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***The Official Yorkfield Q9300/Q9450/Q9550 Overclocking Thread ***

Hesky82 said:
I’d advise giving it a quick stability test with prime though. I did a mini endurance race in GTR2 with a buddy, the same day I fired up Crysis and the system rebooted within seconds of playing the game. Sure enough it wasnt prime stable.

Certain games (well most) just won’t stress a quad core at all.
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Played Crysis and COD4 for a few hours no problem, also LOST aswell, dont think that stress's a quad much though.
Thing is if the computer plays the games, whether they stress the CPU or not, then that is stable enough its not as if I am gonna play prime. dont take that the wrong way neither, its just people have different opinions of whats stable.
I have been overclocking since day one, so I know a little bit.
 
So all of those temperatures I listed are fine? I should just ignore the red and alarms in AI Probe and simply switch it off? The CPU core's are also fine at 50's idle and 60's high use? I wonder why AI Probe lists it as being dangerous.
 
Banny said:
I am using same board, will do 465fsb but cant seem to get anymore, running 460 all the time though. as a fair voltage hike is required to get 465 so I dont bother.
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What voltages are you using on the northbridge for 460 fsb? I'll be looking to get the new quads to 3.6Ghz and to do that you need 450 fsb. The last time I overclocked on a P35 chipset, I think I only bumped the voltage on the northbridge by a tiny amount. But that was @ 400 fsb.
 
I read that its not good to go over 50degrees on the NB regularly as they have a tendancy to go sooner, I also read that you need 1.6+ volts for 460+fsb on the X38 chipset, so I think 500 fsb is off the cards (i think I was dreaming too much to have 4ghz ^_^)
 
ATLANT3AN said:
Ran PRIME95 for an hour, no problems, played STALKER and the only issue I get as with both PRIME95 and STALKER is that the north bridge and sometimes the southbridge go to 45degrees or 46-47 which causes AI Probe to sound an alarm, I have read that those volts are fine and my CPU should be able to handle it no problem and most have theirs higher than that can anyone confirm/deny this?

Mobo 30d
HD's 29d
GPU 55d
CPU Cores 50's Idle, 60's PRIME95

Also, now that I am reaching 3400 does that mean my £200 CPU is more powerful than a stock £1000 CPU? that runs at 3.2ghz the 6770 OR 6750 unsure on exact title?

Thanks
ATLANT3AN
Click to expand...

Pretty good overclock for a beginner :-) -- Not sure about those Idle temps, could someone confirm/deny what the Q9450 should be idling @ on a Ultra Extreme? I was expecting high 30's at the most @ 3.4Ghz+ and something in the range of 50-60 when loaded.
 
I will take back what I said, I am now running prime95 to see what happens, did have to raise the vcore a little up to 1.33v.
Its been running now for 20 mins, will leave it for a couple of hours.
mine idles quite high aswell, can be in the 50s, load is 65c, my cooler is only a zalman 9500 though.
Thinking of doing a lapping job on heat sink and heatspreader
 
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Ich bin ein Dummkartoffelkopf, found out my system instability was more likely due to slightly undervolting my RAM *touchwood*. But my system seems to be more stable now, I was able to take my NB and vCore waaaay down:



Out of interest which RealTemp calibration is best? My under load temps still seem a little high. May try to reseat cooler etc...
 
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Banny said:
Played Crysis and COD4 for a few hours no problem, also LOST aswell, dont think that stress's a quad much though.
Thing is if the computer plays the games, whether they stress the CPU or not, then that is stable enough its not as if I am gonna play prime. dont take that the wrong way neither, its just people have different opinions of whats stable.
I have been overclocking since day one, so I know a little bit.
Click to expand...

If all you do is play games then I wouldnt be surprised if your pc never kicks up a fuss. probably at most only utilises 25% total cpu occupancy with a fast clocked quad.

