Gigabyte P965-P35 X38 overclocking and BIOS tweaking Guide

Hey Bill,just joined but I've been a lurker for atleast a year :) Just wanted to say a big thank you for your awesome guide which got me through my first ever overclock of a E6600 @ 3.2Ghz :)

Oh and a quick question,does this guide also apply for the new Wolfdale cores,like E8400? I guess it does mostly (not totally) but I just want to make sure ;)
 
Hey there Bill - well, we started working this issue in November, seemed to get a fix and now it is BACK with a vengence.

BSOD or total freeze up after boot up. It may take anywhere from 5-20 minutes to happen but when it does, thats all you get.

We worked extensively on Bios settings which helped a lot (thank you). But for some reason this problem has resurfaced with little to no change in computer settings.

I am stumped.

I bought new ram to swap out with (same specs as old stuff listed in signature) and that didnt do anything.

Only two components not swapped out - MoBo and Processor.

I have another comptuer identical to this one (newer rev. on MoBo) with same components.

Maybe I should swap parts around until we identify the problem?

Any ideas on this tough one?

Thank you!
 
cytech said:
any Idea if there is a way to read the NB sensor? i can't find any info from gigabyte :'(
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You didn't specify a motherboard model, but it probably does not have a NB sensor. What I did to read the NB temp was to buy a thermometer probe (Scythe Kama mini-thermo off of Newegg) and put the sensor between the fins of the NB when the PC was powered down. Then I could monitor the temp readings while stress testing.
 
q66003ghz.jpg

Running 3Ghz for a while to ensure stability on my 965P DQ6. I'm using Buffalo Firestix DDR 800 ($250 ram 1 year ago)
Thanks for the help Bill!
 
Hey, I got a Q. I have a E6600 and the DS3. I want to OC to 3.0 Ghz, means getting the FSB from 266Mhz to 333Mhz, and a DDR2 800Mhz mem. Now my Q is why do you write in the guide that one needs to change the PCI Express frequency to 102 instead of the auto value? I mean I always hear not to touch that option. Also why do you write to change the DDR2 overvoltage control to +0.3 , PCIE, FSB and (G)MCH overvoltage control to +0.1? I mean do I realy need to cange them? you mean only in a high OC (which 266 to 333 isn't high I guess)? cuz it's more heat so why do I need to do that? sry, I'm abit new to OCing. Thanks!
 
Teh Lurv said:
You didn't specify a motherboard model, but it probably does not have a NB sensor. What I did to read the NB temp was to buy a thermometer probe (Scythe Kama mini-thermo off of Newegg) and put the sensor between the fins of the NB when the PC was powered down. Then I could monitor the temp readings while stress testing.
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cytech said:
Hi Bill,

but do you know a way of reading out the Northbridge temp on the ds3?
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and yes it has one, many people have seen it in bios, but after the first reboot it vanishes, also speed fan picks up a third sensor but it either reads 127° or -2° depending if you set it to diode or thermistor.
 
Sygon said:
Hey, I got a Q. I have a E6600 and the DS3. I want to OC to 3.0 Ghz, means getting the FSB from 266Mhz to 333Mhz, and a DDR2 800Mhz mem. Now my Q is why do you write in the guide that one needs to change the PCI Express frequency to 102 instead of the auto value? I mean I always hear not to touch that option. Also why do you write to change the DDR2 overvoltage control to +0.3 , PCIE, FSB and (G)MCH overvoltage control to +0.1? I mean do I realy need to cange them? you mean only in a high OC (which 266 to 333 isn't high I guess)? cuz it's more heat so why do I need to do that? sry, I'm abit new to OCing. Thanks!
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Can anyone answer me plz?
 
At least the DDR2 voltage should be set,if you have RAM rated at eg 2.1v or even 2.2v.As for the rest,for that kind of mild OC it is possible you won't have to up any of the other voltages but that depends on each case.So you just try first with no overvoltage,check if it's stable and then go up until you get stability,that's the way it works
 
OK, so I'm sticking with the auto at the PCI E frequency and no overvoltages
 
cytech said:
and yes it has one, many people have seen it in bios, but after the first reboot it vanishes, also speed fan picks up a third sensor but it either reads 127° or -2° depending if you set it to diode or thermistor.
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If you get junk readings, then there probably isn't a physical sensor attached.
 
