Overclocking Core 2 Quad [email protected] without any coolin system.Im Also New here

Hi. I have Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @2.4GHz Stock Speed with only Intel Stock Cooler/fan. I dont own any third party cooling systems like water cooling or anything else similar to it. I got only normal intel stock cooler. Now all i want to do is to overclock it to some higher speeds. Now i need some attention and some guide and help on the following grounds.
1) Can i overclock my C2Q cpu without any cooling system. Its summer here where i live and temperatures would be reachin nearly 50 Degrees Centigrade. So i know cpu would get hot.
2) If i can overclock my cpu, what settings should I have to change with what values. for example i saw from 1 of the videos from youtube, a guy overclocking his C2Q Q6600 to 3GHz with GIGABYTE motherboard. I also myself own a Gigabyte Mobo and its model number is EP31-DS3L. Now the guy in the video changed these values in the BIOS. CPU HOST CLOCK CONTROL > DISABLED to ENABLED. (here ">" shows the changed value the guy changed to. so i wont be using the word disabled to enabled again).
CPU HOST FREQUENCY(MHz) > 333
PCI EXPRESS FREQUENCY(MHz) > 100
SYSTEM MEMORY MULTIPLIER(SPD) > 2.40
SYSTEM VOLTAGE CONTROL > MANUAL
CPU VOLTAGE CONTROL > 1.27500V. Saved the BIOS (Y) and done. I also did the same things except i put CPU HOST FREQUENCY 312 or 310 because at 333 my win 7 had the BLUE SCREEN of ERROR. so i have to change it to 312 to get 2.8 GHz. Right now i dont have any cpu thermal paste, i just put in the COLGATE TOOTHPASTE as i did before but i know it wud have got carp by now like solid small particles but still my cpu is runnin' within 40's Degrees Centigrade. and with full workload or heavy processing it might jump to 60s. So please tell me if i am doing something wrong with my CPU. What should be done properly for a appropriate overclocked cpu. What about the VOLTAGE control of the CPU. Like i Guess its normally by default is 1.32 something volts. Would increasing or decreasing the CPU VOLTAGE CONTROL results in something bad to CPU as I decreased mine voltage to 1.27500V. Thats my question for now. Please do provide me with a guide and good techniques so that i may understand this feature of the PC WORLD. Thanks a lot lot to all of you for helping me and taking out time to read this and providing suggestions and answers. Thanks..... My specs are.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz, 3GB DDR II RAM, WDC WD5000AACS-00G8B1 SATA, NVIDIA XFX GEFORCE 8500 GT 512 MB, 17" DELL E177FP

Get a cooler. If the temps you are keeping your CPU are 50 degrees C, then you will be seeing 50 degree Idle temps. Typically on the best coolers you will see about a 60 degree or higher climb in temps which will push you way beyond the 70-80 degrees you would want to run that at.

Now temps don't scale exactly like that, but the bottom line is if your not running your Computer in an Air Conditioned environment that is somewhere between 20-25 degrees C, then I wouldn't recommend overclocking, much less doing it with an upgraded cooler. As a matter of fact, I would recommend an upgraded cooler for the mere fact you are in a hot climate but still run at stock speed.

Good answer. But dear brutal-force friend! temps right now at idle is about 41 Degrees C. It will go into 50 when get workload. What you think of it right now? is it ok in 40s at idle because in 2009 i used to work on the pc without any knowledge of heating of the cpu. so later on i realized that i should check the temps of the system and the cpu. I use System Information for Windows SIW.exe by gabriel topala. Its a good utility for showing off system information. Anyways tell me. I wud check for a cooler.

and right now i have overclocked my cpu at 2.8GHz. its running cool. Tell me about the VCORE of the cpu. What about the VOLTAGE control of the CPU. Like i Guess its normally by default is 1.32 something volts. Would increasing or decreasing the CPU VOLTAGE CONTROL results in something bad to CPU as I decreased mine voltage to 1.27500V.?

