My first C2D overclock - hows it look?

E4300 with Noctua NH-U12F cooler
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz
Asus P5N-E SLI mobo

Had it at 3.6 iirc yesterday, but within 2 mins of Orthos running the system restarted. I think I got a bit carried away so I've put it to what it is now and am doing a long stability test. Seems fine so far. Max temp I've seen under load is 52 deg C, and it idles at around 22 each core with no stepspeed.





Looking at the above two screenshots, I've got a few questions which I'll list:

• What is the max temperature I should start to get worried about? I know Orthos stresses the system far harder then anything I'd do on a day to day basis. I set myself a limit of 55 deg C. Is that OK? Or could I push it a little more?
• Could the RAM be pushed harder?
• What's the max safe VCore I should run considering the above temps?
• Overall, is it a good overclock? Would there be any point in placing further strain on the system by looking for an extra 200MHZ or so out of the CPU? Or should I now concentrate on the RAM now that the CPU seems settled at 3.2 GHZ?

1) 65°C is the highest you should go
2) What is your RAM at atm?
3) I would say 1.5v max
4) Push it to the limit!

Updated with the screenshot for the RAM timings. Sorry I forgot oops. Not changed anything on the RAM in BIOS apart from setting it unlinked to FSB and putting it at 800 MHZ.

milano_chris said:

• What is the max temperature I should start to get worried about? I know Orthos stresses the system far harder then anything I'd do on a day to day basis. I set myself a limit of 55 deg C. Is that OK? Or could I push it a little more?
• Could the RAM be pushed harder?
• What's the max safe VCore I should run considering the above temps?
• Overall, is it a good overclock? Would there be any point in placing further strain on the system by looking for an extra 200MHZ or so out of the CPU? Or should I now concentrate on the RAM now that the CPU seems settled at 3.2 GHZ?

Click to expand...

According to the Intel Processor Finder the max temp for your chip is 61 °C. You can probably push it a little higher. What is the most stressing thing you use the machine to do? Find out what the max temps you get doing that is since orthos is really used to establish upper limits since it, as you pointed out, will likely push the system harder than anything else will.

Ballistix RAM have a lifetime warranty so push away. 2.2 V is their recommended voltage.

The max vcore according the processor finder is 1.3250V; if you push beyond that electromigration can cause some serious damage to your processor/ram/mb/whatever regardless of temperature. In simple terms, it occurs when the current density is more than the weakest component in the circuit can handle. My advice is to keep your vcore and other voltages within manufacture specs if you care about the longevity of your hardware.

Is it a good overclock... you've pushed the machine about 78 % above the stock values and you're asking if it's good

thats a v good OC for first time.

graysky said:

According to the Intel Processor Finder the max temp for your chip is 61 °C. You can probably push it a little higher. What is the most stressing thing you use the machine to do? Find out what the max temps you get doing that is since orthos is really used to establish upper limits since it, as you pointed out, will likely push the system harder than anything else will.

Ballistix RAM have a lifetime warranty so push away. 2.2 V is their recommended voltage.

The max vcore according the processor finder is 1.3250V; if you push beyond that electromigration can cause some serious damage to your processor/ram/mb/whatever regardless of temperature. In simple terms, it occurs when the current density is more than the weakest component in the circuit can handle. My advice is to keep your vcore and other voltages within manufacture specs if you care about the longevity of your hardware.

Is it a good overclock... you've pushed the machine about 78 % above the stock values and you're asking if it's good

Click to expand...

Thanks for your help mate. I'll reduce the voltage to what you say and see if it's still stable. I'll also set the VDimm to 2.2V and see what the RAM can do, though I would have thought that the extra bandwidth of faster RAM wouldn't make much difference, sort of like driving your car down a 2 lane motorway at 140 mph being the same as driving it down a 4 lane motorway. Unless that's only true with FSB?

Most stressing thing I do is play games like Oblivion, NFS: Carbon, TR: Anniversary and Battlefield 2 mainly.

I just find it somewhat insane that a chip that comes out of the box at 1.8GHz seems to be running happily at 3.2GHz.

YOU CALL THAT AN OVERCLOCK?!?! Why I ought to break your legs! Try to upstage ME will ya?!?! Well I...

Hmm... Wait a second... I thought you were HumanBeatBox for a minute. My mistake...

Nice overclock.

Nice OC. What kind of cooling are you using? Those are some pretty good temps for the speed. I'm pretty much at my temp limits with this chip at the settings in sig. I got mine to boot at 3.1 Ghz and started up dual prime and hit upwards of 66 to 67 in no time flat. I didn't feel like frying a new chip, so I backed off to 2.9 Ghz and couldn't happier with the chip. Nice job, at 55C, I would push it a bit further just to see what it can do, even if you don't plan on keeping there 24/7.

Try setting the CPU to 458*7 or 493*6.5 if your mobo can run half multis, and run the RAM linked if your mobo can manage that FSB. The FSB can sometimes bottleneck Intels and over 400Mhz I hear its better to run linked. Once you see if your ram/mobo can run stable at these clocks then start tightening the timings because yours are seriously loose atm, 31 tras is just silly.

Burninate said:

Nice OC. What kind of cooling are you using? Those are some pretty good temps for the speed. I'm pretty much at my temp limits with this chip at the settings in sig. I got mine to boot at 3.1 Ghz and started up dual prime and hit upwards of 66 to 67 in no time flat. I didn't feel like frying a new chip, so I backed off to 2.9 Ghz and couldn't happier with the chip. Nice job, at 55C, I would push it a bit further just to see what it can do, even if you don't plan on keeping there 24/7.

Click to expand...

