Need help OC'ing Dad's computer...

Viperman5000

Weaksauce
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Nov 26, 2006
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So, my dad wants more performance out of his new Christmas toy, and I was selected for the job since, well, he's kinda old.

Yeah, I'm not too sure how to go about this, as he is on stock cooling with stock HSF.

Specs are in sig, but I don't know how much to increase the voltages or any of the sort.

Here's my CPU-Z results:
specs.jpg


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: As you can see, everything is completely stock.
 
Ok, so I'm assuming you already overclocked it to 2.4Ghz right? Well, if you have tested it and it can't go any further than upping your Vcore would be the next step. The best way to go about this is through the BIOS. You should see somethin near the same part of the BIOS where you overclocked using the FSB that allows you to up what might either be called Vcore, Core Voltage or VID, maybe something else, but those are the most common I find. Just up that by an incriment of .25 or .5 at a time until you hit your desired speed. Only thing to watch out for is temps. Your temps will start to increase faster with higher voltages than they did with the stock voltages. Just make sure they stay within the recommended 60C and you should be good to go.
 
Great system your Dad has there...

First thing you need to do is record your before and after temperatures to see the effect of the overclocking.

Google CoreTemp and Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (temperature programs)

Also, with that kick ass system and he is using the stock cooler?

That's just wrong, Get him a Tuniq Tower 120 now......

Here, you'll see a small review showing the bios option you need to change:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/395/1/

Basically, your RAM needs to be 2X your FSB.
And FSB X your CPU's multiplier (9 is the default value and can only be changed to lower for this particular CPU)

so, 350 FSB X 9 CPU Multiplier = 3150mhz

RAM 350 X 2 = 700mhz

Enable power slope
Set your CPU Voltage to 1.375V (you could also try AUTO for now since *some E6600's can do 3ghz with stock Voltage)
(1.5V should be the max on AIR, 1.6V is way high)
Set your FSB to 350
Set your RAM speed to 700mhz
Set your RAM Voltage to whatever advertised Voltage and timings values

PCI express should be set to 100-101 mhz
PCI BUS set to 33.33

Other things can remain as AUTO for now

If this works, test your system with Prime95 (run torture test) or also try Orthos and run it for @ least 30 minutes to see if your overclock is stable.

1.4V might get you a better overclock, so if the above settings work...

Set your FSB to 375 and your RAM to 750mhz, see if it can do that.

If it fails, you need to up the CPU voltage to 1.4V-1.45V or so

Keep in mind that your temperatures should not exceed 60c under load and I doubt that the stock cooler can help you on that

Bottom line, if you want to overclock more, get a Tuniq tower 120.
 
Just up that by an incriment of .25 or .5 at a time until you hit your desired speed. Only thing to watch out for is temps. Your temps will start to increase faster with higher voltages than they did with the stock voltages. Just make sure they stay within the recommended 60C and you should be good to go.

I'm much more conservative when finding max vcore. Generally I up the voltage by a max of 0.1 volt each time while I check temps which I never let go over 55 degrees celsius under full load (i.e.prime95 small FTTs or blend torture test).
 
I agree with getting a better HSF. Its better to be safe then sorry.
 
Thanks for all the input guys.

@ kill4killin
Nope, haven't touched it.

@orion23
Yeah, I was gonna get him a Zalman 9500/9700 for Christmas but I ran short on money. Would a Zalman be good or should I go with the Tuniq? Also, is all the stuff you explained on stock cooling? And I'm pretty sure the RAM that's in there is rated at 4-4-4-12 latencies.

Also to anyone, how would I find out the temperature while full load? Idle is easy enough, just confused, kinda.

I'll probably try all this after the Eagles game.
 
Just an update:

Ran the Intel TAT. Here's what I got:

overclock1.jpg


Seems a little high, but then again I'm on normal case cooling with the P180B.

Thoughts?
 
Those are your idle temps. Hit the 2 start buttons on TAT and see what the temp jumps up to.
 
The settings I posted above could be run with stock cooling, but in your case, DON'T touch the CPU Voltage.

As a test, simply set the FSB to 330 and your RAM to 660mhz and leave cpu Vcore as DEFAULT or AUTO.

If you have a good chip, it might just do 3ghz with stock voltages. Other than that....

Your temperatues are very BAD for stock settings.

46 Idle is very high!

If you want to go anywhere, you'll need to improve your ambient and CASE temperature.

Make sure you have a fan pulling air in from the front of the case and that you have a fan sucking air out from the back of the case (those 2 at the very least)

Make sure that the room temperature is not too hot, or else, having the best cooler in the world won't help much.

The zalman cooler is good, but not better than the tuniq tower 120.

