how to oc a q6600

[dukebound85]

hi all i have a question

i want to oc my q6600. my question is how do i do this?

the multiplier is locked at 9 max

i would like to oc the most i can with the stock cooling. any reccomendation on settings?

i was thinking 9 x 300mhz (for 2.7ghz) or even 8 x 400mhz (for 3.2ghz)

my case has 2 120mm fans and the stock cpu fan so case ventilation is good.

any of you guys have experience with this? i blieve the above settings dont require an increase in voltage. i may be wrong. if so is it safe to do so on the stock cooler?

thanks and ill have to look into a better cooler in the future but i just have stock in the meantime.

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

what motherboard/ram do you have? i have a q6600 running at 8x462 = 3.7ghz on an abit ip35pro and patriot ddr2 800 ram. if your multiplier is locked, just up the fsb slowly until the system becomes unstable. once it does, you can then start increasing the cpu voltage. eventually, you'll reach a point where no matter how much cpu voltage you feed into the cpu, the system is always unstable.

 

[dukebound85]

what motherboard/ram do you have? i have a q6600 running at 8x462 = 3.7ghz. if your multiplier is locked, just up the fsb slowly until the system becomes unstable. once it does, you can then start increasing the cpu voltage. eventually, you'll reach a point where no matter how much cpu voltage you feed into the cpu, the system is always unstable.

i have the gigabythe ds3l board with

mushkin 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual
Channel Kit Desktop Memory Ram

is yours oc'd with stock cooling? is there any risk to hurting system? or will the chip shut itself down before it frys?


edit: it is also g0 stepping not b3

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

no i do not have stock cooling. however, you should be able to hit 3.2ghz on stock cooling just fine (I was able to hit that speed on stock cooling), especially since it's a b0 stepping (i also have b0 stepping). there is always risks with overclocking. personally, i've never fried a chip before and i've done a ton of overclocking. however, since you're new to it, i'd just take it slowly and do the things i mentioned in my post above. if you want to research more on it, there are lots of overclocking forums out there. that gigabyte motherboard you have should be a fairly decent overclocker though.

 

[dukebound85]

no i do not have stock cooling. however, you should be able to hit 3.2ghz on stock cooling just fine (I was able to hit that speed on stock cooling), especially since it's a b0 stepping (i also have b0 stepping). there is always risks with overclocking. personally, i've never fried a chip before and i've done a ton of overclocking. however, since you're new to it, i'd just take it slowly and do the things i mentioned in my post above. if you want to research more on it, there are lots of overclocking forums out there. that gigabyte motherboard you have should be a fairly decent overclocker though.

you think 9 x 300 or 9 x 333 would be safe to do?

also, is that the only thing i have to change in bios?

thanks for the help man, its all intimidating at first

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

the best thing to do if you don't know what fsb to configure in your bios is to increase by increments of 5-10fsb until the system becomes unstable. to be safe, i'd start at 9x300 and see if it'll boot after you restart. i'm pretty confident that it will since that's way below what these chips are capable of, but it's a great starting point. if the system is able to start up at that fsb, increase the fsb by 10 and then repeat. also, watch your cpu temperatures from within the bios. if it starts hitting 65-70C, i would probably ease it up a bit and wait until you can get some better cooling.

 

[dukebound85]

the best thing to do if you don't know what fsb to configure in your bios is to increase by increments of 5-10fsb until the system becomes unstable. to be safe, i'd start at 9x300 and see if it'll boot after you restart. i'm pretty confident that it will since that's way below what these chips are capable of, but it's a great starting point. if the system is able to start up at that fsb, increase the fsb by 10 and then repeat. also, watch your cpu temperatures from within the bios. if it starts hitting 65-70C, i would probably ease it up a bit and wait until you can get some better cooling.

how would you test the chip to make sure its stable? even if it boots up?

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

when i'm looking for a ballpark figure of the threshold of my cpu, i usually just make sure that the computer is able to restart and go back into the bios. if the computer becomes extremely unstable, it won't even make it this far. you can go as far as letting your computer boot all the way into windows, but remember that you'll be doing this every time you change the fsb. to me, this is a real time waster if i'm just trying to find the ballpark range, so i just make sure it is able to restart and get back into the bios so that i can keep increasing that fsb.

once you have a general idea of how high you can push the fsb, this is where you start fine tuning it. now, instead of raising it by increments of 10, you'll be raising by increments of 1-3 fsb at a time and making sure that it can in fact boot in windows. not only that, you want to make sure that the computer is stable in windows. to do this, i usually run some type of burn in software that puts my cpu and ram at 100% load. if that burn in software is able to run for a couple of hours with no errors (such as random reboots, bsods, etc.), then i go back into the bios and see if i can raise the fsb any more.

 

[dukebound85]

i tried 9 x 300 and the comp kept restarting on me but was able to get into bios. i then set it at 9 x 290 and its loading up windows

is this normal, wonder why it didnt let me do 9 x 300? i mean it didnt raise voltage at all

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

hmm when it was on default, what was the fsb? also, what is your cpu voltage right now? it's really strange to be hitting a barrier already. i mean, 9x290 is only 2.6ghz. the q6600 runs at 2.4ghz stock, so 200mhz over shouldn't be making the system unstable. i would check to see what your cpu temps are right now.

