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***The Official Q6600 Overclocking Thread ***

spb251272 said:
Well I managed to get 3.8 stable on small ffts last night for about an hour and a quarter (when I turned it off), but the temps were pretty high. It hit 77 on cores 0 and 1 at times, but settled around 73. I had to put vcore up to 1.45 to hit this clock, from 1.35 on 3.6. Funny thing was that at 9x422, it bluescreened after about 35mins, but at 8x475 it lasted over an hour.

I'm going to try dropping my voltage a lot when i get home, because since the BIOS flashing and CPU re-lapping, i've yet to crash (unless i play with the ram, still a cap of 832mhz). Stable on small FFT's @ 3.4ghz, peaks on hottest core at 71C, anymore and i woulda switched it off. Hard to say where i should stop though, because small FFT's is so completely unrealistic: it's like shooting your car with a tank and saying "hmm, it's still not safe..."

Yes i've said this before, at a lower multi, people say it puts more stress on the system, but it's more stable and requires less voltage. Needs the RAM to do it though, highest FSB i can get is 416fsb, because my ram maxes at 832 @ 1:1.

What was your VID by the way?

With these temps, I'm thinking that either I need to let the as5 settle in more, or or I've got a cpu and/or heatsink that are not flat! I was definitely expecting it to stay cooler with the vcore at 1.45! Well I'll see how it goes at 3.8 over the next few days, and if the temps don't drop I may get a lapping kit. I'm thinking that if I'm stable at 3.8 and 1.45, I may be able to hit 4.0 if I can get the temps under control. Maybe 3.8 will be my limit on air, and I've always been too chicken to go for watercooling.
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Yeh heatsinks are often uneven, although it doesn't seem to have made a difference, my CPU was very concave, the edges stuck up a lot, needed lapping, though it appears my heatsink does too now, think it was designed convex (now i think of it, would explain my heat jump, doh!), as is the thermalrite 120, as they know intel mass produce them by the bucketload.

Also, your temps will drop after 200-300hrs uptime (it's important there's sufficient cooldown time within this!), by upto 5C usually. My paste has been on like a day, 2 days at a time tops, so havent checked it out myself, my grease needs about 7 days worth of use before it becomes any good lol, because it's like water.

I was cooler 2 days ago at 1.5v as i am now at 1.4625 volts. Word of warning though. This is Asus: with the worst temp measuring known to man, my last board said i was at 90C idle with my prescott, even though the chip shutsdown at that.
 
V3g3tto said:
Yeh heatsinks are often uneven, although it doesn't seem to have made a difference, my CPU was very concave, the edges stuck up a lot, needed lapping, though it appears my heatsink does too now, think it was designed convex (now i think of it, would explain my heat jump, doh!), as is the thermalrite 120, as they know intel mass produce them by the bucketload.

Also, your temps will drop after 200-300hrs uptime (it's important there's sufficient cooldown time within this!), by upto 5C usually. My paste has been on like a day, 2 days at a time tops, so havent checked it out myself, my grease needs about 7 days worth of use before it becomes any good lol, because it's like water.

I was cooler 2 days ago at 1.5v as i am now at 1.4625 volts. Word of warning though. This is Asus: with the worst temp measuring known to man, my last board said i was at 90C idle with my prescott, even though the chip shutsdown at that.
Click to expand...

Mate you're just going to go insane if you keep looking around for little bits and bobs that will sort your overclock out. Its just not going to happen like that.

1. Get a "top notch" cooler (Notcua\or similar tower cooler) - Get rid of that "grease" while your at it and buy some AS5.
2. Start from scratch with everthing at auto (except the obvious things) at 3Ghz
3. Work from there

(FYI, although temps do drop after thermal goo settles down, they don't drop much, we're talking a few degrees if that. It most likely won't affect your overclock much at all)

Don't worry about these extra little voltage settings, you really shouldn't need to adjust them for a good overclock, unless your already getting a good overclock.

If you're under 450mhz FSB, adusting things like the NB voltage\SB voltage and stuff like that is completely and utterly pointless.

