Help O/c'ing E6400, DS3 board plz

[termac50]

E6400, 4x512 pc6400 Corsair ram 5-5-5-15 @ 1.9v, Gigabyte 965p ds3

I set the system multiplier to 2.0 for a 1:1 fsb/ram ratio. Then my multiplier 8x, and the through trial and error found the highest I can get is 385 fsb without any changes to ram or vcore voltage. So 385x8 or 3.08gz is my current ceiling. I ran some prime95 tests for a bit and it seems stable.

Now I'm a little confused on where to go from here. When I tried to raise vcore a little and/or ram voltage, and try upping the fsb some more, it resets back to stock settings. Am I at my limit @ 3.08?

Also, my cpu temp reads 53 degreed, normal use @ 3.08. At stock 2.14, it's around 44. During prime95, it was up in the 62-65 range. Is this too high? I bought a new Cooler Master case for this rig, and it has a big 120mm case fan literally 3 inches away from the Arctic Freezer 7 fan, and they're both blowing air out the case. The power supply is an Antec truepower 550, and it's blowing air out too, and there's a case front intake fan as well. These temps are no better than my old case w/ bad ventilation and one fan.

 

[termac50]

Well, I just pointed an industrial strength building fan at my open case for 10 mins, temps settled at 45. Kind of odd that even with the case off and no external fan on, the temps still stayed at 52+. I took off the arctic cooler and there was a decent layer of arctic silver on both the cooler and cpu. Is that too much thermal compound?

 

[Roguestar]

Try 401.

 

[termac50]

Wow, it worked @ 401! Ty much!

Why the hell does it work, and not 390, 400 etc? I'm really scratching my head now.

 

[termac50]

Any idea how to get the temp down? It's sitting at 60 right now @ 3.2ghz, idle. Vcore reads at 1.275, and it's set to auto in the bios.

 

[Markfw]

Get an aftermarket heatsink.

 

[termac50]

Using arctic freezer 7. I turned vcore up to 1.325, temp stable at 57-58. I open up Speedfan and something interesting shows...core1 temp 1.34, core 2 temp 1.94?

 

[FightTest]

Last I knew Speedfan didn't work with the DS3. The only two accurate temp sensors are Intel's Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT) or CoreTemp. CoreTemp crashed a lot on me, though, so I use TAT. Both give/gave the same readings.

Go into your PC Health section in the BIOS and disable Smartfan. Your HSF will run at full speed and give you much better temps. Dropped mine by about 10C.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: termac50
Using arctic freezer 7. I turned vcore up to 1.325, temp stable at 57-58. I open up Speedfan and something interesting shows...core1 temp 1.34, core 2 temp 1.94?

I have an AC Freezer 7 too, and am running 1.320v core and my idle temp is 52C in TAT/CoreTemp. Are you using Arctic Silver thermal paste?

Also, how fast the fan runs has a direct impact on CPU temps. I use Gigabyte's EasyTune software to set the fan speed.

In the Smart Fan tab, I set the temp for 100% fan speed to 46C. The fan is typically at 900-1200rpm at idle at even during gaming never goes over about 1900rpm. It only hits the full 2500rpm during benchmarking (i.e. Prime95 or similar).

Try that and see how your temps are.

 

[termac50]

Yep, using Arctic silver 5 paste. I did disable Smartfan in the bios. I have more temp programs than I know what to do with now. All of them give me different readings.

Current settings vcore 1.275, 401x8 for 3.2

Core1, 2 temps:

Speedfan 50 (only gives 1 temp)
TAT 54, 51
Rightmark cpu clock utility 48 (1 temp shown)
Coretemp 51, 50

This is at idle. So it does look like disabling Smartfan and having the cpu fan on blast full time dropped the temp down

At this point, I give up overclocking the thing anymore. Too much of a headache. If you guys have any ideas on why the temps are still up to 50, please tell I know 50 isn't anything to worry about, but with 60% load, it gets up to 60. I cleaned and reapplied arctic silver to the heatsink/cpu, changed the direction of the cpu fan, put another fan in the side of the case.

Should I just drop down to 3 ghz, and be happy with 45-47 temps, and call it a day?

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: termac50
Well, I just pointed an industrial strength building fan at my open case for 10 mins, temps settled at 45. Kind of odd that even with the case off and no external fan on, the temps still stayed at 52+. I took off the arctic cooler and there was a decent layer of arctic silver on both the cooler and cpu. Is that too much thermal compound?

With thermal paste the thinner the better. It's really just there to make sure there's no air gaps. It's not really a good conductor of heat.

 

[termac50]

I played around w/ it a little more, moved some stuff around, changed the direction of the heatsink/fan. At 3.2 and 1.31 vcore, temps are 47, 48 idle. Running dual prime's, it's 65, 67. I suppose this means 3.2 ain't for me?

I did download the new F9 bios, it helped to solve the problem with this board "forgetting" my overclock settings.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: termac50
Wow, it worked @ 401! Ty much!

Why the hell does it work, and not 390, 400 etc? I'm really scratching my head now.

Because the p965 chipset has all sorts of black holes at various FSB speeds.