Need A little help with my overclock

[wheazy]

hey guys, ive been reading here forever but never really felt compelled to post. anyway, i built a system recently when frys dropped the price of the q6600 so i thought i should give it a shot. so, ive got a q6600 on an asus formula maximus x38 mobo. 4gb of ocz sli memory. im a little new to overclocking, well lemme rephrase that, im a little inexperienced. ive dabbled for years but never really got serious. but with this 6600 i figured i shoudl try and push it. so ive been reading up on everything and i started out with the autoclock thing where it pushes to a different cpus speed, it did q6850 just fine, or 3ghz. then i decided to see how much better i could do, i pushed it to 3.5ghz volt at 1.502 in bios and 1.44 in wondows. it was running great at 58c while priming then one of the cores failed a test. my question is where do i go from here? do i try upping the voltage? do i need to worry about the fsb voltage? i turned that up a bit to see what happened, hasnt really changed anything. also, i havent touched the ram at all. oh and my hs/f is an asus silent knight. if you need anymore info, please let me know, im not sure whatelse would be useful, except for that its being run by a corsair hx620w. heres a pic of everything right now.

 

[masterosok]

I would recommend going back to the the settings you had stable a 3.0gHz and slowly working your way up to 3.5gHz. You want to maximize your cpu speed but at the same time determine the minimum voltages you will need for stability to reduce heat.

You might want to get a cooler more suited for o/c the Quads, if you really want to push it to the limits.

For reference.. I have my Q6600 running at 3.2gHz as follows

400x8
cpu:dram = 1:1
Vcore= 1.30
VTT=1.23
MCH=1.25
ICH=default
GTL=67%

Idle temps are 37c load temps are 54c

I tested running small FFT in prime for 8 hrs with no errors. I am going to attempt to lower the VTT and Vcore to see if I can still maintain stability before I move up to 3.4gHz.

 

[wheazy]

ok, i took your advice and went a little further. its been running for about 4 hours, and heres the result:

temps seem a little high, but its says its about +/- 30c from threshold. would this be ok to run?

 

[masterosok]

I would say those temps are on the high side, but its all about what you are comfortable with. Some people say the longevity of your cpu is at risk running it at those temps, but others continue to run at those just fine. I prefer my temps to be closer to the 60c mark at load, but I have heard people running them at 70ish to maximize their o/c .... just make sure that you are running at the lowest possible voltages, by bumping them down one at time and stress testing... You always want to make sure that you are running at the lowest possible voltages that still allows stability.

Check out what Bill wrote in this thread regarding temps and delta to tjmax.. that might give you a better understanding of your headroom for o/c.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1303736

the true stability test is a 24h session of smalll fft prime with no errors on any core.