 

[dukebound85]

hmm when it was on default, what was the fsb? also, what is your cpu voltage right now? it's really strange to be hitting a barrier already. i mean, 9x290 is only 2.6ghz. the q6600 runs at 2.4ghz stock, so 200mhz over shouldn't be making the system unstable. i would check to see what your cpu temps are right now.

well running prime95 i get temps of 60-67 C per core. settled to about 65 for max though now

are those high temps? i mean ive seen my mb hit 90C under 100% load. i see the tj max is 100 though for this chip

the voltage now is the same as stock which is 1.2125v

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

your temperatures are fine. what i'd do is just do a quick google search using your motherboard and cpu to see what settings other people have. that board is fairly popular, so i don't think you'll have any trouble finding results. it will give you a good idea of what settings to put cpu voltage at. on my board, i had no problem upping the fsb on the stock vcore, which was about 1.2XXX. if i were doing the oc right now, i'd set the fsb back to 300 and then up the cpu voltage slightly to see if it will boot into windows. however, i highly suggest you do some research before messing with the cpu voltage. those settings can toast your cpu if you set it too high.

 

[dukebound85]

your temperatures are fine. what i'd do is just do a quick google search using your motherboard and cpu to see what settings other people have. that board is fairly popular, so i don't think you'll have any trouble finding results. it will give you a good idea of what settings to put cpu voltage at. on my board, i had no problem upping the fsb on the stock vcore, which was about 1.2XXX. if i were doing the oc right now, i'd set the fsb back to 300 and then up the cpu voltage slightly to see if it will boot into windows. however, i highly suggest you do some research before messing with the cpu voltage. those settings can toast your cpu if you set it too high.

just curious, at what temp under load would you deem too high?

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

a lot of overclockers will tell you to try to keep the cpu under 40C on idle and under 55C on full load. that is a good reference to keep in mind, but these cpus were designed to run at much higher temperatures. for me, if i can keep the cpu under 65C on idle and under 70C on full load, i am happy. however, it's always better to keep the CPU as cool as possible. if you can reach 55C under load, that's great, but don't be too worried if you're seeing 60-65C under full load.

 

[dukebound85]

lol vista just logged me off when running prime95. i take that as a crash right?

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

was it a log off or a random restart? random restart would be a crash.

anyways, just keep playing with your fsb and tinker with the cpu voltage if you're brave enough. there is no set guidelines for overclocking since everyones' computer is slightly different (even with the same hardware). you'll be doing a lot of trial and error/rebooting/stress testing and can easily waste away hours/days. it took me about a week or two to get my computer 100% stable at my current settings. i'm really surprised that you're hitting a barrier so quickly though. these chips are known to hit 3.2ghz on stock cooling, so something else is going on here that we don't know about. i would check out those overclocking forums because there is a ton of info. on this kind of stuff. good luck with everything and i'll check back tomorrow to see if you need any more advice.

 

[dukebound85]

it was a log off. this mean it wasnt due to instability?

thanks for all your help. its been very useful!

 

[MacUser2525]

well running prime95 i get temps of 60-67 C per core. settled to about 65 for max though now

are those high temps? i mean ive seen my mb hit 90C under 100% load. i see the tj max is 100 though for this chip

the voltage now is the same as stock which is 1.2125v

I have the same board, CPU and stock VID as your mine runs at 3150mhz (9x350). You may want to try setting the ram multiplier to 2x to make sure it is not being over clocked too much that can cause some instability and setting the pci-e to 100mhz from auto to make sure the bus does not get out of whack can help as well. Also make sure you have the speedstep turned off that screwed up my over clock, the TM2 is a must have to keep on as it is what protects you with the high temps shutdown and if you want you can leave the C1E enabled to cut the processor speed and voltage when the chip can to save on heat if you change to a different multiplier or set the CPU voltage to anything but normal this will not work anymore so if you do these things disable it. You may want to increase the voltage on the ram though because the normal setting only runs the modules at 1.8v with most name brand higher end ram these are usually 2.0v or better so if yours specifies 2.0v then add a +.2v in its settings up from the "normal" setting and sometimes an extra .1 or .2v on the MCH and FSB will get you a stable overclock. That is about all I can think off here at the moment good luck.

 

[dukebound85]

are you using stock cooler?

 

[MacUser2525]

are you using stock cooler?

No I have a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme for the cooler it keeps the processor in the low to mid 30's C under full load on all cores usually less than 50C, this in a Cooler Master Stacker case with a couple of 120mm fans at the back and one in the front..

 

[dukebound85]

well i got it to get to 2.84ghz and ran prime95 for 8hrs with no errors

max temps reached was 67C but was around 63-65 majority of time

this was with stock voltage at 1.2125V and i had the ram at +.1v

any ideas ho to achieve 3ghz and have it be stable?

i ran at 3 but after like 5 min, one of the cores keeps "misfiring" ending the prime 95 test on that core (the rest were still working)

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

what is the stock ram voltage in the bios? if you can set it to 2.0, set it at that voltage. if you look at the specs of your ram, it should say that it is capable of running at 2.0v

 

[wk127001]

I had my Q6600 running at 3.6GHz (water cooling here) supposedly prime95 stable, but certain things in windows vista for whatever reason would not open or work at all until I brought it down to 3.2GHz. At 3.2 though mine is a very happy camper. The only way to overclock it is by upping the FSB which probably every one else has touched on here.

 

[dukebound85]

what is the stock ram voltage in the bios? if you can set it to 2.0, set it at that voltage. if you look at the specs of your ram, it should say that it is capable of running at 2.0v

you think that would make 3ghz more of a possibility with stock cooling?

 

[MacUser2525]

you think that would make 3ghz more of a possibility with stock cooling?

There is a good chance it could especially if you have not dropped the ram multiplier to 2x as with the auto setting you will be overclocking the ram which may require more voltage to run stable. You should really give us a run down of all the settings you are using each time so we can see how you are trying to do this.