Also, try not to get too worked up over it all. Seriously, S*** haven't done anything wrong, they've sold me the same cpu, its the way it goes. They've just not sold a top end one. You can't expect to receive a top end cpu when you're paying, relatively speaking, "peanuts".

If you're really not happy after doing steps 1-3 then you can always sell it for around £120? I'm not sure how much they go for? Then try again.
 
Indeed ^_^ it hovers between 1.3 and 1.38 if I monitor cpu-z and speedfan !

Asus boards are generally good with Auto settings (default values)
 
Yeh you're right Hernaldo, i'll probably just let it lie now. I'm happy with my idle temps now. 37C at 3.42Ghz is fine when a) grease hasn't bedding in and b) it's at 1.47v

Just tested it and it's prime stable, passed the 8k small FFT's, peaking at 70C/71C (no program on the planet would push it near that hard lol). So it's rock.

The grease is actually on par with artic silver 5, it's jsut it's consitency that's the problem. The guide says put it on both surfaces, some people put it on CPU only, seems thinner than paste, so actually more is needed, though depends how you brush it on. It's easy and complex to use if you get me heh, but done right it's among the best, but i would prefer paste, but im leaving it now until i get a real problem.

mrk, check a) your VID and b) what your current voltage is in windows and c) your temp :D. I can run 3.33ghz on low voltages actually because i can drop the multiplier for that :)
 
Phunky said:
I've got a Notcua on it and soon as i put volts up it jumped from 35ish idle to 40-45 over the cores.
Click to expand...

Mine at 3.4ghz is 28-38 over the cores (i'm an unlucky bugger who has high VID and high temp spread between cores lol). That's at 1.475v Vcore.

Depends what speed, voltage you are at with that though, don't really know. I think with me temps jump 5-6C from 1.4 to 1.47. It's roughly 1C per notch.
 
So, despite the Penryn quads, I decided to go for a Q6600. What turned up was an Intel Q6600 G0 (SLACR) L739A836. It is cooled by a Tuniq Tower 120 on an ASUS P5K Premium WiFi (0504 BIOS) running Vista x64.

I've been doing a bit of experimentation, no long Prime tests yet, but running some custom 8K in-place small FFT tests as well as a couple of larger FFT tests.

CoreTemp reports a VID of 1.2000v. My RAM is 800MHz, so I'm looking at 3.6GHz without overclocking the memory (and I don't plan to).

Findings so far is that the CPU at 3.510GHz (FSB 390, BIOS Vcore 1.2750v, ASUS AI Suite Vcore reading 1.2640v) the temperatures maxes out at 60-61C in CoreTemp across all cores. Room temperature is ~21C, and AS5 hasn't had time to bed yet (not sure what impact this has on temps).

If I go to 3.6GHz I have to up the BIOS Vcore to 1.3125v and temps rise to 67-68C, which isn't that bad, but it seems a bit much just to gain 100MHz, so for now I've decided to back off to 3.5GHz again and do some longer tests. I'm happy with 3.5GHz.

Taking into account possible tweaks needed for Prime stable or any unforeseen problems, it's looking quite good :)
 
Yup, Boah you have a sweet chip there.

In comparison my Q6600 needs 1.435V to run 3.5Ghz prime stable.

I use a Thermalright Ultra Ex. 120 tho so my temps are actually lower than yours!
 
CPU - Q6600
Revison - G0
FPO# - L726A977
Clockspeed - 3330 (370 x 9)
Vcore - 1.4375 (BIOS) (1.392 Windows)
VID - 1.3000v (Core Temp)
Motherboard - Asus P5B-Wifi
Thermal Paste - Arctic Silver 5
Cooling - Noctua NH-U12F
CPU Temp - 71'c Highest logged temp in core temp.

e63846c7.jpg
 
Bito said:
Did you buy from here Boah ??
Retail or OEM chip ??
Click to expand...
Yep, from OcUK. OEM.

