picked up new system, e6600 asus 680i chipset water cooling help with OC'ing

[MJE]

Hello,

I initially posted this in the cooling but a mod told me I'd be better off posting it in here. Its been a while since I've used Intel...and honestly I'm excited to see how it all works out. Older system is a athlon 3200 running standard speed with a swiftech heatsink and big fan thats deafening. Heres the post I made yesterday...My gear should be here tomorrow according to the tracking information.

Hello everyone,

I just picked up a new system that consists of the Intel E6600, Asus 680i mobo (step down from the striker mobo but essentially the same thing), 2 gigs of corsair, dual 320 gig hard drives, a new case and a evga 8800gtx highest end version they have available.

I also purchased the full cooling kit from swiftech www.swiftnets.com

Part # Processor compatibility
MSRP
US $
H20-220-APEX ULTRA + Complete system cooling kit, including Apogee GT CPU Water-block, MCW60 VGA kit, MCW30 Chipset water-block, MCR220 Radiator with fans and MCB-120 R2 "Radbox", MCP655 pump, MCRES Micro Reservoir, tubings, Smatcoils, Hydrx coolant, and various noise reduction accessories $379.95



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Now I've only done air cooled setups...primarily from swiftech because I enjoy working with them. What should I expect from my e6600? I have 2 cases..I purchased a new case which is a ThermalTake Armor VA8000BWS/SWA Full Tower and is viewable on http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/...le.php/3657561

I already own a 3dcool case which is the tornado 3000 series. Its been sitting in its box for a while and i finally put my current air cooled system into it.

the link for the mobo is here http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...&modelm enu=1 and in case the model number does not show up its a P5N32-E SLI 680i chipset.

I apologize for the novel...I'm really excited to get into watercooling and also to have something interesting to post vs. my air cooling experiences. I need a bit of help as far as what settings I should use for stability and performance...as usual I will ask the impossible...the highest performance along with the most stability. I'd like to get 3.8ghz out of the e6600 atleast...if thats a low goal then please let me know. The system will be coming together on Wednesday after someone gives me their opinion on what case to use.

thanks and looking forward to hearing from you guys.

-Mike

[muddocktor]

Hi MJE, welcome to OC Forums and the Intel Core 2 Duo world. :D I think you will really enjoy messing around with your E6600. I don't have the exact same board as you on either of my C2D systems but I'll help you out all I can. :)

One nice thing about the Nvidia chipset boards is the fact that you can decouple the ram speed from the fsb speed, which makes overclocking a bit easier with a low multiplier processor like the E6300 with cheaper and slower ram. But with the 9 multi on your E6600 you should have a little extra headroom for overclocking anyways.

I just d/l'ed the manual for your board and the bios is set up a bit differently from my P5N-E SLI board, but the principles will be the same. Go into the Extreme Tweaker section and set the AI Tuning to manual so that you can control your overclock instead of letting the board do it for you. I would leave all the PCIEX frequencies set at 100 and concentrate on overclocking the processor first. Go into the Memory frequency section and unlink the memory speed from the fsb speed. Then set your ram to it's programmed spd timings manually and reboot to confirm that is setting correctly. Next, go into the overclocking section and start bumping the fsb speeds up, testing for stability. I would bump it to 3 GHz to start testing at with stock vcore, then work your way up to where you need more vcore to run at. Keep experimenting and see where your processor's sweet spot is, then start tweaking your memory speed and ram timings for best performance. You also might need to bump up the volts for the northbridge as you get higher on the fsb speeds, but I don't think you will need much of a boost on this with an e6600 processor.

A few things I always do when overclocking are I set anything dealing with spread spectrum to disabled. Also make sure for now that your memory command rate is set to 2T. I'm not sure how well these Nvidia chipsets will deal with a 1T command rate yet but it might be worth experimenting with later.

Another thing that these Nvidia chipset Asus boards need is better cooling on the northbridge and southbridge if you plan to overclock significantly. At the very least, you need to remove them and check flatness of the sinks and reinstall with AS5 or Ceramique or your high performance tim of your choice. Mounting a fan on the northbridge will also help in keeping it cool.

Hope this helps you out a bit man. :)

[greenmaji]

you also have the HT bus between the NB and the SB you can drop the multiplier on for some extra headroom.

I would advise tweaking 1T and 1:1 seperatly from max CPU and Mem frequency (this involves alot of tweaking)

The board is pretty solid for 1T with the right ram and high enough Vdimm though :thup:

[CrazyIrish]

Also note that the watercooling kit you purchased doesn't come with everything you need to take care of your 8800gtx. You will probably need this also: http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mc21.asp The standard Swiftech kit includes parts for the GPU and the memory, but a lot of newer high-end cards have other parts that need cooling. Best of luck to you.