Sygon said:
OK, so I'm sticking with the auto at the PCI E frequency and no overvoltages
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I would set the PCI-E frequency to 100mhz (the default speed.) The reason the guide instructs people to set to 102 was because some boards would creep the PCI-E frequency up along with the FSB. Setting it to a hard number prevented this from occurring.

The recommended overvoltages in the guide are for extra stability when you start overclocking. Once you get your PC to an OC you are stable at, you'd want to start backing off the voltages one at a time looking for instability. At the end, your OC would be running with the minimal amount of overvoltages needed to make it stable.
 
Teh Lurv said:
I would set the PCI-E frequency to 100mhz (the default speed.) The reason the guide instructs people to set to 102 was because some boards would creep the PCI-E frequency up along with the FSB. Setting it to a hard number prevented this from occurring.

The recommended overvoltages in the guide are for extra stability when you start overclocking. Once you get your PC to an OC you are stable at, you'd want to start backing off the voltages one at a time looking for instability. At the end, your OC would be running with the minimal amount of overvoltages needed to make it stable.
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Does the DS3 raise the PCI-E frequency along the FSB when one OCs it? I also understand that's bad cuz it can jam. ok so if you say that right now my "auto value" actualy equels "100" then I'll change it hard to "100". I'll also start with no overvoltages what so ever (not including the CPU afcourse). Thanks!
 
Sygon said:
Hey, I got a Q. I have a E6600 and the DS3. I want to OC to 3.0 Ghz, means getting the FSB from 266Mhz to 333Mhz, and a DDR2 800Mhz mem. Now my Q is why do you write in the guide that one needs to change the PCI Express frequency to 102 instead of the auto value? I mean I always hear not to touch that option. Also why do you write to change the DDR2 overvoltage control to +0.3 , PCIE, FSB and (G)MCH overvoltage control to +0.1? I mean do I realy need to cange them? you mean only in a high OC (which 266 to 333 isn't high I guess)? cuz it's more heat so why do I need to do that? sry, I'm abit new to OCing. Thanks!
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On some of these gigabyte boards when heavily overclocked they change your PCI-E bus from 16x down to something lower!! (for me 1x!!!) raising the PCI-E frequency to 102 fixed this and such a little frequency increase is no problems for your gpu.

The DDR2 change is dependant on your RAM!! Look up your RAM voltages to set this properly. As for the others the very small increase of +0.1 volts is just for stability as already mentioned. If you don't do this and you see blue screens when under load put these at +0.1 as suggested by Bill ;)
 
Ok, hope it'll be ok. Thanks!
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It will be, the PCI-e buss increase to 102 is probably no longer needed. I explain why I put that in several places in this monster post but if I dont want to find it I doubt you would want to either. Back in the bad old days of the first P965 boards it would sometimes help with issues. Those issues no longer exist. However it will not hurt anything and actually provide a very tiny boost to video performance. The voltage recommendations however are a different story, they should be initially set as I have indicated and even more voltage may be needed for high FSB overclocking.

1) I never recommend any voltages that even come close to the Intel datasheet max limits.
2) it has been proven, over and over, that the minor increases I suggest are an excellent aid to stability even for boards that are not overclocked.

Also why do you write to change the DDR2 overvoltage control to +0.3 ,
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er, read a little more, carefully please. I clearly state that you should set YOUR memory voltage to the specifications published by YOUR memory manufacturer for YOUR SPECIFIC memory. I then said/show how with my Corsair XMS memory that the recommended high performance voltage is 2.1V (max) and how +.3 added to the default 1.8 gives me 2.1V.
I spent a ton of time being very careful in what I wrote, how I wrote it and making sure it was accurate both by documentation and testing on my board. Read it all, at least the first few critical posts, they are easy to pick out, avoid skimming or you can damage you stuff. This post is NOT a "set your settings like this" post. I explain what the setting do and why they are set the way they are with examples and links to more information in most cases and recommendations. The settings I give are a starting point for a base setup that should ensure a mild OC with rock solid stability. Much more work and experimentation is required to tweak a board for bleeding edge performance. All of this is fully explained in the primary posts at the start of this thread.