I'm using THIS case. Not the prettiest thing around, nor is it the easiest to work with, but since I don't have the money to get a decent Antec 900/Lian Li/Eclipse style case it has to do, plus it sits under the desk, and I'm not the type of person to look at a case and go "wow that's pretty". I've modified it somewhat from the original to get a better fitting for my 3 SATA drives. Basically the floppy is in the middle and a 120mm fan either side. I have a 120mm amber exhaust fan on the rear, and a 120mm intake bodged onto the PCI vent for GFX and X-Fi cooling. I can't fit the regular 80mm side one as it's blocked by the huge Noctua NH-U9F sat on my CPU. I have two HDDs above the floppy and one below it. This allows max cooling for my raptors and still sufficiant air going to the HSF. TBH I could tidy it up a little especially near the bottom intake fan as the cabling isn't very tidy right now. It's not really quet either, sounds like a server TBH, but I'm not too fussed since I have the volume up when I game and I always have music on. The wife complained once about the noise, to which I showed her the cost of a good H2O kit and she kept quiet!

Denbob99 said:

Try setting the CPU to 458*7 or 493*6.5 if your mobo can run half multis, and run the RAM linked if your mobo can manage that FSB. The FSB can sometimes bottleneck Intels and over 400Mhz I hear its better to run linked. Once you see if your ram/mobo can run stable at these clocks then start tightening the timings because yours are seriously loose atm, 31 tras is just silly.

Click to expand...

The CPU is multi locked mate so I'm stuck at x9, unless there's a way round this?

As for the RAM timings, I'm a bit new to overcloking RAM, well, I've never done it before. This is what I've got my RAM at right now and I've had the Orthos stress running for about 6 hours. I'm not sure what all the individual settings mean, I just know that they are latencies of certain functions, the lower the number the quicker it is but when you lower the latency you might have to lower the MHz and get the best compromise between the two. Though a tras of 31 and that being bad means nothing to me lol.



What settings would you recommend I change?

Shouldn't CT be ~15 clocks? 31 seems high...

Nice though

Multi doesn't really matter for C2D, only a 1-3% increase for most things, Easiest thing to be would to aim for the highest clock you can get, but you can always push your RAM farther

I'll try tightening the timings to 4-4-4-15 or something and see what happens.

milano_chris said:

Thanks for your help mate. I'll reduce the voltage to what you say and see if it's still stable. I'll also set the VDimm to 2.2V and see what the RAM can do, though I would have thought that the extra bandwidth of faster RAM wouldn't make much difference, sort of like driving your car down a 2 lane motorway at 140 mph being the same as driving it down a 4 lane motorway. Unless that's only true with FSB?

Click to expand...

The FSB on a C2Q/C2D is not the bottleneck for performance; this is a common misconception. Have a look at this thread before you go pumping the FSB up to levels that won't translate into anything for you unless it is pure GHz you're going for in your o/c. In other words, if you're goal is to hit 3.0 GHz for example, it's best to do it @ the highest multiplier and lowest FSB. Again, see that thread for details.

graysky said:

The FSB on a C2Q/C2D is not the bottleneck for performance; this is a common misconception. Have a look at this thread before you go pumping the FSB up to levels that won't translate into anything for you unless it is pure GHz you're going for in your o/c. In other words, if you're goal is to hit 3.0 GHz for example, it's best to do it @ the highest multiplier and lowest FSB. Again, see that thread for details.

Click to expand...

Thanks mate. I did see that, but since I can't change the multiplier I'm somewhat stuck. I'm about to tighten the memory timings and will get orthos on the go. Would there be a point in pushing my RAM passed 900MHz? Would I see better performance form lower latency or from higher speed?

Those temps look a little too low for a 4300, what vcore are you using? If I remember correctly coretemp 0.94 underestimates the temps on the 4300 by 10C. At least thats how it was on mine.

Try coretemp 0.95

looking good though even if it ends up being 10C higher you are still at a comfortable temperature

@milano_chris: in my experience, no on the higher RAM speeds and timings. Also, what do you mean your multiplier can't be changed? Aren't they locked at a max value, like my Q6600 is locked @ 9 but I can go lower.

GTengineer said:

Those temps look a little too low for a 4300, what vcore are you using? If I remember correctly coretemp 0.94 underestimates the temps on the 4300 by 10C. At least thats how it was on mine.

Try coretemp 0.95

looking good though even if it ends up being 10C higher you are still at a comfortable temperature

Click to expand...

My VCore is currently set at 1.325 with the 100mV enabled as it wouldn't load XP with it off. Thanks for the core temp tip, got the new one and the cores are showing between 55 and 60 under orthos load and around 35-40 idle.

I've also changed the RAM to run 4-4-4-15 and it seems stable so far. SHould I change it from 2T to 1T as well?

graysky said:

@milano_chris: in my experience, no on the higher RAM speeds and timings. Also, what do you mean your multiplier can't be changed? Aren't they locked at a max value, like my Q6600 is locked @ 9 but I can go lower.

Click to expand...

Alright, never tried that, only tried putting it higher. So I gather it's better if I run a higher FSB and lower multi?

milano_chris said:

Alright, never tried that, only tried putting it higher. So I gather it's better if I run a higher FSB and lower multi?

Click to expand...

Not in my experience: this is an all-to-common misconception based on some experiments I ran. See the thread here.

milano_chris said:

SHould I change it from 2T to 1T as well?

Click to expand...

yup, set it to 1T if it is stable

OK will give that a shot then and run Orthos over night. Could I tighten the timings further on the RAM? Running 890 ish MHz at 4-4-4-15 2T now. Ran Orthos stable for 4 hours earlier, CPU temp only once above 60 according to log.