Ok, at only 2.8 and 1.275V you should not see idle temps of 40°C unless your ambient temperatures are around 35-40°C or you have something running in the background that you are not aware of. Your practically at stock. If in fact it is 40°C in your computer room, then I would say you must like it hot, because thats 95-104°F. Soooooo that must mean either your temps are not 40°C at idle, or there is something wrong with your HSF. It might not be seated correctly or you have lots of dust or your case ventilation is bad. First thing you need to tackle is those temperatures before you even start to overclock.

First get a thermometer and accurately read your ambient temperature in your room. With my HSF, my CPU idle temp is about 15°C above my ambient temperature of 74°F (23°C) - My idle temps are 38°C @4000MHz with 1.4V Vcore. Now, if you are greater than 15°C above your Ambient temperature at idle with less of an overclock you need to start figuring out why. The program you should be using for temperatures is either CoreTemp or Real Temp. Both are free and both are accurate. You are not looking at CPU temperatures, you are looking at your 4 core temperatures.

1. You can remove the Side of your case and see if this improves the temperatures. Doing this indicates that your fans can not circulate enough air through your case to your HSF. If removing the side of your case lowers your temperatures, then you need either better case fans or maybe a newer case altogether.

2. If case temperatures do not lower when removing the side, then your HSF may be at fault. Get a table top Fan and point it at your motherboard and see if this lowers temperatures. If it does, then you may need a better fan on your HSF.

3. If this does not lower the temps, then you may want to remove and reseat your HSF with new thermal paste. Arctic Silver 5 can be purchased at Radio Shack and is one of the best Thermal Compounds out there.

4. If after doing all this your temperatures are still too high, then you may want to consider a HSF upgrade.

Don't worry about overclocking yet, figure out your temps first. Then we will overclock.

And to OCF!

Dear Friend i live in pakistan and i heard about radio shack but it wont be here. Its an american shop i guess. Anyways here's another small story or tale.
I bought this computer back in jan of 2009 and it was cold here then. But since APRIL 2009 or MAY 2009, i have been using this PC with my system's side cover removed. Its halfway naked and you can touch inside. So Another case is that you're right. I am also using AVAST antivirus, may be that's what be causing background processes to make the cpu in 40's at idle. Back in the january of this year it was quite cold here. I also bought a cheap thermal paste. and when i did put it on my cpu, guess what my system was running at 16 Degrees Centigrade at idle. and with full workload it wud reach merely 28 DEGREES C. But time is change now. Its already summer here and my room is hot most of the day. even fans dont provide any benefit. So you're right. Room temperature is playin a big role out here. As for the cpu temp softwares, i know about core temp and i do use it sometimes and wud definitely check out real temp as i didnt know about it before. SIW (System Information for Windows by Gabriel Topala) is a very good tool to. You should check it out. Its very detailed. and it also has a SENSORS category which lets you see inside your SYSTEM, CPU, HDD, VGA, INSIDE CPU CORES, sensors and let you observe their current and their min and max temps. Just see an example here in my desktop snapshot. Here you can see this.

Also temme about the VCORE of the CPU. what does it matter to change the VCORE value. and CPU VOLTAGE. I decreased it to 1.27500V. What it means to change, increasing it or decreasing it. What role does it play in the overclocking issue. Thanks.

Vcore is the Power needed to run your processor. It fluctuates by what is called vdroop, which can vary between 0.001 and 0.25 V or more depending on your chip/motherboard and how you have your Vdroop enabled or disabled in bios. It follows an Intel specification and typically goes lower than what is shown in your bios. Also Vdrop is the Voltage difference from what shows in CPUz (the accepted standard for anything CPU related) and what is shown in bios.