When you order the Cooler, also get some AS5 or Ceramique thermal paste and follow these instructions for applying the paste:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinstruct/cmq/ins_cmq_intel_dual_wcap.pdf
 
Yeah, those temps definitely just jumped to 58-60ºC within a minute.
I'm starting to think I should get a new HSF. Pronto.

EDIT: Yeah, now I'm really worried about those temps. Any ideas how to fix them?
I have the P180B and I installed the front fan to pull air in, with 2 exhaust fans out the back.
My dad keeps the house at 68ºF all the time, so I don't know.

EDIT#2: I opened the front door of my case, and opened the door for where the computer is. The temps dropped to 40-44ºC now.
Oh and I already put AS5 on the stock HSF.

I found a Tuniq T120 and ordered it.

Now, I tried fixing the FSB and RAM stuff, but everything is labeled differently. I have a Bad Axe 2. I guess I'll just take pics of the BIOS.

OK, I'm gonna try the 4-4-4-12 timings and increase the voltage to 2.1v (because that's what newegg says). Hope this works.
 
Just OC'd the RAM, although I don't really know what any of this means. Again, I appreciate all your help.

overclock.jpg


Just finished running Super PI. Took 21m and 19s to calculate 32M digits of PI. Is that good?
 
I've only done SuperPi at 1M (18.20 secs) so I don't know how that 32M result rates.

Some good advice has been given here and the only thing I'd comment on is your vCore setting in Bios. Some mobos will automatically raise the vCore as you raise your FSB and, in some cases, it will set it way too high, unneccesarily..

Find out what your stock voltage setting is (most mobos will say it right there in the settings) and set the vCore to that, rather than leaving it on auto.

Good luck!
 
I'm really sorry to keep bothering everyone, but it's almost over.

OK, since I have no clue what people are talking about with FSB and where to find it, I'll just post pics (really blurry pics) of my BIOS, and yeah.

Sorry I'm dumb.:(

Here are the really blurry BIOS pics (links b/c actual pics are too big):

Processor: http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/viperman5000/OCing001.jpg

Memory: http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/viperman5000/OCing002.jpg

I don't know: http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/viperman5000/OCing003.jpg


Also, if it's not too much trouble, here's another blurry pic of my startup that I don't know what it means either. Everything works OK, just curious as to why it says what it does:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/viperman5000/OCing004.jpg
 
The FSB that everyone is talking about is the clock speed of the CPU that you are going to change. Default it is set to 266 on your E6600, you'll be increasing it from there. I'd do a search for some walkthroughs on how to OC the BX2 board as I'm personally not familiar with it.

The last pic you posted is of the raid controller. The message is just telling you that you don't have any drives connected to it, don't worry about it.
 
I did a modest OC, I think.

I upped the FSB from 266 to 300. I didn't really want to push it until I get the Tuniq. And I didn't touch the voltages, except those for the RAM.

Temps now idle around 41-43º. Load is around 62-63º.

EDIT: I also must note that the frequency for the RAM has jumped to 450MHz. *shrugs*

Here's updated CPU-ID results. I don't know anymore. I'm going to bed.
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/viperman5000/overclock2.jpg
 
Do you mean the 'frequency' in CPU-Z under memory changed to 450 (makes sense if your ratio is either 'auto' or 2:3)? It means your RAM is running at 450 MHz (=DDR2 900).
 
Do you mean the 'frequency' in CPU-Z under memory changed to 450 (makes sense if your ratio is either 'auto' or 2:3)? It means your RAM is running at 450 MHz (=DDR2 900).
Yeah. I don't know what to do really. I only have DDR2 800 though so, yeah. I think it might be set to auto, but again, I don't know.

And I heard stuff about 1T timing? What's that?
 
You're overclocking the memory right now, I'd run a stress test to make sure it's stable but you have quality ram sticks so you should be fine.

The 1T timings are the CAS latencies of the memory, the numbers below the FSB/DRAM ratio in CPU-Z. You might be able to turn them down a bit (lower is better) but it would probably require you to turn up the memory voltage slightly.

Also, if you plan on turning up the CPU frequency any more I would advise turning your FSB/DRAM ratio down to 1:1.
 
You're overclocking the memory right now, I'd run a stress test to make sure it's stable but you have quality ram sticks so you should be fine.

The 1T timings are the CAS latencies of the memory, the numbers below the FSB/DRAM ratio in CPU-Z. You might be able to turn them down a bit (lower is better) but it would probably require you to turn up the memory voltage slightly.

Also, if you plan on turning up the CPU frequency any more I would advise turning your FSB/DRAM ratio down to 1:1.
Well I ran Super PI, and I read somewhere that if you can calculate 32M digits of PI, then you should be good. Any other tests that I should run?