That said, have fun, go slow, stop and find out if you dont understand something that is going on with your board and you should get great results. If you run into a problem or have another question I (or one of the many capable people that hang aound here) will be happy to help. Sorry I got busy recently and have not been monitoring the post the way I should have.
 
No current Intel Northbridge makes the internal core temp available to outside software or other system components. It does track it internally and there are several signal lines for automatic shutdown and for signaling that additional cooling is needed but the actual temp measurement is, for now, locked inside the chip. You can verify this yourself by reading the MCH datasheet for your MCH at Intel.com. You will find no pins or registers that provide the actual MCH core temp to anything outside the chip, it is kept track of internally but we cant get to it. IMO dumb as dirt.

hmm have not read the data sheet for the x48 but I doubt they have changed it, been wrong before.
 
First, I have done a little OC'ing in the past, but it's been a while... so not much of my experience applies.

Currently I have a gigabyte DS3L, q6600, 4x1gig ram(1066), and an 8800gt. I followed the instructions at the beginning of this thread up to the point where the settings on the board are maxed out without overclocking. After I saved the bios config and rebooted, my pc came back up as expected. After poking around a little, I noticed Core Temp was only showing three temperature icons in the system tray. Task manager was only showing three CPU's as well. Not sure what caused my 'quad-core' to be a 'tri-core' but all was back to normal after I reset the bios settings to the 'optimal defaults'.

Anyone have any idea what would have caused this? Anyone have a similar experience? All responses are appreciated!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread so far - it has been a fantastic source of information for me.


Rob
 
rorichmond said:
After poking around a little, I noticed Core Temp was only showing three temperature icons in the system tray. Task manager was only showing three CPU's as well. Not sure what caused my 'quad-core' to be a 'tri-core' but all was back to normal after I reset the bios settings to the 'optimal defaults'.


Rob
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Presumably you're running the latest bios, and that you have installed the latest intel drivers?
 
rorichmond said:
First, I have done a little OC'ing in the past, but it's been a while... so not much of my experience applies.

Currently I have a gigabyte DS3L, q6600, 4x1gig ram(1066), and an 8800gt. I followed the instructions at the beginning of this thread up to the point where the settings on the board are maxed out without overclocking. After I saved the bios config and rebooted, my pc came back up as expected. After poking around a little, I noticed Core Temp was only showing three temperature icons in the system tray. Task manager was only showing three CPU's as well. Not sure what caused my 'quad-core' to be a 'tri-core' but all was back to normal after I reset the bios settings to the 'optimal defaults'.

Anyone have any idea what would have caused this? Anyone have a similar experience? All responses are appreciated!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread so far - it has been a fantastic source of information for me.


Rob
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I have heard of a core shutting down due to high temps. with the factory settings what kind of temps are you getting and what heatsink are you using ? The "base" settings should not be causing this to happen unless maybe the cpu voltage is set a little high.

Try redoing the base settings but leave the cpu voltage at default (auto) and see if anything changes. Thats the only setting in my base setup that I can think of that could cause what you are describing other than a heat issue.
 
With the standard settings, it's idling at around 39 degrees, 48 after a few hours of playing Crysis. :)

When I booted and noticed it had only three cores, the three that were up were running around 46/47 degrees - nothing high at all.

I have the stock heatsink on it right now. Been doing some research and trying to decide which aftermarket replacement would be best... I am only looking for ~3 or 3.2 ghz out of the q6600, and from what I have read it shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks Bill - I'll try your suggestion and post back with my results.


Rob
 
Well I got it working.... I couldn't find a way to set the cpu voltage back to auto without setting all the voltages back to auto, so I set the cpu voltage back to the default (1.2875). No dice - still only three cores.

I poked around for a few and had an inclination to try something. In the list at the beginning of this thread, there is a setting referred to as "CPU Hyper-Threading", but in my BIOS, it is called "CPU Multi-Threading". I enabled that, and booted back up with all 4 cores present and accounted for.

This seems odd to me, but I am not versed in this area enough to form a solid theory...

Also, all cores seem to be running about a degree or so cooler with these settings. Interesting, but I ain't complaining.

I'll keep you updated on my progress...