Vcore is the voltage needed to sustain your FSB or Bclk (i-series). You have a VID which is the voltage needed to run at stock. This value shows up in Coretemp as well as a few other utilities. By raising your Vcore, you can clock your processor higher, the downside is that it also increases heat. And overall regardless of the heat, it is the voltage that can ultimately kill your processor and the heat that can cook it. So the goal is the highest overclock with the lowest heat and voltages. You can control the voltages per bios and you can control the heat with an upgraded HSF. Heat is directly related to CPU failure/crashing. Too much heat and the CPU becomes unstable.

For a C2Q you typically want to run your voltages at or below 1.45v, however with extreme cooling, you can run up to 1.55V. Temperatures, however, go hand in hand with this. You want to maintain your temps under 70 degrees C for 24/7 use but there is nothing wrong with it hitting 80s for short periods of time.

As for your post in the cooling forum, temper what you say. A lot of new members are quick to take advice (even if its bad advice), you have a cooling problem you need to solve before overclocking which is very evident, and even if it is related to your part of the world simply being too hot. If it is just naturally hot there, then the first thing you want to do is get a better case, get a good HSF (the best you can get) and put your computer in a shady area with good ventilation.

Heat + Computers = Bad, no matter where your from.

P.S. Your utility looks legit, but here at OCF we recommend utilities that are free to to everyone so that we can all be on one page quoting the exact data, not that everyone is using something different.

I see your core temps, but they are roughly the same. A fluctuation of 7 degrees tells me that your not loading your processor, and since the min. is 61 degrees AND you have your side case cover AND your using Colgate for a TIM that you have a big problem. You never mentioned your Ambient temperature, so assuming that everything in your case is working as it should and to the best of its ability, then I must assume that it is between 131-152 degrees Fahrenheit in your room and that you are dying. You need to post more credible data in order for us to assist you.

no its not that hot. but yeah i wud have to switch on the Air-conditioning for a while too. and by this time the colgate toothpaste would have gone solid. i mean it wud be hard by now. that's the main reason too. because you need a liquid at all time applied between your heatsink and the surface of the cpu in order to keep it in normal temperatures. ambient. how can i tell you about ambient temperatures. do tell me. thanks.

Get a digital Thermometer. It will tell you what temperature it is in your room.

As far as thermal paste goes, they all cure and become hard. But toothpaste does not have any conductive materials in it unlike Thermal Paste. Thermal Paste usually contains either silver or diamond type conductors. A lot of paste is not needed. It is only to fill the gaps from uneven-ness of the HSF to CPU contact.

28 degrees Celcius is not horrible, but it is still warm, even by my standards and I live in Florida. If your ambient temp truly is 28 degrees, then you are idling over 30 degrees above ambient temperatures. It is safe to say that your Heat Sink is not properly mounted. The toothpaste may or may not be making it worse. Not likely though, at least not by more than maybe 2 or 3 degrees. Even no TIM would not make it that much higher. But your HSF might be improperly mounted. If your using the Stock HSF, you should double check the pins to make sure they are pushed all the way in and properly mounted. At your current clock, you should be seeing idle temps of more like 30-35 degrees at idle. Double Check your mount. Its not right.

yeah you're right. Florida is hot too. but right now i am running my cpu at 2.8GHz, not at the stock speed of 2.4GHz. maybe thats what causing the temperatures in 40 Degree C at idle. May be i should underclock it again back to its original stock speed. remember i also decreased the CPU VOLTAGE to 1.27500V after seeing a youtube video. What you're saying about the thermal paste condition that it becomes hard after sometime. are you sure that it becomes hard. coz i never used any other. the first came with the intel stock cooler were 3 straps or lines with an equal amount of space among them. they were like something not in liquid but like something straight lines n if u touch it hard the color of it wud stick to your hand. then i bought this cheap thermal paste back in january but it was very cold here. and cpu was runnin under 16 Degrees C at idle. So arctic silver and others also become hard after sometime?

If you overclocked to 2.8 but undervolted to 1.27V you probably won't see that big a difference from stock temperatures to your overclocked temperatures. The fact that at one time your Core temps were 16 degrees should tell you something. Somewhere down the line your Heatsink either got really really dirty or it got bumped and is no longer seated properly.

