Overclocking my E7200 C2D

Jawnskeel

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I'm feeling adventurous. I want to overclock my CPU, milk it for what it's worth. I recently purchased and installed a "Cooler Master Hyper TX3" cooler. I ran a stress test for 3 minutes to see what the computer would max out at temp wise, which I monitored with core temp, and the highest they got to was 47 degrees Celsius. I feel like this is high though. I used arctic silver as my thermal compound.
Edit2: forgot to mention the 36/37 Celsius idle.


I wanted to overclock but I'm not sure if I can with these temps at stock settings?

Also what should I be doing to my DDR2 RAM when overclocking?
 
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You need to run a stress test for longer than that. You're not actually stressing it to find out what your load temps will really settle at. Grab Prime95 and run it for about 20 minutes or so then let us know what your temps are. 47c is rather cold still and more like your idle temp.

Anything up to 75c is ok. Just so you know, that cooler isn't very good and you wont get very much out of the CPU in terms of OC.

When you OC, you need to lower your RAM divider (RAM clocks from 800 to 667 or 533), and raise your FSB until you are unstable. Once you are unstable you need to raise CPU core voltage to stabilize the clocks. Continue to monitor your temps to make sure it doesn't overheat.

My guess is you should be able to get 3Ghz or 3.2 on that CPU until heat becomes a problem.
 
75c under load is so much! I didn't know the CPUs can handle that.

After 35 minutes of Prime95, the max has been 49c, with it currently sliding between 45-47c.

I'll be attempting an overclock very soon.
 
75c under load is so much! I didn't know the CPUs can handle that.

After 35 minutes of Prime95, the max has been 49c, with it currently sliding between 45-47c.

I'll be attempting an overclock very soon.
Those temps are actually rather cool. They are cooler than my load under custom water to give you an idea.

Makes me wonder why my Q8200 runs so hot :neutral:
 
I have that same processor and board and I've had the cpu around 3ghz no problem on stock cooling before.

Best of luck to you.
 
Got to 3GHz without having to change voltage settings, but I noticed the processor no longer gets underclocked when it's not being used heavily. I want the power/heat savings that come with that feature. Is there something I need to turn on?
 
Intel Speedstep is usually disabled when you OC depending on the board and CPU in question. Also, doesn't change much in terms of wattage or heat dissipation.
 
I'm not sure if the gigabyte energy saver works when you're running an overclock setting. I guess you could try it.
 
I didn't know it was the motherboard doing that. at 3.2Ghz, going to sit at that for a while. Prime95 doesn't run properly though, it fails on one of the cores because of a rounding error?
 
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