Finally stable, but not happy. Suggestions?

[WCES Ryan]

After trying to get a stable overclock for about a week now, my system finally ran prime for 8 hours last night at 2400mhz (240x10). However I'm not really happy with that number, I've seen the same CPU/stepping as mine hitting 2600mhz no problem. In my initial testing, I got my CPU to hit 2.8ghz, but it isn't prime stable at all at 2500 or 2600mhz. I'd give it a bit more voltage but I don't wnat my load temps to get much higher, I'm trying to account for an increase of 5c for summer.

Could it possibly be that my system doesn't like running at a higher FSB? When I tried at 2500 and 2600mhz, the CPU was at 295 and 306 with an 8.5 multi. Could it also maybe be that I'm using an uneven multiplier? That's what somebody else mentioned.

What could I try to get my system stable at a higher speed?

 

[Terr0r]

dude i have a ccbwe 0530 tpmw, the supposed best chip out there, and i can barely get 2700 at 1.45, when people get that at stock cooling and like 2.8/2.9 at 1.4

i mean yeah it sucks that you can only get 2.4/2.5, but youre not the only one that got a dud chip

 

[WCES Ryan]

You may be right that I got a dud, and I've considered the same thing, but I'd like to figure that if I can run at 2800 for 30 seconds or a minute or however long I tested it at that speed, then I should be able to get at least 2500mhz prime stable

 

[Logan321]

1/2 point multipliers are the devil. Try it at 10x 150, 155, and 160, with a ram divider of 2/3 to eliminate that as a hinderance to overclocking. You are reducing the HTT to 3x once you are past 250FSB right?

How much are you increasing the voltage past stock? Generally .2-.25 is about as high as you want to go, but less is better, as long as it'll run stable.

If you're not running memtest86 before booting the overclocked memory into windows, you should... just run test5 through to the end, it'll either generate errors or it won't... best test for serious memory errors... the kind that hose your OS install.