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Q8300

Soldato
Joined
22 Mar 2009
Posts
7,754
Location
Cornwall
what the highest speed i can expect to get from this with a: stock HSF and b: relativley cheap aftermarket HSF?
dont have a lot of money to spend and havent really done overclocking properly for ages now, so dont want to go too far, just if i can get a bit more from the cpu then would be a bonus.
 
Hi m8,

You can probably hit 3GHz on the stock cooler - but this chip isn't the best overclocker due to a high stock FSB and low maximum multiplier. With a good n' cheap cooler like this you could probably get 3.5GHz, but you may be limited by you're fully occupied RAM slots.

However, if you are mainly playing games your 2.5GHz Quad core will not be limiting you're framerates - it will be your video card. With that in mind, you may want to consider investing any CPU overclocking money in a faster graphics card.

hopefully getting a new gfx card either for xmas or just after, given the wife some ideas but cant get owt until i know if she has got me one.

what you mean by my ram slots all being occupied, is this not good when overclocking?
 
Yea, it can limit overclocking as it puts more stress on the memory controller. You may want to drop your RAM speeds if you are having problems overclocking.

As for overclocking on stock cooling, install this stress testing program and run it for 10-15 minutes and see what the maximum temperature you hit is. That will inform you on how far you can push the chip with just the stock cooler. (The intel thermal specification of the Q8300 CPU is 71.4 degrees C).

run that before overclocking, or after each stepup?
 
I'd run it now. It will give you a baseline (stock cooling and clockspeeds) - so you know where to go from.

Then obviously run it again after each stage of overclocking to test stability and temperatures.

ok will do when i get home from work and will post up the results and see where i can go from there. i read that just upping the fsb to 400 with stock hsf and voltages untouched will give a stable 3.0GHz, will it make any real difference to performance or do i need to be aiming at nearer the 4.0GHz (if pos)?
 
ok kool, got my DVI-HDMI adaptor (free from work) to take home tonight so hopefully will be able to test both this and the res at the same time :D
 
lol ok fair enough, mine is pretty silent at the moment which is good. dont really use the pc for anything other than games, so if its not going to make to much difference in them then might look at getting it as high as pos on stock, and then see what gfx card and hdd i can get as i think both are holding me back somewhat. my only experience with faster hard drives is with the earlier WD Raptors, are these still some of the best drives of are there better out there, and would this release more potential from my machine?
 
i don't think the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 will be louder then the stock HSF
And a faster HDD will just in prove your loadin times and speed up windows a bit that about it. you really do need a better GFX tho

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?&groupid=701&catid=56&subid=1403&sortby=priceAsc
very good card for the money

if you want to or can spend a bit more money
VTX ATI Radeon HD 5850
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-121-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1502

hopefully getting a new gfx card either for xmas or just after, given the wife some ideas but cant get owt until i know if she has got me one.

what you mean by my ram slots all being occupied, is this not good when overclocking?

hopefully the gfx card issue will be resolved soon. will it not help speed up games though with a faster hdd as it will be able to load the next part quicker, i rip all my games to iso and run them from a virtual drive as i find it quicker than running them from cd/dvd most of the time.
 
ok fair enough, might give that a miss for a bit then, remember having raided raptors ages ago, thing loaded pretty damn quick.

so if i got it up to 3.0GHz, with a better GFX Card then i should be ok, or will it be just as good leaving the cpu alone.
 
was hoping to get a 57** as i want dx11 if pos for future games, but im not sure, i think she found a 9800GTX+ second hand fairly cheap so might be getting that to keep me going.
 
ok, well i will do that stress test tonight and find out the temps, see if i can up my cpu without changing the hsf and go from there once i know what gfx card i will have.
 
im running the test now for 25mins, have looked at the forum rules but cant see what is the best/max size for pictures on this forum so i can post up the result graphs. anyone help please.
 
ok will do, core 3 errored so it didnt do the full 25mins, any ideas?


2009-12-09-21h01-CPU1.png


2009-12-09-21h01-CPU2.png




2009-12-09-21h01-CPU3.png


2009-12-09-21h01-CPU4.png


2009-12-09-21h01-GPU1.png


2009-12-09-21h01-VCore.png


2009-12-09-21h01-Volt12.png


2009-12-09-21h01-Volt3.png


2009-12-09-21h01-Volt5.png
 
Core 3 errored? That says to me that it isn't getting enough volts. The temperature seem safe, so you will want to set the volts manually in the BIOS and retest.

Let me make this clear, right now your PC isn't stable.

oh, thats not good, it seems to be running fine with everything i have thrown at it. which voltages are wrong, i know that prog has shown graphs for some, but i dont understand most of whats gone on.
 
yeah, the first psu i had for this build blew and killed my P5Q and some ram, wasnt happy so had to get what money allowed (it was free from work).
 
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