The overclocking 'wall'

[Stonedofmoo]

With my current Q6600 I've been overclocking it and discovered something I think of as it's overclocking wall. To explain I have a Q6600 which happily runs at 3.5gig, 1.375 volts and max temps of 68 degrees under Prime95 load.

It runs Prime95 all day and is an excellent performer.

Now if I try and set it to 3.6gig, just 100Mhz more it needs substantially more voltage, as much as 1.45v and the temps sky rocket to 77 degrees. Under these conditions it can BSOD. Adding extra voltage beyond 1.45 doesn't really help as I think it's the heat that kills it.

It weird, a mere 100Mhz difference and yet it's like the difference between night and day for stability and heat generated.

I usually choose the stable speed when I find my processors 'wall'. What do the rest of you do, the same? Buy water cooling?

 

[Hawky89]

have you tried increasing the fsb in smaller increments to find out exactly where the 'wall' is? such as 10 - 20 mhz more at a time?

 

[easyrider]

There becomes a balance between vcore used and the clock speed.

With the last few MHZ needing a huge bump in vcore for little gains.

If you wish to find the max of your chip then watercooling is the way to go.

I ran my Q6600@ 3.8ghz 24/7 and it benched at 4.1ghz.

Prime stabity at 4ghz was not worth the extra vcore for 200mhz.

 

[Stonedofmoo]

Hawky89: No because that will just be pushing it closer to that unstable point.

The difference between 3.5 and 3.6 isn't enough to be noticed at this point. I just can't stop myself from tinkering

 

[Hawky89]

well then i would have to agree with easyrider, you will probably need a lot more volts to get a decent gain now and water cooling will probably be required.