q6600 OC trying to get at least 3.6+

[gsrcrxsi]

hello all. im relatively new here. ill start with my build and current specs in BIOS. ive successfully acheived a stable OC of 3.2 GHz, but i want more

Machine:
Antec 900
q6600
Asus P5K3 Deluxe
2x1GB G.Skill DDR3-1066
Cooler Master Xtreme 550W
zalman 9700NT optimal mode (1300-1800rpm)
2x 120mm tri-cool front fans (low)
1x 200mm tri-cool top fan (high)
1x 120mm side fan (1200 rpm)
1x 120mm scithe rear fan (1000rpm)

BIOS:

CPU Ratio                          [9] (6-9)
FSB Frequency                      [355] 
DRAM Frequency                     [DDR3-1065MHz]
DRAM Timing Control                [Auto] 
DRAM Command Rate                  [Auto] (1T,2T)
DRAM Static Read Control           [Auto] (Enable, Disable)
DRAM Dynamic Write Control         [Auto] (Enable, Disable)
Transaction Booster                [Auto] (Enable, Disable)
Clock-Overcharging Mode            [Auto] (700,800,900,1000mV)
CPU Spread Spectrum                [Auto] (Disable)
CPU Voltage                        [1.400] (0.0125V increments)
CPU Reference Voltage              [Auto] (.63x, .61x, .59x, .57x)
CPU Voltage Damper                 [Auto] (Enable, Disable)
CPU PLL Voltage                    [Auto] (1.50, 1.60, 1.70, 1.80)
DRAM Valtage                       [Auto] (1.50+ 0.05V increments)
FSB Termination Voltage            [Auto] (1.2-1.5V)
North Bridge Voltage               [Auto] (1.25, 1.40, 1.55, 1.70)
North Bridge Ref. Voltage          [Auto] (.67x, .61x)
South Bridge Voltage               [Auto] (1.05, 1.20)

core voltage is consistently .02V lower than BIOS setting, and Vdroop is about .04V (ex, 1.52V BIOS= 1.50V idle/1.46V load)

values in [] are current, values in () are available choices. like i said this current setup is stable. temps in prime are 60C, in folding are about 55C. im looking to get at least 3.6 GHz stable on air, 3.8 if possible. ive tried upping the FSB to 400, seting the ram to DDR3-800, and upping the CPU voltage to 1.50V. booted up fine, but running prime caused the machine to reboot within a few seconds. i upped the voltage to 1.5125 and prime ran for about 30 seconds and got an error on one instance (running 4 instances to stress all 4 cores). upped the voltage to 1.525. prime ran ok for a few mins and the machine just shut down again. temps were approaching 70C which is getting a little warm. and i really dont think id be comfortable letting it run hotter than that for any extended period of time (unless its ok). im looking for some guidance on where to go from here and what settings you think i should change to achieve 3.6+. i really dont know what most of those settings do thats why i left most on auto. maybe if someone could explain all of them?

hope i gave all the info you guys need to point me in the right direction. is it possible that the PSU just cant do it? or is the CPU getting to hot and shutting it down? i dont get any error messages when it restarts. or anything else.

thanks

 

[cabose1227]

sounds like your chip is not a great ocer, 70c is very high I never run chips over 65c. what vid card are you running? that psu dosent look very powerfull.

 

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

You might need to re-seat your cpu cooler..does one or two cores seem hotter than the others?
You can use a program called "Core Temp" to see all four core temps at once. It (Core Temp) is easily found in a google search.
Nice O'C so far..

 

[gsrcrxsi]

i cant use core-tep cause i dont run windows. i use ubuntu. im monitoring temps with lm-sensors and sensors applet. from what ive seen, temps are fairly accurate and it gives temps for all 4 cores. but yes, 2 cores run hotter than the others, but it seems pretty common. 2 cores are consistently ~5-8C hotter/cooler than the others depending on which cores youre talking about. i could try reseating the HS, but that would involve removing the MB, and i honestly dont think it will make much difference.

vid card is irrelevant, but its a evga 7300GT. so you think the PSU is crapping out?

