Q9450 watercooled temps question and more

[inflynx]

Hi, guys!
I have recently assembled my new rig, here are the specs:

- CPU Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (Arctic Silver 5)
- Motherboard Asus Striker II Extreme, nForce 790i Ultra SLI
- GPU BFG GeForce 9800GX2 1024Mb
- RAM OCZ 4GB DDR3 PC3- 1333MHz ReaperX

Custom watercooling:
- Pump Alphacool Laing DDC 1+ Ultra AGB
- Radiator Alphacool NexXxos Xtreme II 2x120mm
- CPU waterblock Alphacool NexXxoS XІ+
- Tubs Alphacool 10/8mm
- Liquid Feser One UV Reactive (Blue)

This is certainly not my first build, but I am new to watercooling, overclocking and quad-cores.
I therefore have several questions:

1) CPU temps
I am watercooling both CPU and northbridge with water coming from radiator to CPU and then to chipset.
I have overclocked the CPU slightly to 2.88GHz and you can see my IDLE temps on the screenshot below(LOAD would be 10C higher).
- First of all, why on earth are they so high (or are they)?
- Why Real Temp reports temps 10C lower than anything else? Which are right?
- Is there something wrong with my watercooling which I spent a fortune on?
And also, if I touch the waterblock on CPU it feels cooler than my hand…

2) Oveclocking
As I have mentioned I am very new to whole idea of overclocking. So I am overclocking with Extreme Tweaked in BIOS and using CPU LevelUp function. If I place match QX9650 e.g. @3.0GHz computer boots fine, but programs like antivirus randomly crash. If I put match QX9700 e.g. @3.2GHz computer does not boot at all. Any comments on this?

3) Memory
CPUZ reports 533MHz which in dual channel will give 1066MHz.
- How is this if memory is supposed to work on 1333MHz?
- I found the voltage on memory to be 1.6V. Shouldn’t it be 1.85V, as written in specs?

I would be grateful for intelligent answers and comments. Thanks a lot!

 

[Cob]

I don't think any of the temp monitors can read the new Intel chips correctly yet.

And you'll have to set a higher memory ratio in the BIOS to get the memory to run faster.

 

[inflynx]

Thanks, Cob.
Is temperature in BIOS close to real at all? Although ASUS has only supplied beta bios for my board yet....

 

[Cob]

Well the BIOS reads the temp from a different sensor than CoreTemp does, and it's usually lower than CoreTemp. You can usually add a good 10-15c onto the BIOS temp to get what Coretemp would say.

But again there's no real way of telling if the BIOS is able to read the temps correctly on the new chips.

 

[juno_first]

Nice load of kit man, a bit like how I was a year ago

I'm not sure about the 790i chipset but my p35 wont run 4 sticks of RAM >900mhz but is good with 2 sticks at 1150mhz wtf?

With high end air my b3 will do 3.4 & 3.55 on water (3.7 under 90c).
At 3.55 does 50c idle & under full load using OCCT the cores can hit 98c & they're still stable for hours (I think the old quads are rated to run <100c).

I got a great big chunk of copper on my dq6 mobo for the northbridge so just running CPU on water.

I guess you just need experiment with the BIOS settings to get higher speeds, have fun

 

[inflynx]

I have discovered my BIOS version does NOT support Q9xxx at all, letting along displaying correct temps
New BIOS is out but it is still in beta. Looks like ASUS follows the rule of releasing the product asap and then take their time to polish the firmwares off.
Overclocking instability is also BIOS problem aparently.

I am not worried any more then. Will hang until new bios is out.
PS>Those overclocking their Q9450's will certainly get even lower results then on Q6600 for the same reason.