Hesky82 said:
Never the less you have a great quad and the perfect board to overclock it, just held back by cooling.
Click to expand...
Yep, cooling and the memory really. I doubt it will go much past 800MHz, so I won't get much further than 3.6GHz anyway, cooling or not - although I haven't tried pushing it, so this assumption may be wrong. I'm happy with the clock anyway, not looking for something ultra-extreme :)

HeX said:
I use a Thermalright Ultra Ex. 120 tho so my temps are actually lower than yours!
Click to expand...
The Ultra 120 Extreme was out of stock at the time, and I was a bit impatient :D
 
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Hey guys,

im stable (7hrs Prime95) @ 9 * 378 (3402.1) @ VID 1.3 and 1.448V.

The only issue is the temps - core 0 and 1 are peaking at 74C....

If its running fine for 8 hours Prime95 - does the 74 deg matter? - should i be working to get it down at all? I've kinda pinched the BIOS settings off another website:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/07/25/overclocking_intel_core_2_quad_q6600/2

And upped it from there....


Cheers

Jza
 
V3g3tto said:
Is there any other program that tells me individual core temps? Because i'm starting to think Core temp is the one off the mark here...

...i'll be bloody annoyed if it is, yet happy that my CPU is cool at same time :D

Edit: Wow, just noticed it gives the core temps on SpeedFan too, you seen that...8C?! This is without OC btw, only disabled and optimized stuff.
Click to expand...


http://www.lavalys.com/

Everest 4.20
 
What an amazing chip the Q6600 slacr GO cpu is. Bought one today (retail) to replace my E6600, and used the newish Artic MX2 instead of the usual AS5. I put the core volts at auto, the multiplier to 8, as it was for the E6600, and the clock at 350 making 2800ghz. Up it came and ran so well running Orthos x 2, I put it up to 3 ghz, and again it ran fine, so up it went after an hour or so to 3.2, still going strong. The temps were 34ish at idle, and 52ish under load with Orthos. I then wondered how low I could run the core, so went into manual mode and set the volts to 1.2v giving 1.165v in CPUZ, and it dropped the temps by about 4C. I have it now at 3.24ghz with the core still at 1.2v, and will let it settle for a few days before going higher. I am really pleased with it, having decided to not bother with the new quads coming out, what a super buy.

Edit Now at 3.5ghz with 1.3v in the bios, idle 1.264, under full load 1.2v. Temps around idle 34c, under load after 1 hour of OCCT is around 51C max, (All cores within 1C, cycle down to 49C and up again).
This has been game stable, but got bored of running prime, so used OCCT. This overclock is already well past the max on my E6600 it replaced. This is on air with a 120 ultra, what a chip!
 
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I find it intreguing that these low VID chips (1.20) clock so well with little volts but are so hot in doing so.

Mine was an OEM chip as well, and I'd be scared to put a stock cooler on it at even 1.20v 2.4Ghz as I don't think it would cope - even a Scythe Mine hits 60C iirc. My Tuniq does a better job of it, but even on my custom watercooling, it's difficult to get it much below 50C at stock and 60C at 3.6Ghz load i think.

I suspect these 1.20vid chips to be quite good from a Dice/LN2 point of view ;) I just got my pot, so I'll let you know!
 
Well my VID is 1.375v and even at 3.2GHz the CPU is 29-390 degrees! now that's with the fan at 50% speed on my Freezer 7 pro and using AS5. This is with the BIOS auto adjusting the vcore to 1.3-1.4v

I'm at the FSB wall limit though for "this" chip because at 3.3 it CTD in 3dmark even wtih +1.4v
Different chips clock differently I know and I'm quite happy with 3.2 for the long run as everything is now GPU limited !

Of course individual cores are 40-45 idle or 55 under load which gives a CPU temp of 30~ idle and 45 loaded as above :)

I really like this chip!


EDIT*

or could it be that it's unstable in 3dmark at 3.3ghz because the vcore is being adjusted automatically? reckon I should set the BIOS vcore to 1.4v manually ? rising the mhz from 3GHz to 3.2GHz did not up the temps at all so I'm confident in the cpu running within existing temp margins without issue. Just need stability!

I have an Asus P5KC and Gskill DDR2-8000 @ 950MHz atm so would ideally like my RAM running close to 1000mhz as possible :D

Edit2**

Sod it I can't be fart arsing around with this any more, 3.2 is stable and still bad ass so 3.2 it stays!
 
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