 

[ps2cho]

i cant use core-tep cause i dont run windows. i use ubuntu. im monitoring temps with lm-sensors and sensors applet. from what ive seen, temps are fairly accurate and it gives temps for all 4 cores. but yes, 2 cores run hotter than the others, but it seems pretty common. 2 cores are consistently ~5-8C hotter/cooler than the others depending on which cores youre talking about. i could try reseating the HS, but that would involve removing the MB, and i honestly dont think it will make much difference.

vid card is irrelevant, but its a evga 7300GT. so you think the PSU is crapping out?

I think once your temperatures are more reasonable, then I would look at your PSU.

Reasonable being <60c full load.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

so what would you suggest? not going so high on the CPU voltage, and playing with other settings?

 

[gsrcrxsi]

hmm, im inching closer. i pretty much copied these settings from a similar setup (same chip, nearly the same MB)

CPU Ratio                          [9] (6-9)
FSB Frequency                      [400] 
DRAM Frequency                     [DDR3-800MHz]
DRAM Timing Control                [Auto] 
DRAM Command Rate                  [Auto]
DRAM Static Read Control           [Auto] 
DRAM Dynamic Write Control         [Auto] 
Transaction Booster                [Auto]
Clock-Overcharging Mode            [1000mV]
CPU Spread Spectrum                [Disable]
PCIE Spread Spectrum                [Disable]
CPU Voltage                        [1.4875V]
CPU Reference Voltage              [.63x] 
CPU Voltage Damper                 [Enable]
CPU PLL Voltage                    [1.50V] 
DRAM Valtage                       [Auto]
FSB Termination Voltage            [1.30V]
North Bridge Voltage               [1.40V]
North Bridge Ref. Voltage          [.67x]
South Bridge Voltage               [Auto]

now so far this is stable through 2 rounds of small FFT's. im gonna let it run overnight (hopefully it makes it). can anyone explain exactly what ive done in changing these settings. i mean i know i set certain voltages to specific values. but what are the reference voltage values, what is CPU PLL voltage? what is the spread spectrum stuff? what is NB termination voltage? what is clock over-charging mode? etc? temps are getting high too. 72C

edit: *****, just failed at ~30 mins

 

[jordon]

These are all things you can google.... 3.2 and 3.6 seems to be a big dif in heat with these qauds... I wont be able to hit 3.6 till i upgrade my cooling.. af7 pro just aint cuttin it.

 

[KillrBuckeye]

I've been playing with my Q6600 over the past two days, and I think I've settled on 3.4 GHz as my final overclock. This requires about 1.31 VCore, and two of my cores max out around 63C in CoreTemp (60C in Real Temp) for brief periods while blend testing in Prime95. These temps are about as high as I find acceptable, so I'm not going to risk upping the VCore to attain stability at higher clocks. I'm using a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 CPU cooler, and I'm not sure how well the heatsink is seated, but to me it's not worth reseating to gain a couple hundred MHz. Performance of a Q6600 at 3.4 GHz should be PLENTY for real-world usage.

So to the OP: your chip, like mine, might just not be capable of 3.6 GHz without extremely high temps. If you're pushing 1.5Vcore and still not achieving stability, I don't think there's much hope. Many people claim that 1.5V is the absolute max you want to feed to a Q6600, so I suggest you proceed with caution.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

yea, once i started going over 1.5, i didnt want to push it. so i stopped at BIOS setting of 1.525. i just didnt want to risk going higher, and i already didnt want to go that high.

with my closest attempt i was only using 1.4875 Vcore. which is a lot better than my earlier attempts with leaving most things on auto and jumping the voltage to 1.525 so the other settings are really helping out. so i think i can do it, i may need to nudge the voltage to 1.5 in BIOS. but i did have another quick question, everyone says "dont go over 1.50V or 1.55V" do they mean actual voltage? or the BIOS setting. different boards have varying degrees of vdroop.