Na you don’t play prime lol, but if you are actually fully utilising your qaud you will find your hammering all 4 cores pretty much 100% which is similar to what prime is simulating. If none of your apps do that, then you simply don’t need a quad core :)

Fact is with these qauds many everyday tasked carried out on your pc just don’t push the cpu nearly enough so you can get away with a fairly unstable overclock without nasty errors and crashes rearing their ugly head.
 
Hesky82 said:
A simple run of memtest86 would have diagnosed your problem within minutes!!

I don't think people test their ram nearly enough.

Good to see you’re making progress :)
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Actually I was wrong. Again. I did Memtest just after I first installed XP on this rig, passed. Just passed it again. Anyways, I managed to run my CPU in Prime for 3 hours fine at 1.21v. Then about 10 minutes after I stopped that it decided to give me the reboot treatment and it refuses to do anything useful at those volts now. Sigh. Back up to 1.28 methinks...
 
lol ok, random rebooting definitely sounds like your vcore is simply too low. Perfectly safe voltage though, which is coincidentally exactly the same voltage it takes to get my Q6600 prime stable at 3.6GHz :o
 
Hesky82 said:
lol ok, random rebooting definitely sounds like your vcore is simply too low. Perfectly safe voltage though, which is coincidentally exactly the same voltage it takes to get my Q6600 prime stable at 3.6GHz :o
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I know it's safe, it's just a little warmer than I'd want really. Annoying considering it was happier earlier but oh well, it's stable so I shouldn't really complain.
 
Hey guys :), I pushed mine to 440 FSB 3.5ghz (3520mhz), 1.304v, I have turned Landline calibration? to enabled which keeps the Volt you set but its still lower than I set, I set 1.32... etc. Running PRIME95 now, I ran PRIME95 for 5 hours on my 3.4ghz 1.240v setup with landline set to auto and that was fine.

I didnt want to touch 1.3v though out of fear it will damage my CPU, also about those northbridge temperatures, after running PRIME95 for 5 hours the temps stayed at 44degrees or below and in the green also when playing STALKER it didnt stay in the red anymore, I cant understand why?

Cores late 60's in CoreTemp whilst using PRIME95.
.
Update:

3520mhz whilst using PRIME95 makes northbridge go red after a while and then out back to green mostly I have to admit staying green though, hopping between 44 and 45-6 degrees, 3400 did not do so, I guess though its the increased voltage?

Update 2:

Ran prime for nearly 2 hours so definitly stable, Northbridge is constantly at 45 degrees red, and CPU Core temps late 60's early 70's, is it worth it? I know My system will almost never be pushed like this though so I guess it is.When stopped temps come down to mid 50's as normal and early 40's for north bridge. SuperPI at 1MB was 1/2 a second faster with 3.5ghz than 3.4ghz at 13.203seconds

ATLANT3AN

What truly is hands on heart the safest cpu voltage for these Q9series? which wont result in any loss of life span? I dont know If I should go back to 3400 with 1.2v. I cant change computer for 3 years and when I get a new one this will become my second machine, so really 5 years is the lifespan of my machine, if It will easily reach that then I dont mind.

OC2.png
 
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Hesky82 said:
If all you do is play games then I wouldnt be surprised if your pc never kicks up a fuss. probably at most only utilises 25% total cpu occupancy with a fast clocked quad.

Na you don’t play prime lol, but if you are actually fully utilising your qaud you will find your hammering all 4 cores pretty much 100% which is similar to what prime is simulating. If none of your apps do that, then you simply don’t need a quad core :)

Fact is with these qauds many everyday tasked carried out on your pc just don’t push the cpu nearly enough so you can get away with a fairly unstable overclock without nasty errors and crashes rearing their ugly head.
Click to expand...

Fair point Hesky, probably never needed a quad your right, but I had to have one as I had pretty much run at of overclocking options with my 6300. Didn't really want another dual core, as there is no challenge there.
The Q9300 sounded the best choice at the time, couldn't get a Q9450 and never wanted a Q66000 (everyone has them), so I have something new now to play with.
I do play games, but I prefer overclocking much more fun.
Have started using prime95 now, see how I get on with it.
 
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