OC'ing a Q6600

[Uranium-235]

so as some of you know the PSU on my i7 died. I've been using an Asus P5N-E SLI for some time, and wonderfully at that. With a 6750 @ 3.2, I now have started to run into performance problems with borderlands 2, taking up all my CPU

I ebay'd a Q6600 (2nd revision). I read on a lot of forums about people bumping it up to 3ghz on stock air and default voltage. Well I can't seem to get it past 2.7ghz @ 1.4-1.5v

Every time it actually boots to windows without bluescreening, I notice the voltage on asus monitoring software is always lower than I set it, also lower on the bios screen too.

I have a theory...I'm running two Thermaltake TR2-430's. Both have worked fine for years. One is on all the time (shorted atx on connector) that runs my GTX 285, the other one, in the case runs the MB and CPU. Could my PSU not be giving enough juice to the chip? When I start to run prime95, the voltage starts to spike, which kind of makes me think its drawing too much power for the PSU to handle. I thought 430 would be enough, and dispite the fact one or two people here I know has had problems with the TR2, I've had nothing but luck with it, hell I've used about 6 my entire life, 2 I have, one in my mothers, one in two of my friends boxes. All of them over at least 4 years old and running fine

My temps are not a problem, I have a good cooler. I actually broke the fan on the cooler (arctic cooling freezer pro 7). But remembered a kid who used to volunteer with us at teh shop broke the amd mount for his and he just gave it to me, sure enough, in storage I had it with a perfectly fitting fan

thx

[gerg]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

I would try speedfan just to be positive on your temps I would also check the event viewer if it gives you any clue as to why it is blue screening in the first place. Do you have your memory and processor unlinked in the bios if i remember you unlink them before overclock on that board otherwise you are messing with the ram also. Sorry I can't be much more help then that....

[Uranium-235]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

oh yeah they're unlinked, always have been. if they were not I would of never been able to bring my 6750 to 3.2, I also used CPUID's Hwmonitor to confirm the temps.

[brethin]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

You can get 3.4 on good Air cooling if you use a good board that supports 1600fsb. Your board maxes at 1333fsb so you are limited. I have 2 Q6600's running at 3.4 just on air and one will run at 3.6 but I dont push it. Both are ASUS boards. and both use DDR2-800 memory. Both are set to unlinked but the FSB is set to 1600 and memory to 800.

[shovenose]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

Get a new computer.

i'm a dillweed

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

hmm i've taken a look at the specs and pics of ur board and i believe the fault may lie with ur board's number of cpu power phases... if u look at the number of power phases it has for the cpu, it only has 3 power phases. thus i dont recommend overclocking a quad on that board due to the 3 phase power. 3 phase power may be fine for overclocking duals but i dont recommend it for quads.

what fsb and multiplier did u use to overclock the e6750 and q6600? im guessing u are using 400x8 to get 3.2ghz on ur 6750? if the e6750 can hit a higher fsb than the q6600 then the problem is likely inadequate power delivery to the cpu from the board's 3 power phases so its not ur psu. u mentioned there's a lot of vdroop and voltage spiking going on during transient loading? quite likely its the 3 power phases being inadequate to feed the cpu at 2.8ghz+.

however, if u havent already tried this last resort which im going to mention below, then u shud give it a shot before confirming the board is indeed inadequate to power an overclocked quad:

lower the multiplier of the q6600 to 7. try 400x7 to get 2.8ghz first. usually, with a lower mult, a cpu will need less voltage and power to overclock but the flip side is that it stresses out the NB instead as u have to push the fsb all the way to get high clocks and the NB/RAM might not be able to take it.

other things u can do are purchasing mosfet heatsinks and sticking them on the mosfets to keep them cool. i also saw this heatsink air deflector u can put on ur heatsink to deflect the air coming out of ur heatsink downwards to circulate air around the vrms to keep them cool.

if u still cant get it stable after all that jazz, then u may want to get a board with at least 6 power phases if u intend to overclock the q6600 to 3ghz and beyond.

[Uranium-235]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

heh, you're using actual clock speeds, not QP speeds. Ether way

the 6750 ran @ 1610, I had its multiplier maxed, I right now am running the Quad at about 2.58 stable and 1.48v (though actual voltage is shown lower). I did replace the input VRM caps with some nice new nichicon HM's to try and help with any OC'ing later on. And unlike a lot of pictures out there, my output VRM caps are polys. But yeah, it is 3 phase.

Actually with the 6750 I had the NB at 1.7v, 405, but it never went over 49C. This is due to an inventive cooling solution of two high speed small fans blowing directly on the heatsink (one blowing directly onto another)

[kc8adu]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

you buying?if so great.
sounds like a spoiled brat answer to me.
back on topic a neighbor has a q6600 at 3.5 with one of those corsair h60 coolers and a .2v vcore bump.i bet there is more in there to get.it probably would do it on stock vcore but he bumped it to resolve bsod on youtube video.a flash update fixed that.

Get a new computer.

[Uranium-235]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

Get a new computer.

uh yeah dickweed. As I mentioned earlier. I have an I7 920 @ 4ghz (and this is C0, not D0, and that is not an easy OC)

But as mentioned months ago, I got 12V2 burn from the PCI-E cards and it ended up taking one of my GTX 285's with it

I still have to fix the connector somehow. and in the mean time I technically can afford a new PSU, but have to get inventive with the connector...and get a second 500GB drive to replace the mirrored 500 I killed. So all in all, this is the only gaming system I have right now and I want to get the best out of it I can

I got the chip off ebay for $58, took my 6750, put it in my media rig, and am taking the 6600 from there and selling it to a customer of mine for $30, combined with an asrock ddr3 lga775 board (meh, polymer vrm, good enough for a 65w cpu-rest smaller caps are OST, I can live with it, already posted it just fine). Her going from a 775 3.06/533 /w 1gb ddr2 4200 to 4gb 1066 ddr3 and a 6600 on winxp, I bet she will notice a difference. Including the WD blue 500 with the 16M cache over her samsung 80gb with a 2M cache from '07

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: OC'ing a Q6600

owww 2.58ghz @ 1.48v? thats quite a high voltage to keep stable at 2.58ghz. for most ppl, 1.4v is enuff to reach 3ghz. hope its just the board struggling to keep the voltage loadline regulated and NOT u getting a bum chip that cant oc well...