Overclocking a Q9450 on an EVGA 780i FTW

[smashedpumpkins]

I now have an EVGA 780i FTW and a Q9450 on order. From what I've read the Q9450 overclocks pretty good on a 780i. I previously overclocked my Q6600 to 3.6Ghz on a 680i. However I had a good chunk of help and did a lot of research. I'm curious if anyone can give me some insight on the overclocking for a Q9450. How far on air cooling will this overclock? I have a Tuniq cooler and a few side fans that circulate very well.

Thanks for any info!

 

[Nagasama]

i cant get past 435 fsb. at all. ever. no matter what. boots up fine up to ~475ish, but locks up 3 seconds into p95. i have a p5q pro. from what i am reading, it seems the cpu has an FSB wall around 435-450. so, i would say somewhere around there. not many people at all are getting more than that with a 45nm quad, no matter the mobo. the good news is, i saved a lot of money on my car insurance. lol. just kidding...it runs 435 x 8 at 1.225V (less than my VID), and stays nice and cool. im fairly satisfied seeing as the q6600 i bought when i jumped on the intel bandwagon took so much voltage and got so hot just to get to 3.2 i thought it would burn down my house if i left it alone. not as beastly of an overclock as i got on my x2 3600 or my x2 5000BE...but it is much faster than either of those.

 

[thirdshiftdj]

and that is why I don't recommend the q9450. Atleast your running low temps and voltage though

 

[smashedpumpkins]

Well that's a bummer. My Q6600 did better than I'll get with my Q9450...

 

[Nagasama]

and that is why I don't recommend the q9450. Atleast your running low temps and voltage though

yeah, i guess so. it is kind of expensive for sure (newest and finest and all that blah blah blah heh heh). it's still faster than a q6600 at around what, 3.8ish? but yeah the temps sold me on it, fo sho fo sho...it sure is nice to open realtemp and see it idling in the low 30's instead of the mid-high 40's lol. its pretty zippy in any event, but i was hoping for 3.6-3.8. i have a new beta bios (1104) that may help it some.

 

[greistokes]

I have an EVGA 780i SLI that is watercooled, it is much better than my Striker was, I was running a QX6700 which I couldn't get over 3.3GHz no matter what I did, the CPU was sitting around 65C loaded and 45C. I have also tried it with an E2160 that got to 3.4 and an E6550 that would do 3.5GHz so I was a little disappointed with the QX6700. 2 days ago I got a Q9450 which got to 3.9GHz before it failed to POST. The highest I got into Vista X86 was 3.8 but it wasn't stable enough to get through 3DMark, I dropped it down to 3.6 and it is 100% stable at that speed. I have now put it onto a P5K-E (P35) to see if it is any better on it, so far I can't get it stable over 3.6GHz on it either so that may be the highest it will go. The P5K-E is on air and is at 26C idle and peaks at 45C.

 

[thirdshiftdj]

those are nice temps you guys have. I'd still be happy w/ 3.6 and temps like that

 

[smashedpumpkins]

Okay here's what I got now. For the most part I'm pretty stable here for my basic uses. However with Prime I only last about 10 minutes before my PC freezes. So I was hoping you guys may be able to help me with that. I was freezing at 1.36 Vcore also around the same time so I don't know if I should lower that back down and change something else? Oh and so far I've read MANY different people and their stories with their q9450 and I'm the only one I can find that can get up to 30c degrees different from core 1 to core 4. What might that be... Even at full load my 4th core won't pass 51c when my 1st core is past 80c.

CPU Core - 1.375v
CPU FSB - 1.325v
SPP (NB) - 1.45v
MCP (SB) - 1.5v
SPP (NB) << - >> MCP (SB) - 1.3v
GTL Ref: Lane 1,3,4: +20mV, Lane 2: +30mV
Timings 5-5-5-18
FSB 1850/4 = 462.5
Memory below the FSB is at 1066
-----
A clock of 3.7 Ghz

 

[greistokes]

My Core 3 always is about 10c over the other cores, I can't work out why cos often core 1 will doing 40% of the work 2@25%, 3@15% and 4@5% but 3 will still be the hottest, I guess it is HSF related. It's still not hot though even with 4 cores @ 100% none go over 65c, my QX6700's cores would all be in the 80s.
I've been trying the Q9450 in my P5K-E and in it the max stable FSB seems to be 1800 as well. So I guess I'm happy with it stable at 3.6GHz, I'm sure I could get it up higher but why bother, other than benchmarks nothing else will get all 4 cores working. I've got Vcore at 1.3 and I've only turned up the other voltages one click each. Although I've got PC8500, I am running it in sync mode at (900MHz) CR2 5-5-5-13.