Quick, Stupid n00b33 Question re: Overclocking Conroe

[Ladyhawk]

I've finally got my system running stably with one or two small (probably software-related) issues. I'm using stock cooling on a E6600. I have a nice, big Antec case with four fans (two in front, two in back). Can I (should I?) overclock and if so, what should I shoot for? What steps should I take?

Pointing me to a good article would be fine.

Thanks.

LH

 

[Arcygenical]

Yes. You should .

If your load temps are below 50'c right now (use Orthos, or 2 instances of Prime95, to test this)...

Try throwing the FSB up from 266 to 300, making sure to "lock" the PCI and PCIe busses.

 

[thrawn86]

I wasn't able to find an Intel overclock guide in the forums, but the A64 OC guide found in the AMD forum serves as a good starter, most of the same principles apply.

Can you? Yes
Should you? Yes
What to shoot for? Fairly certain You'll be able to hit at least 300x9 on stock, at least. YRMV. Spend a few bucks on a decent cooler, that will give you 3.2 or more...

 

[Ladyhawk]

Try throwing the FSB up from 266 to 300, making sure to "lock" the PCI and PCIe busses.

Okay. I'm sure locking the PCIe and PCI busses has something to do with them functioning at 266 rather than the O/C FSB of 300. Any details you could give me on this? The last time I overclocked, the PCI busses were not automatically affected. I just had to make sure the memory could handle a FSB of 100...LOL. PC-100 memory for a Celeron 300a overclocked by increasing the FSB to 100. It's been awhile.

I clocked my 533 memory to 800. Should I clock back down first?

LH

 

[Arcygenical]

Yes, clock the RAM to 533

Search the BIOS for a PCIe Lock and a PCI lock...

These should be set to 100mhz and 33.3mhz by default. Either set them to "100 and 33mhz" (respectively) or set them to "locked" or "Async" whatever doesn't shoot them up past their stock values (All BIOSes do this differently, some even lock them normally, it's a tossup, unfortumately).

Then throw the FSB up to 275 and see if you're stable, then try for 290... etc.

 

[kill4killin]

^^ well put, locking the PCI and PCIe busses is essential for a stable OC. But some boards are pretty good at locking them by default and others aren't. Like he said, its a toss up basically.

As for overclocking it. The Conroe chips overclock very very well and run extremely cool with the stock cooling anyway. General rule of thumb is that as long as its under 55 or 50C then its perfectly fine. You most certainly will want to invest in a good HS/F for the processor if you decide to do any real overclocking though. However I would expect that your chip could easily hit 300x9 if not 333x9 depending on your temps. Just make sure you keep and eye on temps throughout the process.

A good way to overclock as well (at least with AMDs and it should work with the intels) is to take prime, run two instances of it, specifying which core each should run on. Then open up ClockGen (if it works with C2D, i think it does) and just bump up 5mhz at a time until your system crashes. Then your stable speed is around 5mhz under whatever it was at when it crashed. Thats what i do atleast, then i do Vcore mods to see how much farther it can go.