Thanks again,

Rob
 
I tried the settings in the "instant gratifications" section (7x multiplier, 2.5 mem div, 400 fsb) but couldn't boot into windows. I tried some other settings (9x multiplier, 2.5 mem div, 300 fsb). and the machine booted just fine, but runs a touch on the hot side. Ran orthos and it hit 64 degrees in 2:36.

I changed the cpu voltage from the default to 1.3750 in the initial config. I may try seeing how low I can drop that (while remaining stable) to lower that temp a little...
 
I'll join the chorus of cheers and thank you personally for opening this thread. Helped me immensly on my 2nd OC (well, my first was a Pentium 166 to 200mhz ...wasn't stable so I set it back). Built a bunch of systems since but no OC until now. Was easy with your info.

Thanks again!
 
supergrover said:
I'll join the chorus of cheers and thank you personally for opening this thread. Helped me immensly on my 2nd OC (well, my first was a Pentium 166 to 200mhz ...wasn't stable so I set it back). Built a bunch of systems since but no OC until now. Was easy with your info.

Thanks again!
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You are very welcome.
(And a little bump before we get buried too far. )
 
I recently bought this setup... "GIGABYTE GA-EX38-DS4 Intel X38 / G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) / Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz 65W."

Does the OP guide still pertain to me, in this month and year? Because I see it is quite old... Relatively speaking with how fast technology moves along...

If I follow this guide to the T with my new setup am I going to be safe? or will I blow up my new $750.00 investment =) (side note - It wasn't $750.00 just for those 3 parts... I got other things as well, for you who would love to tell me I got ripped off for paying that much for those 3 things so I dont have to explain later =D.)
 
Yes it is perfectly accurate. Gigabyte has done little to the bios since this was written, as explained on the first page there might be a few items not listed that you find in your bios but your manual and a little internet digging would provide any answers you need or ask here.

The starting bios settings recommendations are still valid and very conservative. They are just a stable base setup to START to OC and contain nothing that would harm any current Gigabyte board or Intel processor.

However as stated in the write up, the best computer at hand is your brain, use your manual with its bios settings descriptions etc. and follow along as you go through setting the values. If you see something that does not appear correct or have questions, stop and figure it out or post a question.
 
Ok, sorry for miss informing you here. But last moment I went with a different MB I got the GIGABYTE GA-EX48-DS4 Intel X48 at the last moment... If I'm understanding what you are saying (sorry its 3am my only time without the woman breathing down my neck hah) then it doesnt matter what model I have, the "TIPS" you provide of which features to turn on or off are still valid, despite my model type?
 
BizzzIMO said:
Ok, sorry for miss informing you here. But last moment I went with a different MB I got the GIGABYTE GA-EX48-DS4 Intel X48 at the last moment... If I'm understanding what you are saying (sorry its 3am my only time without the woman breathing down my neck hah) then it doesnt matter what model I have, the "TIPS" you provide of which features to turn on or off are still valid, despite my model type?
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Yeppers. I am going to download the manual for the X48 and take a look myself but the guide should still apply to the vast majority of settings.


Actually, anything not explained in this quide, can be found here, a good write up of the Gigbyte X48 bios and what the advanced settings do/affect. No sense in me rehashing the same thing.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3190&p=11
 
Quick question...why is it that everytime I try to edit my multiplier or FSB, it never stays how I put it; it always reverts back to its stock (9x266)?
 
NASTY_LOS said:
Quick question...why is it that every time I try to edit my multiplier or FSB, it never stays how I put it; it always reverts back to its stock (9x266)?
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I know you posted before but I cant remember the details and I am too lazy to look. So forgive me if you have already done the procedure below etc. and remember you might be an expert but all my replies in general are meant for a wide audience that may not have your level of expertise so please do not feel insulted if I over explain or suggest obvious things. I am just trying (I usually fail :eek:) to make the reply useful to anyone who might have a similar problem and finds this post.

The board should not be doing that. One of the things these boards (and most boards today) do during Power On Self Test (POST) when it first boots or does a reset is that it checks itself to make sure it can run stable with the settings in the bios. This is not a perfect science and the quality of this self check varies and certainly is not perfect. The idea is that if you set incorrect parameters that cause the board to not be able to start up, it will reset its bios settings so that it can. This prevents you having to clear the bios settings with the jumper or removing the battery. Thats the general idea as I understand it.

