My first OC. Thrilling!

Well, I learned alot. Coryhm1 Helped me out a ton in pm's as I didnt want to keep asking in the open and get on everyone's nerves. He had the same processor, ram, mobo, and hsf cooler that I did.

I will upload some pictures of the tests and such later, but this was my first attempt. Pardon being excited with not that big of a increase.

e8400@ 3.6Ghz, vcore 1.23 w/ Zalman 9700 LED
Gigabyte x38-DS4 Mobo
2x1gb XMS2 DDR2-800, v2.0, set at 2.00b 1:1 with FSB

SpeedFan 1.44 Beta: 37c idle, 51c load during OCCT/P95
Coretemp: 41c idle, 56c Load during OCCT/p95


I successfully passed a 2 hour and a 4 hour OCCT custom cpu/ram test.
I ram p95 v25.3 for 6 hours and passed. Both cores 100%
Ran Super PI for a few hours on 32m and no issues
Tested ram with memtest, 2 instances of 860ram and no errors
No crashes on 6 3dmark06 attempts, 4 hours in EQ2, 5 in CoD4.

I DO plan to run all of it longer and keep running till i can pass 24 hours on p95 and run OCCT for a long time as well. Just been taking it slow.


However Prior to all that fun and error free.. I was having a hell of a time. I couldnt pass p95 for but 2 hours, and OCCT within the first 30 minutes would error. I upped my voltage a wee bit to 1.23 and it is running like a dream now.

Overall.. it wasnt as hard as I had assumed, but damn was I nervous the entire run. Especially when I undervolted the cpu and had to clear cmos during the beginning. Learned quickly after that.

Overall I am happy with this first attempt, and I am still working on my air flow in my cm690, and maybe later this week I will try and go higher.

Just happy right now is all.

Glad i could help, 3.6 is a very good OC at low vcore. Maybe later if you keep tweaking, you'll get 4ghz on respectable air voltage.

Very nice job man!! Pretty damn good clocks for that voltage.

Congratulations man

I know how it feels, I myself have also just attained a completely stable first over-clock, and we have quite similar systems too, and we're a the same CPU frequency too. It's a beast isn't it? I hadn't played much games during the past two weeks because it wasn't stable enough and I simply refused to stay at stock frequency with such a processor and when considering the amount of hard-earned money I've put into this new build. I had to over-clock it before playing games regularly.

It took patience, about a hundred reboots, about a hundred BSODs, it took three re-installations of my hardware (from A to Z), it took a good amount of frustration in the process, but now I'm sitting on my chair with a tranquility of mind knowing that it's finally stable, and I've just started playing games like last night, and this thing is a freakin' beast when I compare it to my previous setup, I must have gained a good 20FPS in all of my games (except Crysis) without changing the GPU and without OC'ing more.

Now just feel the joy and enjoy it for some time before attempting to over-clock more, is my advice.

Appreciate all the praise.

Yes, it is a beast. I upgraded from a AMD 3800+ am2 socket single core and a x1900GT. So the difference is utterly amazing.

Got into eq2 last night and was hitting 45-50 in middle of qeynos harbor on Very high graphics. I hit extreme and was around 15fps or so. Course that is in the city, so outside I am unsure. But I was 20ish fps on balanced in qeynos on balanced. So going to next to highest settings and getting 2x+ the fps was very exciting for me. It was a wonderful pat on the back i guess you could say.

I agree on the "had to oc the beast" thinking Zenoth. I spent alot of money on this machine and it is the first "nice" gaming rig i had ever built. All prior machines were budget gaming rigs. So.. I couldnt resist.

I am going to run a 24 hour p95 tonight. Or maybe Orthos. I am still too new to let it run while I sleep so I want to watch the temps on a overnight test and make sure there isnt going to be any issues.

Congrats; welcome to the OC world. Just joined myself last year. Good times. Great clocks!

Hi mate and welcome to the overclocking world that is Wolfdale.

Keep pushing that chip gently and you will be in the 4Ghz club soon.

Good Luck!

Great Job! im jealous

Just to ask you all, what would you all view as the safest highest voltage a e8400 can take without getting too close to the danger zone? I am going to try for 4ghz, as its too tempting. However upping voltage still... scares me abit. I know too much voltage, or too high temps, and especially both can risk the life of the cpu.

I know every chip, even the same model and steppings, can be different. So i am not asking what oc and voltage i should get. Merely what i should try to avoid as far as vcore overall, regardless of clock.

I have heard not to exceed 1.4 on the vcore, but it was never specified if that is the real voltage or what you set in BIOS. I keep mine under 1.4 set in BIOS...1.38ish is the highest I would go for every day use, maybe not even that high depending on temps. You should be able to do 4ghz with vcore in the low 1.3's

CreasianDevaili said:

Just to ask you all, what would you all view as the safest highest voltage a e8400 can take without getting too close to the danger zone? I am going to try for 4ghz, as its too tempting. However upping voltage still... scares me abit. I know too much voltage, or too high temps, and especially both can risk the life of the cpu.

I know every chip, even the same model and steppings, can be different. So i am not asking what oc and voltage i should get. Merely what i should try to avoid as far as vcore overall, regardless of clock.

Click to expand...

You should be able to o/c safely to 4Ghz under 1.4 volts and that seems safe to me and a lot of others on here. If you can hit 4Ghz on lower volts then thats even better but use the 1.4volts as a guide and you will be ok.
Some others have been getting even lower voltage with 4Ghz clocks and thats the stronger chips that will probably run 200mhz faster at similar volts to those that are on 4Ghz. Its all trial and error, testing, re testing, benching to find the sweet spot.

Overclocking can reduce cpu life but as an example for your peace of mind, my last cpu i had (P4 2.4C HT 800FSB) was running daily at 3.2Ghz and is still working even all these many years after. No faults or degrading whatsoever and in fact i have had 2 replacement video cards since having that old pc and not 1 problem with the cpu itself.

I think once you get over the scare factor (i get it all the time i try for a higher clock and switch pc on) (will it beep wont it etc etc) you will be fine. If its 4Ghz you want then focus on making that stable within your system and do a couple of runs at that speed then get the temp readings (under full load) using core temp and run some benchies and post back your results. There are always plenty of people here that will be able to say if you are within limits or whether you should back down on the clocks.

Doing this even though you may be at limits for a short time wont damage anything, well at 4Ghz it shouldnt anyway.

Sorry for the long post, i must have my helpful head on today.

Congrats

About the voltage, I've heard you should keep it up under 1.5V for 24/7 use.