Sub $50 CPU overclocking. E3300

So I've had this baby wolfdale for a long time, got it for $40 years ago, was using it in my HTPC, never knew they could OC soo easily.

My q6600 box with P5E lost it's q6600 because I put the chip in someone's workstation so they could run VMs, their CPU was a terrible 1.8GHz C2D but had a nice mobo.

Using a stock intel heatsink used on 120W P4s instead of the puny thing the e3300 came with, it runs pretty cool at 3.5GHz(2.5 stock) with 1.25v bumped to 1.29... and droops way back down to 1.256, damn P5E motherboard.

I thought these were bad-bin e8400/8500's, what's the max safe(for 24/7) voltage?

I would say the bump in voltage is very minimal, if it is stable there... run it for a while and see what the temps look like. if all is good, rock it. max temp for that cpu is 74c i believe.

dtrunk said:

I would say the bump in voltage is very minimal, if it is stable there... run it for a while and see what the temps look like. if all is good, rock it. max temp for that cpu is 74c i believe.

Click to expand...

Bumped clock to 3.6, voltage to 1.35, droops to 1.32, stable for an hour.

It seems to need a big jump in voltage to clock higher because of the huge droop, annoying.

Intel says max voltage 1.356, I guess I can bump up until the non-loaded voltage matches that.

Shell said:

So I've had this baby wolfdale for a long time, got it for $40 years ago, was using it in my HTPC, never knew they could OC soo easily.

Using a stock intel heatsink used on 120W P4s instead of the puny thing the e3300 came with, it runs pretty cool at 3.5GHz(2.5 stock) with 1.25v bumped to 1.29... and droops way back down to 1.256, damn P5E motherboard.

I thought these were bad-bin e8400/8500's, what's the max safe(for 24/7) voltage?

Click to expand...

Oh yes, the Wolfdale and Allendale/Conroe CPU's do tend to overclock quite easily with a good board and good cooling.

For a Wolfdale such as that, 1.4V would typically be the max safe voltage for 24/7 operation. Though a better cooler might be required at that higher voltage to keep temps under control.

Shell said:

Intel says max voltage 1.356, I guess I can bump up until the non-loaded voltage matches that.

Click to expand...

You should note though that this is just what their max stock voltage (VID) is (for chips binned at higher voltage, due to needing extra voltage to keep weaker cores stable). It is not the max SAFE voltage.

I have gone above 1.36V and 1.4V several times in the past with no ill effects to my Wolfdale CPU's. So, you are not likely to break or kill your CPU if you exceed 1.36V, at least as long as you have reasonable cooling and temps aren't insanely high.