Maximum safe everyday voltage for E6600?

[Jimmy the Greek]

I've been running my E6600 @ 3.2GHz at 1.285v for the last 5 months, and haven't experienced any lockups or other issues. Temps are around 30 idle, 48 load.

I've tried running it at 3.6GHz with 1.375, but it rebooted when loading Windows. 3.4GHz worked at that voltage, but I didn't really put it to the test. The temperatures were a few degrees higher, but nothing noteworthy. Still, the high voltage concerned me.

For everyday use, what voltage can I get away with, without drastically shortening the CPU's lifespan?

 

[TheCur]

1.55V

 

[engiNURD]

1.55V

Dont forget to take into account VDROOP. Also, keep your dual core under 60°C at full load and you'll be fine. Use CoreTemp to measure temps. As long as you keep it under that voltage and temperature, your chip will be fine.

 

[BillParrish]

I will mention that 1.55 is the Intel Datasheet absolute maximum. Failure to take into account voltage spikes that are normal due to overshoot of the cpu voltage regulator duing large load changes (firing up orthos from idle for instance) and/or ripple or noise riding on the nominal voltage can easily take you to 1.55 or over even with Vdroop. 1.50V would be far safer. I personally do not go over 1.45V but that is just me. You should determine by testing what the minimum Vcore is required for your target OC.

 

[Trepidati0n]

I will mention that 1.55 is the Intel Datasheet absolute maximum. Failure to take into account voltage spikes that are normal due to overshoot of the cpu voltage regulator duing large load changes (firing up orthos from idle for instance) and/or ripple or noise riding on the nominal voltage can easily take you to 1.55 or over even with Vdroop. 1.50V would be far safer. I personally do not go over 1.45V but that is just me. You should determine by testing what the minimum Vcore is required for your target OC.

Wise words to live by. The maximum you should go to should be no more than 95% of the maximum. A longer term safe value would be 90%. However, any more conservative than that is just a life statement and not a damage statement. Just remember that most motherboard core regulators don't use precision resistors and are COTS devices. Going for the typical device, you should expect 3-4% tolerance from day 1 and up to 10% over temp/life.

 

[Flopper]

I run 6600 for over a year at 1.58vcore.
No issues.
Watercooled though.

 

[revenant]

on air (high performance cooler) 1.55v... or up to 1.60 on water.. I think cpus are tougher than peeps think (as long as good cooling is in place), but I wouldn't push much beyond 1.60 unless you have phase or something..

 

[Hazaro]

I stick to 1.5V

Shoving 1.6V doesn't even get my 3.6Ghz stable on my E6600.
So I run 1.42V at 3.33Ghz or 1.38 at 3.2

 

[revenant]

yeah - after 1.5 your not going to gain much more OC headroom.. it's a bigger risk for very little performance pay off, in general..

edit: as for my e6600, since this is about those chips specifically, I ran it on water for the first 1/2 of it's life at about 1.55v core in the bios, ~1.50v with droop.. at 3.5ghz... no amount of extra vcore would stablize 3.6... I could bench, but not prime.. I was able to run it on at at 3.5ghz on air also but it ran much warmer.. which sucks when the room is hitting 90 in the hot indian summer afternoons here in ca.. so I dropped down to 3.2ghz on default vcore which works fine.. and it runs in the mid 40s load.. now that winter is here I can crank it up again I suppose.. but I am going to play with an e6850 for a while here now.. maybe get back on water.