Q9450 Overclocking: What next?

[bhishma]

I can boot my Q9450 (on an Asus P5Q-Deluxe) into windows all the way up to 3.7 GHz but realized when I did that cores 1 and 4 failed Prime within 5 seconds. I'm working my way back up but wondering if i'm not tweaking enough things.

So far I've only been messing with FSB and vcore. Oddly, I can only run 3.4GHz prime stable for 5+ minutes when I'm at Vcore 1.336V which, as i've been reading around, is way more than I need. My question is: should I be tweaking with the NB and SB voltages while maintaining a more reasonable Vcore (for 3.4 maybe 1.27V would be reasonable).

I'm currently overwhelmed with all the options in the Bios and am very hesitant to mess with things (burned my Q6600 a month ago after overlapping the heatsink and just got computer back up). What's my next step? What should I start adventuring with besides Vcore and FSB to be prime stable at 3.6GHz? Thanks.

 

[Drsignguy]

Welcome to AnAndTech!


For starters, have you read up on the "How To" Overclock Sticky at the top of the forum?
What you need to start out with this chip is to drop back to default levels and go into bios and reset a couple of things. 1, is your ram ( what type of ram do you have BTW ), set it to 1:1 ratio, set the timings to manual and adjust them to default levels that they require. As for the southbranch, leave it set as is. Northbranch, leave as is for now. What is your VID for your chip. Set it to that voltage. Pci-e should be locked at 100mhz. Fsb, set it to 375: 8 x 375 = 3000. Try that for now and run prime. Just remember, voltage jumps to your cpu is NOT the only thing that is required to overclock. There are many variables and one, on the personal side, is patience. The other is understanding, ( which I try to absorbe more everyday )

BTW, what did you do to "burn" your Q6600? overlapping the chip?

 

[myocardia]

Welcome to anandtech. You're at the point now that you'll have to start raising your northbridge voltage, and also the VTT. Make sure to keep your VTT below 1.40, though, with these 45nm chips. You can kill them with too much VTT.

 

[heyheybooboo]

From - - - > >
http://www.overclockersclub.co...iews/intel_q9450/3.htm


3.2GHz on 1.175 volts was a promising start for this chip. Having a VID of 1.0625v was another plus in the quest to wring some additional performance from the newest from Intel. With the promising start I was very optimistic that the 9450 would be a great clocking chip. 450 x 8 came easily with 1.30 volts on the core and a tweak to the northbridge and FSB voltages to add some stability. Booting at 475 x 8 was possible but did not offer any stability, even with up to 1.75 on the chipset and 1.425v on the CPU core. That was kind of dissapointing, but nevertheless it gave a point to work down from. Lowering the clockspeed a bit at a time, I reached stability at 463 x 8 with 1.360 volts to the core and 1.6 volts to the northbridge. Not too shabby for a day's work! The temperatures did not seem to scale with the voltage like the QX9770 and Q6600s do, but the 9450 still gets a little warm. With 1.37 volts, I saw 64C with the less than optimum heatsink I used.

 

[The-Noid]

You will need higher northbridge voltage. With p45 somewhere around 1.40v should be enough for that oc.

 

[bhishma]

Thanks the help! Feel like i have a sense of direction in this universe finally.

My VID is 1.25 (the highest possible apparently). Just my luck. I may be forced to be satisfied with 3.6 windows stable.

I wonder how far I'll get with such a high VID.

As for the Q6600 - I lapped the processor great. It was the heatsink that I did too much. When i put it all back together the heatsink wasn't making contact with the processor. Needless to say, the CPU didn't last much longer.

 

[The-Noid]

VID has very little relationship to your overclock. I have had Core2's with 1.325 go 4.0 ghz while a chip with 1.0000v couldn't hit 3.8 ghz stable.

 

[bhishma]

Right now I'm at about 1.32 VTT, 1.4 NB and 1.35 Vcore (1.336 after Vdroop). FSB at 450.

Core 4 always fails first, about 4 seconds after I start prime. Core 1 follows about 10 seconds later. My idle temps are 45,45,40,40 and my room is hot (can't afford AC over summer).

Is this about as reasonable as I'm going to get without messing with GTL (something i am completely unfamiliar with)? I don't much care for Prime Stability as long as gaming stability (i don't game often) and OS stability are solid. So far, the latter two are.

 

[The-Noid]

I would blame the motherboard. That is awful hot for a room, I assume the motherboard is causing instability not necessarily the chip in itself.

 

[bhishma]

Do you think i should just keep it at 3.6 even though it's prime unstable? With the AC on (come August it'll be on 24/7) it runs at 42,42,38,38 which i am comfortable with.

Or should i clock it down to 3.2 or 3.4 and try to get it prime stable? Obviously my use for the computer matters: I'll be "gaming" and doing quite a bit of simulations programming.

 

[Drsignguy]

No, that is why I sugested to drop it down to get you to a point of stability. Then move up from each stable OC. As Myocardia has sugested along with the others about your northbridge is all well and good, and they're right, but if you don't have stibility then whats the point?

 

[bhishma]

I was always planning on starting back from scratch so I didn't mean to sound like i was ignoring that option. I was just wondering, impatient that I am, if there were any short term and easy solutions to the problem. Alas, as usual, there isn't. Darn.

Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[Drsignguy]

Originally posted by: bhishma
I was always planning on starting back from scratch so I didn't mean to sound like i was ignoring that option. I was just wondering, impatient that I am, if there were any short term and easy solutions to the problem. Alas, as usual, there isn't. Darn.

Thanks for the help everyone.

The cool thing is, you learn....Hey everyone has to. Here is an example.... Get a BBQ grill and it comes with directions, do you read them to learn how to build it or do you just ignore them and try to build it on the fly? Some can just look at all the pieces on the floor and put them together. Some NEED the directions. As for me, it all depends on how big the grill is....

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: bhishma
As for the Q6600 - I lapped the processor great. It was the heatsink that I did too much. When i put it all back together the heatsink wasn't making contact with the processor. Needless to say, the CPU didn't last much longer.

That's actually surprising, Intel's thermal monitoring/shutdown features are normally very robust, and it's quite hard to actually kill a chip.

My friend used to test it by just setting the heatsink on top of the CPU, and pulling it away and watching the system shut down.

Did you disable TM2 (Thermal Monitor 2) setting in the BIOS when overclocking? You shouldn't disable that, ever.

 

[bhishma]

Well, it was a somewhat convoluted story.

I didn't disable TM2. I tried to boot windows, it just shutdown. Wide-eyed, I restarted it to see the BIOS temp reading. It was 80C and climbing. I immediately shut it off. Ordered another heatsink, put it on and the processor was working (temps were down about 5-10C, very happy considering it was a B3). I tried to change some RAM settings and blammo, wouldn't post. Replaced motherboard, still wouldn't post. Replaced processor, everything fine. Could only deduce that it was the processor. Won't make same mistake again.

 

[aigomorla]

vid is just point in the right direction.

The Q9650 ES on loan had a vid of 1.250

And would rape 99% of all the yorkfields on this forum.


hows that for ya?