Baby's First OC (With Voltage Questions)

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Averhoeven

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Apr 24, 2007
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Just did my first OC. The FSB is at 1600 right now (wouldn't boot at 1640 and I figured 3.6ghz was a pretty solid OC and all I need/want). I've run Orthos so far (chugging along right now) without probs. Vista core multimeter monitor shows 100% on both cores and between 95% and 99% on the RAM.

Ran Orthos ran for 30 minutes at these settings and after about 20 mins was seeing temps around 70C (70CPU/66Core0/66Core1 was the highest it registered). Is it time to go seeing whether I can drop the voltage (currently at 1.45) or should I lower the clock to drop the temps first? I initially raised the Core to 1.45V, the FSB to 1.5V and the nForce SPP to 1.5V as was recommended in a guide I saw. Which of these should I be dropping/focusing on until I reach a minimum stable point? Which is most important for temps/stability?

In case it matters, once everythis is set and stable it will be a gaming machine. My goal is not to keep pushing it, I just want it at a nice OC (that's why I bought the Tuniq) that is stable and pushes my games as well as this setup reasonably can.

System:
E6600 with a Tuniq Tower 120
eVGA 680i
eVGA 8800GTX (doubt I'll toy with this)
Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 at 4-4-4-12 T2 (haven't played with this at all yet, probably won't)
Corsair HX620 PSU

***Just adding in the other settings I modified in case anybody feels the urge to double check it since this is my 1st time OCing. Also, any things to check would be good.
CPU Thermal Control: Disabled
C1E Enhanced Holt State: Disabled
Intel Speedstep: Disabled
CPU Speed Spectrum: Disabled
HT Spread Spectrum: Disabled
PCIe Spread Spectrum (SPP and MCP): Disabled
SATA Spread Spectrum: Disabled
 
3.6 at 1.45v is pretty impressive with a new cpu. I wouldn't drop the volts unless it's Orthos stable for like 5 hours though.
 
Should I be worried about those temps? They seemed to peak at about 20-30 mins in where they were consistently around 70C. Now that Orthos has been running for an hour they seem to be steady at about 63C. I'm assuming they'll go down once the thermal paste has settled in a bit (the PC was just finished the other day).
Also, when/if I start toy drop the voltages, which of those 3 should I be dropping (or do I drop them together)?
 
If you're Orthos stable at 3600 MHz at 1.45 volts you can try to reduce voltage but you're not likely going to be able to drop voltage and maintain Orthos stability. If you are Orthos stable with less than 1.45 volts at this speed then tell us where you bought your cpu so we can all go buy one. :D

If you can keep your core temp at 70C or under you'll never have a temperature related problem. I was running my E6400 at over 80C last week while maintaining Orthos stability so you still have some head room to go.

Also keep in mind that Orthos loads your cores more than any other real world application so if you're Orthos stable, you'll be fine with your present temps, especially for gaming. The majority of games are single threaded so running them is a joke compared to running Orthos.

How much TIM did you use and how did you apply it? Optimizing what you've got might get your temps down another degree or two.

I wouldn't drop any of your voltages. You've got a good overclock so why f*@k it up.
 
Thanks for the advice on the voltages. Like I said, 1st time doing this so I don't know what to expect. If that's a pretty good run, I'll keep them there.

Temps: I think I probably applied too much (used the stereotypical Arctic Silver 5) looking back at it because the initial application didn't see to cover the chip underneath the Tuniq so I added more. If it's only going to make a 1-2C difference, I really don't want to go through the trouble of taking everything apart to redo it. Almost an hour and a half into Orthos now and it seems to be sitting at 65ish. All my fans (4x120s) are on low right now too (part of the plan, I thought I'd get something that was decent even on the low fans so that I can crank them if need be).
My only curiosity is, my temps seem to be in the same range as the stock HSF according to this Anand review of the Tuniq ( http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2906&p=5 ) and nowhere near their Tuniq for the similar clock.

**Ok, just turned the fans in the case up to the medium setting (3 settings on them) and I haven't seen the temps go over 60C (and sticking around 55C) for the last 30mins and it's still almost dead silent. I'm happy with that!

Strange happening though. EVERYTHING (Orthos, SpeedFan, Vista, etc) reads my OC as 3.6ghz except for CPU-Z. It read it as 3.2 because it has an 8.0 multiplier instead of the 9. I never dropped the multiplier when playing with the BIOS and everything else is reading it as I set it up (9x400). Chalk it up to some strangeness/Vista incompatibility for CPU-Z?
 
Wow, I feel retarded......
Apparently CPU-Z was right and my multiplier HAD been dropped. I didn't do it, so I don't know exactly when it decided to drop, but I've knocked it back up. As of right now sitting at about 3.4ghz (which I'm still happy with). I just feel like I wasted a bunch of time testing the stability of the previous setting cause everything else told me it was 3.6 and I was all excited. Oh well.... back to toying I guess.
 
Just about the same here Averhoeven, but using 1.38v for the CPU, but made sure the C1E Enhanced Holt state was disabled, checked cpu-z each o/c so that the multiplier did not change from x9 to x6 as I have seen it do, and got 3.4 ghz, but 3DMarks06 would not finish, and locked up each time I tried.

Wonder if upping the voltage would help with 3DMarks or not. Did not go higher than 1.38v, but will give it a go later.


VelocityMicro Gamers Edge

680i SLI
P-25 bios
E6600 2.4 ghz @ 3.4 ghz
4 Gigs Corsair Dominators DDR2-8500 C5D 4-4-4-12 2T
Vista Premium 64 bit OS
WD 250 Hrd Drv 16 mb cache
8800 GTX
 
Averhoeven said:
My only curiosity is, my temps seem to be in the same range as the stock HSF according to this Anand review of the Tuniq ( http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2906&p=5 ) and nowhere near their Tuniq for the similar clock.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind these temps were collected during a FarCry demo run, not Orthos. Orthos will push the temps much higher...higher than just about anything you would ever do in the "real world" (like gaming). Orthos load in the 70's should be fine, since again, you'll probably never use the cpu as much as Orthos does.

Averhoeven said:
Strange happening though. EVERYTHING (Orthos, SpeedFan, Vista, etc) reads my OC as 3.6ghz except for CPU-Z. It read it as 3.2 because it has an 8.0 multiplier instead of the 9. I never dropped the multiplier when playing with the BIOS and everything else is reading it as I set it up (9x400). Chalk it up to some strangeness/Vista incompatibility for CPU-Z?
Click to expand...

Make sure EIST and C1E are both disabled in the BIOS...it appears one/both may be enabled, and it'll drop your mutli when you aren't under load.
 
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