Past 2 years, I've setup 3 Q6600 G0 @ 3.2ghz machines (full memory banks.) Mine that ran on Gigabyte motherboard(P35C-DS3R), it was not so hard. I just had to go through several voltage settings to find the sweet spot: no headaches. However, on my friends Asus motherboards(P5Q pro and P4KC,) things were a lot more difficult. I had to try all those various settings motherboard offer (a lot more than the Gigabyte one.) On top of that, when overclocking fails, P5Q Pro wouldn't even POST. I either had to reset and wait at least 10 minutes hoping it would post or reset the BIOS manually. On the other hand, P4KC would go back to default settings when it fails to recover from sleep mode: Major headaches.
Anway, the point is that overclocking, though I've been doing it for a decade, was not smooth... as always. That's until I met this 9550 E0 CPU with Gigabyte EX58-UD3R-SLI board.
My goal was 4Ghz and upon looking at all those settings the board offers, I thought it could be a major headache. Just to try how far I can go, I tried 4Ghz with 1.4V vcore. Works great. I tried 1.35 vcore. Works great. I tried 1.32 something vcore, fails running Intelburn. Lowered a notch and this thing just works! The whole thing didn't even take 5 minute (excluding Intelburn test time) and it's just stable. I didn't even have to touch any other settings! Just a vcore and RAM voltage! Because it was such a easy overclock, it feels werid...like I haven't acheived anything.
So, here's the question. Is 9550 E0 @ 4Ghz supposed to be this easy? I know it varies greatly but given how crazy easy it was, I wonder.
EDIT: It's Intel Q9550 CPU I'm talking about
EDIT2: It's Gigabyte EP45-UD3P ATX LGA775 board, not EX58-UD3R-SLI.
Anway, the point is that overclocking, though I've been doing it for a decade, was not smooth... as always. That's until I met this 9550 E0 CPU with Gigabyte EX58-UD3R-SLI board.
My goal was 4Ghz and upon looking at all those settings the board offers, I thought it could be a major headache. Just to try how far I can go, I tried 4Ghz with 1.4V vcore. Works great. I tried 1.35 vcore. Works great. I tried 1.32 something vcore, fails running Intelburn. Lowered a notch and this thing just works! The whole thing didn't even take 5 minute (excluding Intelburn test time) and it's just stable. I didn't even have to touch any other settings! Just a vcore and RAM voltage! Because it was such a easy overclock, it feels werid...like I haven't acheived anything.
So, here's the question. Is 9550 E0 @ 4Ghz supposed to be this easy? I know it varies greatly but given how crazy easy it was, I wonder.
EDIT: It's Intel Q9550 CPU I'm talking about
EDIT2: It's Gigabyte EP45-UD3P ATX LGA775 board, not EX58-UD3R-SLI.