Your multiplier should be able to be set from whatever the stock value is downwards to 6, you cannot raise it above stock and you cannot go below 6. (Well unless you have the high priced extreme chip version).

The FSB needs to be adjusted in small increments until you know what the board can do and as you adjust the FSB you also raise the frequency the memory is operating at and if the memory cannot take it, it will reset during power up.

So there are a lot of things that could be the cause, I would need to know your bios settings under the MIT menu, all of them, and hardware you are using, in particular the memory specs, to take a detailed look and provide a better answer.

So, without more data, as a first guess, something is not set right in the bios or there is some issue that will not allow you to OC. It could be as simple as the stock heatsink push pins not seated well and the CPU causing a reset to some memory sub-timing you accidentally changed.

1) In the bios reset the bios settings to "restore factory defaults" (or whatever is close to that, I forget exactly what the wording is). Find the bios setting and disable the "Full Screen logo" so you can see what happens as it boots. Back out to main screen and "Save and Exit" the settings

2) The machine should reboot. Everything should be stock when you boot back. ( I personally would boot into a copy of memtest86+ burnt onto a CD, its faster than booting into windows and if you have to reset or the board crashes it cannot trash your windows installation, and if no problems found you can run the first few tests to check the machine/memory is OK. )

3) OK, now shutdown and on restart go back into the bios.

4) at the main bios screen hit the Ctrl and the F1 keys at the same time (CTRL+F1) it will appear as if nothing happened but the MIT menu will now have additional advanced settings.

5) go into the MIT menu and reduce the multiplier by one, whatever number is there now, subtract one from it and enter it in.

6) set the "CPU Frequency Control" (or whatever it is called) to "Manual"

7) add 3 to the FSB, what ever number is there, add 3 to it, if 266 type in 269 etc. or in this case I would add 4 so it was 300 to make the math easy. if 333 I would add 2 , just add some small amount .

7a) make sure the memory mulitplier is set to 2.0
7b) make sure memory performance is set to "Normal"

8) back out to the main menu and "save and exit" and the machine should reboot and now the machine should tell you (it goes by fast, you can hit the "Pause" key to freeze it during boot, and the Control + s (CTRL+s) to resume the boot process.) it is running at
the speed you set (CPU multiplier x FSB) with the speed sometimes being a little off due to rounding of the numbers. Since you reduced the CPU multiplier it should be running well below stock speed. The point is however it verify your bios changes are being correctly saved.

If the above procedure works, I would then have to think that there is something wrong with the installation or with the bios settings the board does not like and needs to be tracked down and fixed to prevent itself from resetting.

If the above procedure does not work I would be leaning toward an RMA after you double checked temps and heatsink mounting.

REMOVE ALL EXTERNAL USB DEVICES except a USB mouse and/or USB Keyboard. These have been shown to cause problems, external USB drive, MP3 player, web cam, yada yada yada, anything/everything USB should be disconnected other than a mouse or keyboard.

Let me know what happened.
 
No clue here, hopefully someone will answer that has tried it. Think with my version 1.0 board I am SOL anyway.

( I am going cheap and banging in a Q6600 and then hold out until the Nethalms become affordable next summer)

I think you have already looked based on your "un-officially" pun. :D

But for those who have not visited Gigabyte lately the rev 2 and rev 3 versions of the P965-DQ6 have a beta bios out that is susposed to support the 45nm cpus. - un-officially.

Enable 45nm CPU with non official support, due to Intel having no official guarantee for 45nm CPUs on non-3 series chipsets
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Here is a guy (middle of thread) that claims to have one working on a version 1 !!! (wonder what he used for a bios as the beta for 45nm was not listed for ver 1 only vers 2 and 3. )
http://www.tipidpc.com/viewtopic.php?tid=148064


I find several cases of dual core 45nm working if I google "P965 DQ6 45nm" but no quads but the one case above and I got tired of looking. Sorry.

Might want to make a new post to get better visibility to the question.
 
this thread has been a huge help at figuring out how to overclock my E6400 on a 965P-DS3. Until I found this thread a while back, I had looked and looked for a good guide but everything I found was only very general and really didn't go into specifics. Its like most things you find are intended more to keep you in the dark so that you don't really understand how to make overclocking work rather than explaining specifically what to do.

