Q6600 overclocking experience

[bryanW1995]

So, as many of you know, I finally got my mom's Q6600 rig up and running the other day. I had it stable (or so I thought) at 9x390, but I kept getting random errors in seti@home. I went by her place on sunday and applied my fairly decent amount of c2d and c2q overclocking experience to the problem. I reread graysky's guide, adjusted the case fans, etc etc etc. Finally I decided to check it out with the side of the case off. I noticed that there was a lot of airflow heading from the cpu towards the cd drive...whoops...it's amazing how your temps go down literally 10c immediately when you aim the hsf in the correct direction...

needless to say, there's still a lot more oc headroom. sadly, I had to depart after getting 3.528. I'll go for 3.6+ next week. :|

 

[akhilles]

Same thing here. I have one day a week to tweak my friend's Kentfield on X38.

 

[akhilles]

Same thing here. I have one day a week to tweak my friend's Kentfield on X38.

 

[Drsignguy]

That is very cool to give your mom an overclocked Q6600. I admire that in you. Nice work Bryan!

 

[Winterpool]

Originally posted by: Drsignguy
That is very cool to give your mom an overclocked Q6600. I admire that in you. Nice work Bryan!

But when does his mum actually get to use the computer -- when it's not being overclocked?

And I presume the distributed computing only takes her 'idle' cpu cycles?

I'm always paranoid about what's going on inside my case. That's why I want a clear panel: not to show off the bling, but simply to see what the heck is going on (are my fans all blowing, have none of the cables got caught in something, etc). Granted, if I've built right, nothing very peculiar should happen, but it's paranoia, you see... (Recently a smaller wire did get too close to one of my fans and start making a clicking sound, which scared the shite out of me until I found out what it was.)

Given your extensive quadcore experience (you'll be up there with Mark et al soon), do you feel that the Q6600 is hands down the chip to buy right now, especially if one is going to overclock? We here mostly parrot the conventional wisdom that fast dualcore (ie E8400) beats quadcore for current gaming, but I wonder if that really matters given most Q6600s will overclock over 3 GHz and the gpu-limiting of any high-res gaming.

 

[Gillbot]

I have also learned that throwing water cooling on a Q6600 running on a lower end P35 mobo will not help your OC's over air much at all.

 

[ChaosDivine]

Originally posted by: Drsignguy
That is very cool to give your mom an overclocked Q6600. I admire that in you. Nice work Bryan!

QFT. I could only afford to upgrade my mom's computer to an OC'ed E4300 (last summer).

 

[TC91]

Hey Bryan, just curious, what cooler / voltages / temps is that q6600 running at? I was thinking of getting a q6600 later maybe; if they can do around 3.6ghz or so with relatively reasonable temps/voltages it might be a good upgrade.

 

[bryanW1995]

@winterpool: I got the quad for mom b/c it was $179 plus tax/shipping at microcenter and I do DC. It doesn't hurt that she has it in a very cool room. If you're not running DC, doing video editing, or you have any concern about thermals at all then a 45nm dualcore will be cheaper, be faster clock/clock and oc much higher. A Q6600 is really neat to have, espcially as you creep up over 3.5 ghz, but the heat output from these things is literally unreal. You will be able to upgrade later to a quad in a few years if necessary, but, realistically, you'll probably be gtg until westmere or sandy bridge with just the dualcore in most situations.

@Gillbot: a lapped true with push/pull is typically equal to or better than most (non-aigomorla-style) water. do you think your oc was limited by the mobo, the cpu, or the cooling solution?

@TC91: lapped tuniq, 1.52 vcore bios/1.45 load, temps 60/58/58/57 (using tjmax of 95c). From everything I've read, 3.6 is possible but absolutely NOT guaranteed for a Q6600, especially for 24/7 load. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get closer to 3.6, but I'm scared to go over 1.52 in bios so I might have to settle for something a little lower. We'll see what happens this weekend...

 

[Gillbot]

I now think my limiting factor might have been Mobo but we'll see after friday when my DFI gets here. My Neo2-FR had no problems upwards of 505fsb with my E6550 but with my E3110 I had a hard time with 450-475. Now with the Q6600, it just doesn't seem to want to be stable when I push it past 3.2 or so Ghz.

 

[Jessica69]

I'm just curious what batch numbers y'all have on your Q6600 cpus that are having problems OC'ing past 3.2GHz or having to run high voltages to get to around 3.6GHz, like bryan (1.52V is a tad high for 3.5V, at least for batches in the L75C or 75X series....)

I only ask because I've got a Q6600, batch L745 that has a VID of 1.275V and OC's to 3.6GHz on 1.36V. I've gotten 4GHz out of it, but it took 1.5V, unfortunately. MB=Asus Maximus Formula, 4 x 2GB Mushkin Redline DDR2-1000 memory. Yep, all four slots filled and it runs 3.6GHz 24/7 at 1.35V.

I'd almost bet the people who are having problems getting above 3.2GHz or so have batches in the L8XX series......known poor OC'ers, relatively speaking.

 

[Gillbot]

Interesting....

On my Neo2-FR my VID was read as 1.3250v, on the DFI it shows the vid as 1.1625v

EDIT: I see that it reads the VID of whatever the mobo wants the target voltage set to. If you have EIST/C1E on it shows the VID when it's dropped in speed as lower.

 

[brencat]

Originally posted by: Jessica69
I only ask because I've got a Q6600, batch L745 that has a VID of 1.275V and OC's to 3.6GHz on 1.36V. I've gotten 4GHz out of it, but it took 1.5V, unfortunately. MB=Asus Maximus Formula, 4 x 2GB Mushkin Redline DDR2-1000 memory. Yep, all four slots filled and it runs 3.6GHz 24/7 at 1.35V.

Jessica, I'd venture to say your $250 mobo may have a lot to do with your success as well. That particular board kicks ass Enjoy it!

I have the same $75 IP35-E as Bryan and I'm pretty sure this ain't the optimal OCing board for a quad.