Help Overclocking Q6600 on P5E Board

I'm a noob when it comes to clocking. I've read a few articles here and there. I'm just trying to get a little something more out of my Q6600 chip. I found one youtube video that I've tried the settings and they seem to work but just want to get a second opinion.

Here is the video
And here is my hardware breakdown.

Motherboard - Asus P5E
Chip - Q6600 G0
Ram - 4 x 1GB XMS2 -PC6400 800MHz CM2X1024-6400

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hi mkabwilliams!

What kind of cooling are you using? May as well list your other components for completeness sake. You've got a G0 chip which, in general, are/were a good stepping to have so that's a plus. Start reading here.

Haven't played with 775 for a while but there are a few threads in the forum on 775 and q6600's so some searches and reading will be worth the time and effort. Here's one of mine but DO NOT USE MY VCORES AS YOU WILL KILL YOUR CHIP! Might have some useful stuff as far as other settings. Some other useful stuff can be found here, here and here.

One of the things I do is, starting at default but then raising overclock (leaving all voltages on auto), boot into windows then use speedfan to see what the board's giving for VCORE, VTT and vNB. Keep an eye on temperatures!! As I reboot, slowly increase the fsb and get into windows I keep checking those 3 voltages. After a number of those tests, the 3 voltages will either stabilize (vcore won't, though) or you'll be able to estimate what voltages you'll need for those to go higher. Reboot, go into bios and set those voltages manually. The board tends to give more voltage than you need (particularly on the cpu) so you can start with a little less voltage. I'd also recommend grabbing setfsb because you'll likely be able to reach higher speeds using it rather than trying to boot at a huge fsb from bios.

Read a bit, test a bit (don't go crazy and keep the core temps below 85C) then post your bios settings and results. Good luck!!!

Listen to this man

http://hwbot.org/submission/2602753_funsoul_wprime___32m_core_2_q6600_(2.4ghz)_8sec_171ms

The only other components I could list are the video card and the hard drive. The video card is NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS. The hard drive is LITEON 128GB SSD. The system is just one I've pieced together the heatsink is a Rosewill RCX-Z3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200013.

Pretty much this is a plex media server box thats setup with with couchpotato and sonarr. It runs great and all but I just figured why not push it a little more for the fun of it.

The heatsink/cooling's going to limit you...interested in upgrading heatsinks or getting an AIO water kit?

Regardless...do some reading and testing then post back here. Pretty sure we'll be able to help

Thank you funsoul I will check out that link and see what I can absorb from it. I wouldn't mind updating the heatsink eventually if it was to help me get a little more out of this old guy.

You're very welcome! Make sure to check all those links/threads...tons of useful info. Here's, iirc, one of the ballsiest air coolers available. Worth googling to see if there are better before buying anything, though. It'll get you a few 100MHz more than the one you're using.

There are several options out there better than the Hyper 212 Evo, it's more of an entry-level cheap cooling solution from the impression I get, although; it is better than some much cheaper heatsinks.

A few examples of some very good (In My Opinion) heatsinks are: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (older, usually fairly cheap on used market, better temps than Hyper 212 +/EVO), Noctua NH-D14 (overkill for Q6600 at mild overclock), Prolimatech Megahalems, Phanteks PH-TC14PE (also probably overkill for Q6600 at mild overclock).

Also, you don't want to blindly just follow other people's voltage settings for a specific overclocked speed. Your particular CPU might require more or less voltage, depending upon the quality of your particular CPU.

Your setup might require more CPU voltage (vCore) since you are running four sticks of memory (requires more voltage to stabilize the CPU since it is more strain on the system overall).

I may be back to comment/help more later, but I've gotta go right now.