My E6400 runs prime95 stable at 3.2ghz with 1.3825v with +2 on both the fsb and mch
 
I see all the stats for 6 series and lower, but where is the OC info for my e8400. I'm trying to get my OC set up and this guide is working great. Im sure its in the 15 pages here ATM but right now i have a headache and can't look through them all. Thanks in advance for whoever links me to the right place, me love you long time
 
I stopped updating with the flood of new Intel CPUs, seems every time I got some added more were on the way.

e8400.

Still the general advice is still good.

1) dont just bang in the higher numbers, I have discovered the Gigabytes "behave" a lot better if you "sneak up" on the final OC. I think that this is because during reboot they sense/calculate a lot of things we do not see in the bios.

2) keep Vcore under 1.4V reports of the 45nm cpus degrading with high Vcore.

stock is 333 x 9

Basically its pretty simple.
set the bios to boot from a CD first.
set the CPU mulitplier to 8
manually set the FSB to 333 (this will underclock the cpu at first - dont worry)
set Vcore to 1.30 V
set MCH voltage to + .1 or whatever the next higher bump up in the bios is.
Set your memory voltage to manufacturers specs. If it is 1.8V set it to 1.9V.
set the memory mulitplier to 2.0 (this will underclock the memory at first - dont worry)

Now, grab a soda and reboot. Use a memtest86+ CD as a boot disk cause it starts up fast and you can just hit the reset button to restart without problems that would trash your windows install.

Reboot the machine. all should be fine. let memtest run just a minute.
Hit the reset button, go into the bios, go into the MIT sub menu.
Incease the FSB 10MHz
save changes and exit which will reboot the machine.

In general, not always but if you have a fan on the MCH/northbridge you should easlily work your way up too a 400FSB which will be 3.2 GHz with memory running right on spec.

Now do 5MHz increases in FSB. It will probabley crap out somewhere areound 420 as your memory is being OCed.

Take note of what the memory actual frequency and FSB is. Unless you loosen timings it will probably be a limiting factor. 8 GB of memory will most likely be an issue as I bet it is alread 5 5 5 15 so you dont want to loosen the timings any more. Just having all the slots filled like you do might cause more time and effort to get a decent OC.

After you do the above. Leave everything alone but:
change the cpu mulitplier to 9x
change the FSB to 333.

repeat the procedure.

It is likely you will get much higher in CPU speed before the wheels fall off but with a 2.0 memory mulitplier your memory will be underclocked and you have now found the limit of the cpu.


you now know the limit of your memory and your cpu.

The trick is to find a memory mulitplier and cpu mulitplier ( 8 x or 9x) and FSB value that will run the cpu as fast as you can but still keeping your memory near its rated speed. Normally its a compromise. Underclocking the memory a tad and getting a much higher cpu speed is better than cutting back on cpu speed to keep memory in spec.

keep an eye on temps (PC Health sub-menu in bios) you dont want to get over 50C doing this.

This is just a rough cut. Then you need to see what it will do loading windows. Normally if you do a good job at picking a compromise windows will load right up. Again back off of max and "sneak up" on it with small FSB increments and unless you have delux cooling dont push it too hard.

Install windows at stock settings.

Good luck .
 
The time has come to try pushing my rig a little harder. Been running great at 2.88GHz for about a year (9x320MHz, with no voltages exceeding those Bill gives for a 'standard high performance setup'). Sadly, my RAM can't go past 843MHz. Does this mean that I don't need to worry about monitoring the DIMM chip temps as I increase FSB frequency? I'm also aware that I need to worry about cooling the MCH before I proceed much further. I know a fan is ideal but before I look into that, is replacing the MCH thermal paste with 'Arctic Silver 5' worthwhile?

Cheers
 
Hiya ! Nice chip for OCing, I am pretty sure you can easily get more without too much trouble. You are aware of the thermal issues and how to fix/mitigate them so what I am suggesting is you try and see where you can go with the chip and then you can see if additional steps in cooling is needed and take action then. With a little care (coretemp and your finger) you can easily monitor the temps of critical components as you increase the OC and just see what happens. It is highly unlikely you will damage anything with heat, its unreasonable high voltages that do the damage and we will not go there.

