I sold my friend a 3.6 Q6600 (rig)...

[chubbyfatazn]

I almost never overclock rigs I build for other people. If I do, it's only for close friends, after they ask me to, and after I warn them of the possible side effects of doing so.

Boot loops in my experience were 1) motherboard fault (Gigabyte Z68) or 2) power supply issue mentioned above.

 

[Spungo]

WTF!? taking the case off is the worst possible thing you can do !! Fluid dynamics majors get in here and explain!

My computer at work is brutal for trapping heat in the case. One thing I like doing is putting my sandwich on the case so it heats up before lunch

 

[Gikaseixas]

My ancient i7 860 used to run @ 4.0ghz and i had to lower my clocks to about 3.2ghz.
My mobo gave up 6 months ago and i got a new one, now i'm keeping it @ 3.6ghz. I guess 4.0ghz was probably too much so 3.6ghz for a Q6600 is pushing it. Lower the clocks and problem will be solved

 

[Arachnotronic]

Remove the OC. For what he does I doubt he'd notice anyway. It's an 8 year old CPU you can't expect to push it like that.

I still can't believe the Q6600 is that old...yikes.

 

[Gikaseixas]

I still can't believe the Q6600 is that old

It's a legend

 

[Ratman6161]

It is very common that OC headroom gets a little worse after a while. Nothing to worry about, just lower the clock. 3.3 Ghz should probably be OK.

I just noticed this thread because last weekend I decided my old Q6600 had crapped out for good. It was my full time PC for several years clocked at 3.2 and then it's been a home ESXi lab running pretty much 24x7 for years more. At one point it started crashing once in a while so I lowered it to 3.0 and its gone another year or so since then (still 24x7) .

So it's had a good run. A very good run! But when the box died over the weekend I decided not to even bother troubleshooting it. I guess I may still look at it. Could be lots of things other than the CPU. It it's a PS, I've got a spare I could slap in there. If its the motherboard or memory though its going in the trash.

Any system that's gone this long and overclocked the whole time has done pretty well. At some point you just have to say its not worth messing with and get something new(er). Perhaps my i7 2600K will become the new ESXi server, who knows.

 

[gmaster456]

Every few generations intel comes out with a legendary CPU. The Q6600, i7 920, maybe the 2600K.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This sounds exactly like a power supply problem I had a while back. The PSU would reset after it was unplugged for a few minutes, then no problem until the next random shutdown. I thought mine was heat related as well, but it just turned out to be a crappy PSU. Replaced it and never had another problem with random shutdowns.

I was wondering about it. The PSU is an Antec EarthWatts 650W, made by Delta. But maybe it's on the way out?

 

[Ketchup]

I was wondering about it. The PSU is an Antec EarthWatts 650W, made by Delta. But maybe it's on the way out?

The PSU is powering a very power-hungry CPU that has been running pretty close to the limit of what those chips could handle for several years. I would probably suspect the power supply if it were me. I am sure he is ready to upgrade, but it would be interesting to see exactly what fixes the problem, and how high that CPU can still go with full stability. I was always very impressed with the performance of mine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, I'm interested in trying to get that rig back up and running for him. While he is interested in buying a new PC, he also mentioned keeping that one as a secondary. I feel kind of bad that he has run into as much trouble as he did with that rig.

It didn't help, though, that he was running such a hot system in an enclosed desk, I can't help but wonder what that might have done to it, in terms of stressing the mobo, CPU, PSU, etc. components.

Plus, the video card, I sold him a GTX460 1GB to go with it, that had one fan going bad (out of two). I gave him a really good deal, because I didn't think that it would last more than a year. He said lately, one of the fans literally fell off, so I'm not sure how much it would have had to heat up to cause one fan to completely detached. (Plastic supports melted, perhaps?)

Either way, that would cause freezes too, wouldn't it, if the video card was shot?

I'm basically looking at three avenues to refurb this box. New PSU, clock down the FSB, and new PCI-E video card (possibly something low-power, if he doesn't game much on the PC).

I'm semi-doubtful that the mobo and CPU have suffered much serious permanent damage.

 

[soccerballtux]

What everyone else said. If it could be expected to run at 3.6GHz, it would have said that on the box.

that's not why it doesn't say 3.6ghz on the box, lol

try:

• TDP
• never give the customer more than you absolutely have to

it's mostly the second one there.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

If the board can take it, try to put in a Q8400. My Q8200 could hit 2.8Ghz @ ~1.05V stable without any issues. It hardly needed any juice to get by. If it's the MOBO or PSU, gotta tell him it was AS-IS unless you implied some warranty.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If the board can take it, try to put in a Q8400. My Q8200 could hit 2.8Ghz @ ~1.05V stable without any issues. It hardly needed any juice to get by. If it's the MOBO or PSU, gotta tell him it was AS-IS unless you implied some warranty.

I gave him a six-month warranty, which is long gone by now. But I'm giving him a sweet price on an IB rig, less than I paid for it, cause I feel bad his Q6600 rig didn't work out so well. (And again for the record, while I had it, I had it running max stress for a month straight and never had any problems, so I figured it would be fine to sell to a friend. Guess pushing the redline isn't always such a good idea.)