I already increased the voltage on the memory to 2.12v because the memory is rated at 2.1v, just to make it 4-4-4-12 timings. So I don't know about 1T, or how I would go about that.

And how would I make the ratio 1:1? I looked around for it, but couldn't find it.
 
Somebody with a Badaxe is going to have to answer that question. Not all mobo manufacturers label things the same way. Pisses me off. Anytime you get a new mobo you need to decipher their nomenclature. On my Asus mobo it's under the chipset options and then you have to turn off the automatic timings. Then the timings for the ram open up and you can set them manually.

Why do you want to run 1:1? That's the slowest ratio for your ram. Typically oc'ers use 1:1 so they can jack up the fsb on the cpu without having to worry about hitting the limit of the ram before the limit of the cpu. Your 2:3 ratio is actually faster than 1:1. Do some reading on memory timings before you start messing with it too much. You can really mess up your system if you get the memory timings wrong.
 
Why do you want to run 1:1? That's the slowest ratio for your ram. Typically oc'ers use 1:1 so they can jack up the fsb on the cpu without having to worry about hitting the limit of the ram before the limit of the cpu. Your 2:3 ratio is actually faster than 1:1. Do some reading on memory timings before you start messing with it too much. You can really mess up your system if you get the memory timings wrong.
Figures.... I could've used that half an hour ago.
 
Like he said, only overclockers use 1:1 and that is what you are trying to do, overclock!


So, by setting it to the most stable setting, you'll be able to overclock your PC without compromising stability and it will also allow you to deal with CPU overclock related issues instead of having to deal with both the CPU and RAM speed @ the same time.

And, having a faster clocked CPU is better than having fast RAM, which is what you are trying to do. The guy above just forgot to read THE ENTIRE THREAD!

Anyway,

In the Bios, under Performance / Processor Override:

Change your CPU Voltage to 1.35V (1.5 is very high, 1.6 = DANGER...DANGER...DANGER)

Change FSB Frequency to 300

Change PowerSlope to enabled

Under Performance / Memory Overrides

Change the SDRAM Control to MANUAL
and set timings as 4-4-4-12
And set the correct voltage (2.1V I believe you said earlier)

Now, for the RAM frequency or SPEED, just set it to 533 which means 1:1


We know that your RAM can do 900mhz already, which means that if you were to try a 400 FSB and the PC fails, it wouldn't be a RAM problem, but rather a CPU Voltage or just a speed limitation issue.

Under Bus Override

Change PCI Express frequency to 100mhz
and PCI Bus frequency to 33.33.

Later, when you get the new cooler, you could just try going higher with your FSB to let's say 405mhz and upping the CPU Vcore to 1.4V for a possible 3.6ghz overclock.

But we won't know this until you get the better cooler going. Don't even think about it now!
 
I forgot something else,

Under Processor override, you'll also find the MCH voltage and FSB voltage values.

Usually, you won't have to change these values before a 400 FSB, so don't worry about them now.

And in case your PC won't post, be prepared to RESET the BIOS or CLEAR CMOS
(REMOVE BATTERY, SWITCH JUMPER POSITION, READ THE MANUAL)
 
Well here's another update. And by the way, thank you orion23 for sticking with me through this.

I lowered the RAM frequency from 800MHz to 533MHz and now have a 1:1 ratio.

I also upped the CPU voltage to 1.325, but it made my idle temp shoot up 10º, so I'll leave that alone 'till the Tuniq gets here.

Now, I have some questions for you (hope you don't mind, this is my first time OC'ing, as you can tell) :

1) What does the PCI Express and PCI bus frequency do? GFX card?

2) I don't understand that if my RAM is running at 800MHz, then why am I lowering it to 533? Isn't higher better? And I don't get how my RAM can run at 900MHz, when it's only DDR2 800, PC6400. Doesn't that mean that it can only run at the highest, 800?

I appreciate your time, I just want to learn what all this stuff does.
 
Well here's another update. And by the way, thank you orion23 for sticking with me through this.

I lowered the RAM frequency from 800MHz to 533MHz and now have a 1:1 ratio.

I also upped the CPU voltage to 1.325, but it made my idle temp shoot up 10º, so I'll leave that alone 'till the Tuniq gets here.

Now, I have some questions for you (hope you don't mind, this is my first time OC'ing, as you can tell) :

1) What does the PCI Express and PCI bus frequency do? GFX card?

2) I don't understand that if my RAM is running at 800MHz, then why am I lowering it to 533? Isn't higher better? And I don't get how my RAM can run at 900MHz, when it's only DDR2 800, PC6400. Doesn't that mean that it can only run at the highest, 800?