Does this mean that I don't need to worry about monitoring the DIMM chip temps as I increase FSB frequency?
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If your case has any kind of airflow at all and with what I am recommending below there should be no need, to start the ram will actually be underclocked a bit with the goal of reaching 3.2GHz with the ram running right on spec. So memory heating should not be an issue. But it never hurts to place a finger on the heat spreader or a chip and it not difficult to tell toasty warm (nomal) from "DAMN THATS HOT" my "rule of finger" is that if I cannot keep my finger on it for a slow count of 5 it needs some air on it.

is replacing the MCH thermal paste with 'Arctic Silver 5' worthwhile?
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Difficult to recommend against doing this. However since it requires removing the board I suggest a small fan directed at it (or just silicone RTV glued to it) to start would be a lot less hassle and then you could see what the results are and take further action if you deem it necessary.

I suggest you drop the cpu mulitplier to 8x and reboot with your current FSB. Everything should be about the same just slower CPU speed. Then booting into a memtest86+ boot CD so you dont trash your windows setup, raise the FSB 10MHz and reboot. This lets the board recalculate voltages etc. and reset hidden timings we dont see in the bios. Rinse and repeat to "sneak up" on 8 x 400 = 3.2GHz which is a very nice target and with a memory mulitplier of 2.0 will be running your ram right on spec.

You have the cpu cooler to make this a very reasonable effort. You might have to up the Vcore a bit but as long as you stay under 1.4V there are no worries. I like to set it at 1.35V and see where a chip will go, and maybe 1.375 which is what my 6300 has been running at for 2 years now. People have set them much higher but I am conservative. 1.55 in the Intel absolute max and I would never go over 1.5V due to added voltage from the cpu voltage regulation circuity on the board "overshooting" .

I cannot stress enough the "go slow" approach. As you reach near 400MHz maybe evne 5MHz steps and a nice trick is to pull the frout panel reset swith leads off the motherboard pins and move it to the cmos clear pins. Then if you happen to get into a wont boot cycle, you just turn off the power, press and hold the reset button for a slow count of 10 and you are back to testing. After you are done working with the board, put it back, you dont want to accidently hit it while windows is running etc.

If you have trouble getting to 400MHz give the mch another "one notch" more of voltage. It will get pretty warm almost hot, so be thinking about that small fan.

Once you get the board running 8 x 400 you have options, you can go a little more since your memory will do a bit more than 800MHz but frankly somewhere around 3.2GHz I dont see a lot of improvement in "snappyness" so its your call how hard you want to press.

(even just an old 80mm case fan hung up with tye wraps etc. blowing in the direction of the mch and under that Ultra so the air hits the components around the cpu socket will do wonders for MCH temp)
 
Cheers for your advice (and 'hi' back at ya)!

I suggest you drop the cpu mulitplier to 8x and reboot with your current FSB. Everything should be about the same just slower CPU speed. Then booting into a memtest86+ boot CD so you dont trash your windows setup, raise the FSB 10MHz and reboot. This lets the board recalculate voltages etc. and reset hidden timings we dont see in the bios. Rinse and repeat to "sneak up" on 8 x 400 = 3.2GHz which is a very nice target and with a memory mulitplier of 2.0 will be running your ram right on spec.
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Well, I made it to 363MHz with Vcore=1.35V (the system reset to 8x200MHz when I tried 8x364MHz). So I tried slowly upping Vcore until 8x370 ran but nothing worked (I kept under 1.4V!). I gave the MCH another notch, reset Vcore to 1.35, and tried 8x370 again. Failure! So again I upped Vcore slowly to just under 1.4V but again no joy. Odd. All the settings in the M.I.T. BIOS screen are as you specify except for PCI-E frequency (which was on 100MHz or default until I recently upgraded to current video card, when system wouldn't boot at 9x320, so I tried upping to 101MHz - success!), and Refresh to ACT Delay ('auto' strangely isn't one of the options on offer. 42 is the suggestion but for some reason mine's on zero). Not too sure what my next step should be - oh, I set the memory multiplier to 2x BTW (even for 8x330!).
 
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