My first OC attempts! Now what?

Well the Antec 900 and Evga 8800 640 finally arrived friday and I built my first system, took about 6 hours from ~9AM to ~3PM. Took my time and all that. I'll have a pic of the insides soon I think I did a decent wiring job too.

Man this thing SCREAMS! At 1440x900 resolution with stock E6420, STALKER with the latest patch and max settings gave me no problems! I really don't need to OC this baby.

But I have to try and see what she gives me, so I attempted my first OC tonight!

Multiplier: 8
FSB: 375
Memory: 5-5-5-15
CPU Voltage: I forget offhand, but it's 1 setting below the default 1.35+ (it's 1.34something).

Question: When there is no activity, why does CPU-Z show Core Speed 2244.1mhz, Multiplier x6, Bus Speed 374 (even though I set 375) and Rated FSB 1496mhz? But the moment I do something, like load a new webpage, the Core Speed shows the correct 2.99ghz and Multiplier 8? I think Gigabyte has some kind of power saving setting or something, can't think off hand, that might be doing this?

SpeedFan shows (with nothing but this window open):

Temp1:38c <- what are these "Temp" readings for?
Temp2:18c
Temp3:-2c
Core 0:23c
Core 1:31c

Fan1: 192857 RPM <- is this because I connectd all 4 Antec 900 fans together with a molex to the PSU ?

I am going to try for 400FSB.

But now what?

Do I try to lower the CPU voltage?

Do I try to tighten the memory timings?

When should I run a 24 hour stress test?

Popped the FSB up to 400 and so far so good. Will give Orthos a run.

the reason your overclock reads low is that intel's speed step is reducing it during periods of no load...

go into your bios and disable the speedstep options

EmAn said:

the reason your overclock reads low is that intel's speed step is reducing it during periods of no load...

go into your bios and disable the speedstep options

Click to expand...

Thanks! I forgot about that, and it worked.

OK, I went to run Orthos Small FFT's, and after like 5 seconds I got a BSOD and it said "uncorrectable hardware error" and then rebooted.

Did I fry something?

Edit: nevermind, had to bump up Voltage back to norm (1.35+)

Usually if you can't pass Orthos or boot Windows it's a voltage issue.

Nice oc so far you can drop your timmings to 4-4-4-12

Oh and try using Intel TAT or Core Temp for monitoring temps.

Intel TAT
http://www.overclock.net/downloads/138139-intel-tat.html

Core Temp
http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/CoreTemp/

Well I had my FSB at 400, kept voltage at stock (1.35), 8 multiplier, ran Orthos on each core of the E6420, and got through about 10 mins of Small FFT's before BSOD.

So now I'm at FSB 375 and seeing how that goes.

inkfx said:

Oh and try using Intel TAT or Core Temp for monitoring temps.

Intel TAT
http://www.overclock.net/downloads/138139-intel-tat.html

Core Temp
http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/CoreTemp/

Click to expand...

Thanks, but neither work with Vista 64-bit, even after Running as Admin, or disabling UAC, etc.

I have speedfan..

OK, so at FSB 375, Orthos has been running on both cores for 20 minutes and counting with no BSOD's.

However I get:

WARNING: Affinity Mask: Process: 0x1 Sys: 0x3

What does this mean and is it anything to be concerned about ?

Why don't you up your voltage at all? You could pull off a much better OC with that

Seriously you have the best air cooler out at the moment with a killer fan as well. Bump that voltage up!

So the only thing you have to worry about with bumping the CPU voltage up (or past it's limit) is heat?

My CPU says 1.35 is the "limit".

pump it up!

Yeah, it says its the limit but its not really ;P Aslong as load temps are below 60*C you're fine. I reckon you can easily hit 3.2ghz (400x8) with barely a boost in voltage. Most chips are safe at 1.4v under air, 1.5v under water and 1.6v under phase.

Yeah, 1.4v is perfectly safe as long as you stay under 60 degrees load CPU temp. Lots of people run 1.45v to 1.5v with no problem if you have good cooling. I routinely do 1.5v with watercooling. Typically, Intel CPUs can overvolt up to about 10% with good cooling.

Have you raised chipset voltage and made sure pci\pcie buses are locked?