I appreciate your time, I just want to learn what all this stuff does.

pci-express runs your graphics card. you will want to lock that in at 100mhz.

also lock in pci if you haven't at 33.33mhz.

your RAM is RATED to run @ 800Mhz, just like your CPU is RATED to run at 2.4Ghz. It's called overclocking for a reason ;)

However, if you have version 2 or higher of XMS2 Corsair RAM, it's probably Promos and won't do much more than 900mhz unless you are lucky.
 
pci-express runs your graphics card. you will want to lock that in at 100mhz.

also lock in pci if you haven't at 33.33mhz.

your RAM is RATED to run @ 800Mhz, just like your CPU is RATED to run at 2.4Ghz. It's called overclocking for a reason ;)

However, if you have version 2 or higher of XMS2 Corsair RAM, it's probably Promos and won't do much more than 900mhz unless you are lucky.
Well, the first PCI-Express configuration is set to default, however it doesn't go down to 100MHz. It gets close though, at about 101.7MHz I think.

That 33.33MHz is stock.

Oh, gotcha. That makes sense. I'm still wondering why I lowered from 800 to 533. Oh well, thanks for the answers.
 
You don't need to lower it to 533 unless you plan on upping the CPU frequency even higher. If you just plan on running at 2.7GHz (300x9) you could leave the memory at DDR2-900 (450MHz) as it was before. That's likely the upper bounds for the memory frequency, so if you planned on upping the FSB any higher you'd need to make sure that the board didn't automatically increase the memory frequency above 450MHz with it. That's why I suggested setting it to 1:1 if you planned on overclocking further.
 
The 533 setting is a weird "setting" name for the board to run 1:1

You see, the default FSB for the board / CPU is 266mhz and the RAM needs to run 2 X that value.

So for a 1:1 ratio, the board needs to be set to 533. Other boards will have this setting as 2X or 2.0 or 1:1.

Now, once you change the default FSB from 266 to let's say, 350, your RAM will automatically run @ 2 X the FSB, so it will be 700mhz. If you were to use the 667 or 800 setting in your board with a 350 FSB, your PC wouldn't boot since the RAM would be trying to run @ about 1000mhz or more.

And 101 - 105 is fine for the PCI express setting!

Makes sense?
 
Much clearer now. Thank you.

And for the PCI-Express setting, should I just leave it on "default" then?


1: Set the PCI Express to 101mhz or so

2: Set the PCI Bus to 33.33 (if not already set) Very important

3: When you get your Tuniq Tower...

Clean the old paste from the CPU (you can use a fine coffee filter with a bit of alcohol)

Also clean the bottom of the tuniq tower.


You will have to remove your motherboard to install the backplate that holds the heavy heatsink in place.

Make sure that you apply the new thermal paste using the instructions I linked before for use with a Core 2 Duo CPU (thin line down the middle)
And too much paste is not good either, again, follow those instructions.

Put the heatsink down on the CPU once and get the screws in place (aim well, since you don't want to have to reseat the heatsink.

Put the heatsink on the board, outside of the case, and then put the motherboard in the case since I highly doubt that the screws can be tighten once inside the case.
 
OK, here's an update:

Got the Tuniq today and installed it. Took a couple hours but, I did it.

I upped the FSB to 350 for an OC of 3.15GHz. Also upped the voltage to 1.325, I believe.

Temps are 35-37ºC idle, 57-58ºC load.

Is this good? Should I run any tests? Should I get some screens for you guys?
 
The Main tests for the memory are http://www.memtest.org/ go down and you will see the newest version 1.70 and you can put it on a bootable cd or floppy or jump drive, the in the BIOS change the boot order to whatever you have the memtest saved on. Then instead of starting windows in will start the memory test screen. If it goes through that with now errors then you know the memory is good and you have the option to over clock it higher if you want. The other test is Orthos http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm or Prime 95 http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm they will test your motherboards ability to handle the higher FSB and the processor for the same. Orthos is a little easier because it has dual core testing built in with prime95 you have to save it in two locations and run two different cycle of it for each core.
 
How long should I run Orthos? It went 5 hours without a hiccup with temps hitting 54ºC max.

Another question: When I installed the Tuniq, I put some AS5 on. But, I read in a build walk through to spread out the AS5 in a thin layer. Well I kinda did, as I spread it on 9/10ths of the CPU. Will this be ok?

I'm thinking of doing it over.
 
Most people will run orthos 24 hours I cut mine off at 8, did you pass memtest86 and which one did you run on orthos cpu only or cpu with little ram?
 
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