Despite everything, for your overclock, your voltages and your ambient temperatures using a stock cooler, your CPU is running too hot. You should not be idling at 60 EVER.

You should recheck your Heatsink and remount it to be sure. Since you are there, you should also pick up some Isopropyl alcohol and some Thermal Paste. You won't regret it.

hi there agentquad

I agree that you have a cooling issue to overcome with your pc, but if you're clocking for performance, then maybe consider getting a faster graphics card, and letting your cpu run at normal clock speed, because a 8500 gt aint the best when it comes to performance.

Yeah man you're right. By the way which new VGA would be a great deal. what about the ATI? I used to have 1 back in the early 2001 in my Pentium III 800 MHz. Guess what it was ATI ALL IN WONDER 128 PRO 32MB. Man those were great times. And a great PC too. But for my new quad system. I bought this NVIDIA THING XFX GEFORCE 8500 GT 512 MB. I just saw the price and the MEMORY at the time of purchase in the MAY of 2008. What i didnt know was that DDR 2, GDDR3 MEMORY and DATA BANDWIDTH like of 256 Bits in newer cards play a major role in a Graphics card overall performance. SO tell me what about the ATI HD 4850 and 4xxx Series. Tell me the best card in a good price range which i could easily purchase like something in between $100-$200. Games like crysis are huge RESOURCE and RAM and VIDEO MEMORY TAKER, what would be the best card for the SMOOTH GAMEPLAY OF CRYSIS and for its good FRAME RATE or FPS.

I'm not too clued up on ATI , but I'm sure they're real good, but I'd recommend the geforce GTX 260 , you'll get it for about ± $160 , and you only need a 500W PSU for that card. The performance is real good, I had the 9800GT and upgraded to the GTX 260, and it was tops... The GTX 4 series, is maybe the best , but also the best price. But your setup is real good, CPU, RAM, etc is great, so if you upgrade your Graphics card you should run most games on max graphics. and on the other hand, to get your cooling sorted , a new box will be about $100 and better fans and cooling for your CPU will be about $50...

Yeah man thanks. CPU is good. Q6600. Do you think 3GB RAM is good? i mean i have 1 KINGSTON RAM 2GB and other 1 is DYNET some unknown KOREAN BRAND I GUESS. Yeah 8500GT 512 is quite old. I cant play some latest games which requires a lot of processing on part of the Graphics Card. Like Operation Flashpoint 2. I downloaded it. and now i cant play it because there's isnt a good frame rate from this VGA card. what would be the cost of GTX 260. I live in pakistan. you can multiply the cost of GTX 20 in US DOLLARS to x 83.500! So i can easily overclock to 2.8GHz. but having some ram troubles when going to 3GHz.

CAN I OVERCLOCK THIS TO 3.2 GHz

HERE IS MY SPECS

CPU: Intel Core(TM)2 Quad Q6600 2.40 GHz With Stock Cooler
MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte GA-G41C DDR2/DDR3 Combo
RAM: 2 GB DDR3 PC1333 Kingston
HDD: Seagate 1.5TB Sata 7200 Rpm
CD/DRIVE: Asus 24X Dvd-Writer Sata
GRAPHICS: Palit Nvidia Gt210 1GB DDR3 64-bit
PSU: Stock 500w Generic
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
MONITOR: 20" AOC E2040V

Give it a try, the stock cooler should make it to 3.2GHz if the board will overclock.

I highly doubt it... most boards that will overclock the Q6600 but are running off stock coolers wont do much past 3.0 without becoming unstable. Thats been the experience I've had with mine anyways.

I'm like you, stock cooling 3.0GHz is my limit but others do make it to 3.6GHz. You get a fast die from the middle of the wafer then yes you can do it. The die from the center of the wafer have smaller transistors and run cooler. They overclock easier.