Update** 3.0 GHZ today - Just overclocked my CPU and need an opinion

[nicksort]

I have been away from overclocking and games for about 5 or 6 years and life goes on..... Fast forward to today and I decided to check the internet for the latest and greatest hardware out there to see what is good to run for gaming.
So I decide to check the specs of what i have on my business computer, wrote the stats down on the CPU and Motherboard, I then google the numbers and found that these were pretty good to overclock so I said what the heck, and I tried it.

CPU is E6400 2.13 set at 266 x 8
MB is Asus P5B

Did a quick calculation, read the How to Overclock thread briefly and tried 350x8 =2.800 and it ran pretty good so i stepped it up a notch and went to 365x8 = 2.920GHz
Wow, what an increase...
I downloaded the following

Core Temp
CPU-Z
SpeedFan
CPUID Hardware monitor

Looks good all around, the temps are steady at 60-62C at 0% and climb to about 67C with 75% load.
I tried P95 and the 100 % load it was at 74% - this scared me.

well I need to ask the experts what they think so.... what do you think?

 

[Rike]

If you mean 74C at 100% load with stock Intel cooling, I'd say that sounds about right. It's getting mighty warm, but not ready to fail on you yet. With some aftermarket air cooling, I'm sure you could push it higher yet and keep the temps below 60C.

Personally, I get nervous at anything over 70C on air, but I'm fairly cautious.

 

[Gorrillasnot]

If your PC has the room for it I would recommend an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler.
I have my E6420 OC'd to 3.2GHz and CoreTemp shows 52C when at 100% load.
I also have 6 case fans which helps too, but the Freezer 7 is a good affordable air cooler.
The link I put for refrence is from newegg.com, there may be other places to buy the freezer 7 cheaper.

 

[angry hampster]

Idling at 60*C is horrible. My temps are about on par with phatTweaker's ^ with a Thermalright Nirvana on my E6420 running around 3GHz somewhere -- airflow isn't spectacular in my case though.

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: angry hampster
Idling at 60*C is horrible. My temps are about on par with phatTweaker's ^ with a Thermalright Nirvana on my E6420 running around 3GHz somewhere -- airflow isn't spectacular in my case though.

Not horrible for an Intel stock heatsink at those speeds. The temps he described are in the same neighborhood that I had at similar speeds with and an e6600 and stock cooling.

 

[Roguestar]

That's a pretty decent overclock, and reasonable temperatures assuming the Intel stock cooler and no voltage changes.

Like phatTweaker said, consider getting a reasonable aftermarket cooler to slap on just to keep the temperatures even lower. You'll be able to push it a little higher as a result, if you want.

 

[Shmee]

TBH, I am somewhat astounded that it does that well with stock cooling. I had an e6320, oced it to around 2.4, on stock, results were similar. I have long since sold that chip and gotten better cooling, but if I new what I know now back then, I could have done better. (making good voltage adjustments, better cooling)

now i have a q6600 at 3, but its time to upgrade my cooling again!

 

[nicksort]

Like I said, I did this the easy was so far, just multipling and no voltage changes yet.
The funny thing is I just checked the ram and I am using DDR 667......
I guess I better get the cooling issue down a little, I checked the Artic cooler that phat suggested and it is big, I hope it fits on this board. I read about 1/2 of the reviews on that store site and no one had mentioned that they installed it on a P5B.
thanks for the replies so far.....

 

[nicksort]

While i sitting around today i decided to see if i could step it up another notch.
Remember I started at
350x8=2800 ran great
then
355x8=2840 ran great
then
365x8=2920 ran great, temps were climbing

today i decided to see if I could go another

375x8=3000 3.0GHz shocked me, she booted and is running fine, temp is steady at 66C.

I think I will order the Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro on Monday unless there are other units that work as well for the same cost?

How far has anyone got with a E6400 on air?

 

[nicksort]

So now that I have gone this far, what should I do next, I know i need cooling so that is the first thing to do.
This is what i did, I changed the setting in Jumperfree Configurations from Auto to Manual and then changed the 266 to 375
I then went to CPU Configurations and changed the multiplier from 08.0max-06.0min to only 08.0

Once i get the cooler bought and installed I will start over again, I have reset my setting to put my cpu back to its original 2.16 setting.

I have NO idea if I am on the right path to what I need to do so if you have any help for a newbee I would appreciate it, thanks again.....

 

[Markfw]

I have gone as high as 3.5 on my E6400, but after a while, 3.3 was the best I could do. Right now its @ 3.2 to be sure I get no EUE units on F@H.