 

[soccerballtux]

run memtest and prime95 and see if it's just voltage

usually it's just voltage. you probably have accelerating vdroop

 

[MongGrel]

My sister in law still uses my old Q6600 I used to run at 4.0, but when I redid it for her I cranked it down to about 3.2 I think.

I didn't even tell her it was OC'd at all, she just wanted something that would game relatively well a few years back.

She still uses it for web cruising mostly, pushing one that old might have been a problem I guess.

It still has an old ASUS gaming board and a pretty high end Antec PSU in it though also.

Pretty decent CPU fan too if I remember right, the nice thing is I've only had to look at it twice I think in the last 5 years.

 

[Blue_Max]

i'd definitely lower it down to 3.2GHz

Yep. 3.2 is the "golden" number that SHOULD be rock-solid stable.

If he still has issues, be prepared to offer to take it back... surely you didn't charge much for it anyway?

$100-200 vs. friendship... your call.

 

[escrow4]

Honestly I don't know why anyone would buy an old Core 2 when a Core i3 4330 would obliterate it. Sure heavy multithreaded it might be a touch slower but you'd have a modern platform that sips power. I was at a creaky old government office over here that had P4's/XP last year, they now (finally) upgraded to SNB i3 2100's with 7. The boxes don't sound like D-Day anymore and they are fairly swift. Company likely saves a fortune on energy bills as these are on five days a week and there are close to a dozen. Point is, running old rubbish eventually just becomes pointless.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If he still has issues, be prepared to offer to take it back... surely you didn't charge much for it anyway?

$100-200 vs. friendship... your call.

I really don't know why everyone seems to think I have such an adversarial relationship with my friends? It's not like he's complaining and threatening our friendship over this.

I'll take care of him, I'm already selling him a new rig (at stock speeds) for half of what I paid for it, and when I get a hold of this Q6600 rig, I'll thoroughly diagnose it and get it running solidly again, assuming nothing is majorly fried or something.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly I don't know why anyone would buy an old Core 2 when a Core i3 4330 would obliterate it.

Yes, we know a Haswell i3 outperforms it in most tasks, and takes less power. Thanks for the FYI.

PS. Was the i3-4330 available back in 2012? I don't think so.

 

[Ketchup]

I really don't know why everyone seems to think I have such an adversarial relationship with my friends? It's not like he's complaining and threatening our friendship over this...

I don't get it either. This deal is almost 2 years old, and he knew the CPU was running a pretty good overclock when he got it.

 

[tweakboy]

Shame on you. Q6600 GO. How much did the poor guy pay. lol

 

[Blue_Max]

I don't get it either. This deal is almost 2 years old, and he knew the CPU was running a pretty good overclock when he got it.

...a rather important point. I didn't notice VL necro his own thread.

Glad to see VL seems a stand-up guy and does his friend a favour instead of saying, "Sucks to be you" like a crappy friend would.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I think Alienware or some other outfits competing in the same sub-market sold gamer-bling-boxes which were factory over-clocked.

But here's a story. I was fitting our systems for RAID0 in a flush of enthusiasm back in 2004. I built my sister-in-law a system, and figured RAID0 would be better than a single SATA-150. It was. Everything was fine.

But I should have passworded the entry into the RAID-controller's BIOS. She started poking around with it, and destroyed the array.

Suppose I pass on one of my Sandy systems to someone outside the household? To a friend, for instance. I could say "I left all these overclock profiles for you in BIOS, and they're all rock-solid." Or I could simply set the clock to stock, and let the friend take responsibility for his own fiddling and tinkering.

 

[escrow4]

Yes, we know a Haswell i3 outperforms it in most tasks, and takes less power. Thanks for the FYI.

PS. Was the i3-4330 available back in 2012? I don't think so.

No but the 3220 was and it would have been only slightly slower.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, a follow-up. I was able to diagnose and fix the Q6600 rig, or at least I think I fixed it.

I hooked it up, it was still clocked at 3.6, and I ran GPU-Z, CoreTemp, and OCCT PSU test. Got a bluescreen a minute or two in.

So I took a look at the PSU, and it was really pretty caked-up with dust, so I suggested replacing it.

I removed the EarthWatts 650W, and installed a ThermalTake TR2 700W (BNIB, I had it on hand). It has a five-year warranty, so hopefully it doesn't fail before then.

I hooked everything back up, and no bluescreen, but OCCT exited, due to crossing the default 85C temp threshold on the CPU. So I boosted the temp threshold to 95C, and it exited again, and suddenly shut down. BIOS shutdown temp was set at 90C, there was no higher setting except "disabled".

Somewhere along the line, I also downclocked it to 3.33Ghz.

Anyways, even clocking down to 3.15Ghz, still at 1.33v, it was overheating in the OCCT test. However, when I originally tested the CPU, it was good for 3.3Ghz at stock volts. So I set it back to stock volts, at 3.15Ghz, and OCCT PSU test finally ran for like 12 minutes straight without a hiccup, max CPU core temp 83C (still a bit high, IMHO, for that clock and voltage, something around 1.2v). Max GPU temp was 78C, according to GPU-Z, so I figured that was OK.

So I packed it up and called it a success.