OCing the Q6600

[gurusan]

tbh I have never clocked like it says in those guides.

I always set my vcore to the max I would be comfortable running 24/7 then start off at some insanely high clock. Then back off by about 100mhz til it seems more or less stable...then I fine tune it a bit and see if I can lower the vcore.

I've never understood raising the FSB by 25mhz and the vcore by .05v and running prime. By the time I get a stable clock the hardware would be obsolete!

With my method I can usually find my max clock in a few hours and get it stable in a day or so of testing (when I'm not home)

 

[veedubfreak]

Same here, i picked the setting i wanted, 3.6ghz, set it to that, then just tweaked the vcore until i got it where i needed it.

 

[Mordred]

Isn't it bad to just start trying random settings? I heard you can destroy your hardware that way.

Edit: I'm in my BIOS right now and am looking at my DDR2 Voltage... the specs for my RAM say that they're supposed to run at 2.2v Newegg.com - Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
but they're running at 1.8v. Should I manually change that or leave it as is?

 

[veedubfreak]

Meh, these new chips are almost impossible to kill if you do your research and have even half a clue what you are doing.

 

[Mordred]

So, so far I have tried 1333 FSB at 1.2375 and 1.2475, but the first was too low to even try to boot to windows, the second hung up on the windows loading screen...I guess I'll go one higher

Tried 1333 FSB at 1.2675, still hung on windows loading screen...

The specs for the q6600 say it can handle up to 1.5v, Should I just try to run it at like 1.3575 and see what happens? Then if it's stable bring it down?

 

[veedubfreak]

Depends on what cooler you are using. I run at 1.4V and have has as much as 1.55v without cooling troubles, but i use a lapped TRUE-120

 

[Mordred]

I still don't know what lapped is...but I'm running a tuniq tower.

 

[stalin90]

I still don't know what lapped is

lol, its where u sand down your cpu heatspreader, and your hsf to where its all copper

 

[Mordred]

Correct me if I'm wrong....won't that make the surface uneven and actually hurt heat distribution?

 

[veedubfreak]

Actually quite the opposite. Most heatsinks and cpu's are NOT flat, thus the reason you have to use thermal interface material. When you sand the cpu's heatshield and the base of the heatsink, you essentiall make them both very flat and get much better contact. My temps came down around 14C on the outer cores and 5C on the inner cores when i lapped my stuff. Now whenever i remove my heatsink the center of the cpu barely has any TIM on it at all due to it making such good contact.