another quick question

 

[KillrBuckeye]

yea, once i started going over 1.5, i didnt want to push it. so i stopped at BIOS setting of 1.525. i just didnt want to risk going higher, and i already didnt want to go that high.

with my closest attempt i was only using 1.4875 Vcore. which is a lot better than my earlier attempts with leaving most things on auto and jumping the voltage to 1.525 so the other settings are really helping out. so i think i can do it, i may need to nudge the voltage to 1.5 in BIOS. but i did have another quick question, everyone says "dont go over 1.50V or 1.55V" do they mean actual voltage? or the BIOS setting. different boards have varying degrees of vdroop.

another quick question

I think they mean actual voltage as reported by a program like CPU-Z. My Abit board tends to supply about 0.05V less than what I set in the BIOS, so to get 1.30VCore actual, I set it to ~1.35V in BIOS.

So, you believe that those "other" voltage settings are helping with CPU stability? Interesting. So far, I haven't touch any voltages other than VCore on my board. I wonder if I can go any further by playing around with those settings.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

they are definitely helping. my computer would fail and restart before within 2 mins with 1.52V. making changes to the other settings it was "stable" for 30 mins with a lower Vcore of 1.4875.

i just wish i knew more about these settings to make more educated changes. someone has to know what they do/are? and the upper limits of all the voltages. (dont give me upper limits of CPU or MEM, i know those lol)

 

[w2richwood]

wheres evil at he can help you with setting on that board also the abit forums may help
Rich

 

[gsrcrxsi]

maybe im missing something. why would abit forums help? i have an asus p5k3 deluxe MB. the ddr3 version of your board.

 

[moto211]

a lot of these Q6600's have a wall between 3.2 and 3.4 and to pass that wall you have to start feeding voltages in other areas besides just Vcore. to get mine past 3.3 i had to pump more volts to the MCH, CPU VTT, and the ICHIO. keep in mind that i am running a higher FSB than most with a similar overclock (using 8 multi instead of 9) because i like to run the ramas fast as possible and keep a 1:1 with the FSB and the best way to do that is to drop the multi and pump the FSB. but, at high FSB speeds you have to up the voltage in a lot of areas to stay stable. i also found that it helped to play with the GTL Ref. percentages. if anyone is wondering, i'm running 3.408Ghz(426x8)@1.46v(actual) for Prime95 and 1.43v(actual) for stability in everyday apps.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

yea i have pumped other voltages, but it still failed, granted, lasted a lot longer than previous attempts. check the second set of BIOS settings i posted 9 posts up. like i said, i pretty much just copied this from someone elses setup. while it helped, its still not there. i just dont know where to go with the other values because i dont know what they do. i dont know weather its safe to go up or down (in some cases im at the max already) and i dont know whats safe and whats not in terms of the other values.

what would you guys do with these values?

 

[noxqzs]

my settings:

cpu voltage: 1.35
cpu reference voltage: .63
cpu pll: 1.6
DRAM voltage: 1.75
FSB termination: 1.5
North Bridge: 1.70
North Bridge reference voltage: .67
South Bridge voltage: AUTO

I skimmed through this thread, and could not find what stepping cpu you have. If it is a B3 and not G0, then your results are on par for the setup. With the exception of the cpu voltage, those settings were pretty much standard compared to my other quad.

 

[jimmers]

I have the same motherboard and CPU and have barely been able to get over 3.2ghz stable with decent temps. I've played around with it alot and came to the conclusion that its the board. Running prime95 at 3.2ghz my temps at load are 45 and idle 27. I'm running the Thermalrite 120 Extreme.

 

[noxqzs]

I have the same motherboard

slightly different model. the version he has is DDR3.

The p5k has 3 DDR2 versions correct? I remember some have had issues with one of the types.

 

[jimmers]

slightly different model. the version he has is DDR3.

The p5k has 3 DDR2 versions correct? I remember some have had issues with one of the types.

My mistake, I just saw the P5K.