3's

Many thanks for doing this. Im sure this will be a big help for him. Appreciate it.

McT

 

[McstylisT]

I wouldn't bother overclocking without an aftermarket HS.
Also there are threads already regarding overclocking the E8400, should help your mate with a starting point; when he gets an aftermarket cpu cooler that is. IMHO.
Thread of part of my E8400 Oc journey.
My stable settings for 4.25ghz on air.

Ai Overclock Tuner - Manual
CPU Ratio Setting - 8.5
FSB Frequency - 500
PCI Frequency - 100
FSB Strap to North Bridge - Auto
DRAM Frequency - DDR2-1002Mhz
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A1 - Auto
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A2 - Auto
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel B1 - Auto
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel B2 - Auto
DRAM Timing Control - Manual

CAS# Latency - 5 DRAM Clocks
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay - 5 DRAM Clocks
DRAM RAS# Precharge - 5 DRAM Clocks
DRAM RAS# Activate to Precharge - 15 DRAM Clocks
RAS# to RAS# Delay - 12*
Row Refresh Cycle Time - 55 DRAM Clocks
Write Recovery Time - Auto
Read to Precharge Time - Auto

READ to WRITE Delay(S/D) - Auto
Write to Read Delay(S) - Auto
WRITE to READ Delay(D) - Auto
READ To READ Delay(S) - Auto
READ To READ Delay(D) - Auto
WRITE To WRITE Delay(S) - Auto
WRITE To Write Delay(D) - Auto

WRITE to PRE Delay - Auto
READ to PRE Delay - Auto
PRE to PRE Delay - Auto
ALL PRE to ACT Delay - Auto
ALL PRE to REF Delay - Auto
DRAM Static Read Control - Disabled
DRAM Read Training - Disabled
MEM. OC Charger - Enabled
Ai Clock Twister - light
Ai Transaction Booster - manual
common performance level - 11
Pull-In of CHA PH1 - Disabled
Pull-In of CHA PH2 - Disabled
Pull-In of CHA PH3 - Disabled
Pull-In of CHA PH4 - Disabled
Pull-In of CHA PH1 - Disabled
Pull-In of CHA PH2 - Disabled
Pull-In of CHA PH3 - Disabled
Pull-In of CHA PH4 - Disabled
CPU Voltage - 1.275
CPU GTL Voltage Reference(0/2) - Auto
CPU GTL Voltage Reference(1/3) - Auto
CPU PLL Voltage - Auto
FSB Termination Voltage - Auto
DRAM Voltage - 2.02 (Cheers Setter, I do listen eventually.)
NB Voltage - 1.40
NB GTL Reference - Auto
SB Voltage - Auto
PCIE SATA Voltage - Auto
Load-Line Calibration - Enabled
CPU Spread Spectrum - Disabled
PCIE Spread Spectrum - Disabled
CPU Clock Skew - Auto
NB Clock Skew - Auto
CPU Margin Enhancement - Optimized

CPU Configuration
C1E Support - Disabled
Max CPUID Value Limit - Disabled
Intel(R) Virtualization Tech - Enabled
CPU TM Function - Disabled
Execute Disable Bit - Enabled

Hi m8 , thanks for the reply.

I did search but found nothing with relative info for the 8400 cpu. Then you linked that other thread ...ooooppppss ...lmao.

Great information here. This goes for all that have posted in this thread. Great wealth of experience and detailed settings. I for one appreciate all of it.

Im sure my m8 cant go wrong with all this.

Cheers

McT

 

[McstylisT]

@Mcstylist.. No problem buddy, if he has any issues get him on here to post
As JMC said, I wouldnt push to hard with the stock cooler.

Also it really IS worth spending time seeing how low you can take the volts whilst maintaining a stable system, which in turn will extend the life of the system.
The E8400 really is an amazing chip which I'll be keeping until the quads come down in price in a year hopefully.

Hi Rangler , That info helped him massively. You da man.

This is where he is at now.

He tried a slight OC ok. Only a increase in the FSB to 145 everything else left to stock. He booted and his idle was 41 , max load when using OCCT stress test was 65degs on all cores. Do you think this is high. ? I thought so bearing in mind that its a 72.4 thermal limit CPU. ? His stock temps were not much different , like 40 idle and 62deg OCCT load.?

We are basically now discussing top notch coolers. I have now suggested the Tuniq tower to him. What would your top choices be. Bearing in mind he is in the US and could find it hard sourcing some of the awesome ones we get hold of here.

Others mentioned were , Arctic freezer 7 Pro , and Zerotherm copper cooler.

All choices and opinions welcome.

Also the next morning after he booted his pc , nothing happened. It basically stated to hang and would not load the os. ? He eventually got into the bios and reset them to the standard settings. Everything boots fine. ?? I suggested maybe the mobo struggled to do the oc on boot. ??

So he is on the look out for great cooler opinions.

McstylisT