Help me fine tune my Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz O/C via perfect voltage adjustment!

Archaea

Archaea

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 19, 2004
Messages
11,826
Parts list
  • Abit IP35-e
  • Q6600
  • Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
  • 6GB of PC 6400 RAM (2x2GB and 2x1GB)
  • Antec Earthwatts 500 watt PSU
  • Galaxy 8800GT
  • Thermaltake Xaser II case

I've hit 3.6Ghz OC last night Prime 95 stable on all four cores, now I'd like to fine tune my voltages to lower my temps. I know my CPU voltage cannot be less than 1.4 volts because at 1.38 volts prime 95 died after a couple hours on one of the cores. My temps hit 74*C as a high point based on core temps logging function, but most of the time hoovered around 69-71* under load. Silly thing is on the IP35-e you have to face the Freezer 7 pro cooling fan up --- exhausting towards the powersupply due to the fact the northbridge passive heatsink is so large. I've read of some folk modifying their heatsink by cutting fins, so they can exhaust towards the rear of the case, but I'm not wanting to do that --- I've got a 120mm blow/hole fan on top that I dremeled out several years ago and that exhausts heat pretty well, and there are two 80's blowing out on the rear of the Xaser II case.

My CMOS settings are

Frequency settings
  • 3.6Ghz @ 400mhz FSB
  • DRAM = 1:1
  • PCI-E Frequency = 100mhz

Voltage settings
  • CPU = 1.4
  • DDR2 = 2.0
  • CPU VTT = 1.2375
  • ICH = 1.55
  • MCH = 1.29
  • CPU GTLREF = 67%


Does anyone have any suggestions on fine tuning the voltages, perhaps lowering one of the settings that I don't need as high? I'll continue testing on this I'm sure, but I've spent the entire last night last night to determine the settings so far and sometimes there are people who have spent several days playing with each individual setting volt by volt adjustment...Any hardcore enthusiasts here who can supply additional information?

As an additional FYI, on the retail cooler from Intel, I could run at 3.0ghz with stock voltage 100% stable, but couldn't hit much of anything higher due to heat issues.
 
Well...update.

Prime95 stable on all four cores in XP 32 bit, NOT in Vista 64 bit. I booted to my vista partition and was playing crysis and it blue screened. Started up prime 95 and it errored out in less than five minutes on Vista. Odd eh? not stable in vista 64 but stable in xp 32?


Going to have to play with my voltages some more to figure out where I need to increase a bit more. I've noticed temps are a bit lower in vista too. Vista must have better power mgmt.
 
I had the same Vista issue except with my memory. My CPU overclocks remained stable, but memory... I would receive periodic BSODs with no idea why. Once I found out it was the memory, I backed it down slightly, and all worked well (note the same settings still worked fine in XP so it wasn't failing memory). That was months ago, and still today everything runs great.
 
what voltage did you have to turn your memory up to? Or did you just have to decrease timings?
 
Same thing here, prime, memtest, occt stable in XP - Vista reboots soon after boot up. POS OS. Just stay with XP. Vista is obviously using so many resources it can make what was a stable OC in XP unstable. And thats with no OTHER application running, just the friggin' OS.
 
Arctic freezer Pro 7 should not be able to keep that CPU under 80C at those speeds. What are your temperatures?
 
It does...I mentioned my temps in the first post. Core temp logging in XP @ 3.6 ghz showed it hit 74*C as the highest but it typically hovered around 69-71 at full load on all four cores. In Vista the temps are lower --- but heck I've been playing with it all day and I can't even get 3.2 Ghz stable in Vista. It'll play crysis for 2 hours in Vista at 3.2ghz, but it'll crash in prime 95 in less than 30 minutes. I'm getting darn near the voltages I needed for 3.6ghz in XP to get just 3.2 in vista. :(

Edit - pitiful...I'm at 1.36 voltage in Vista at 3.2 and it just failed in prime again. Up to 1.38....that's ridiculous because I only needed 1.4 to safely stay at 3.6Ghz in XP.

By the way - I am using Artic Silver Ceramique thermal paste...not sure if the stuff is snakes oil or not because I scrapped off the old pad and cleaned it down with rubbing alchohol before putting on the AS Ceramique thus I don't have a "comparison'

It occurred to me that one difference here is that XP only reconized 3.5GB of RAM due to being 32 bit. Vista's recognizing 6GB of RAM. I have a new theory to test. I'll pop out my 2x1GB sticks of ram and go back to my intial settings that were proven okay in XP and test it that way. Maybe having four sticks of RAM is hosing up my OC in Vista.
 
Well it sounds like you've already found the lowest voltage your CPU will run stable at that speed, so not really much else you can do to fine tune it. If you want lower temps your choices are better cooling or lower OC at this point.
 
just to address the point you make about the fan not facing the right direction, i have an af7 pro and an abit ip35-e and i ran into the same problem you did. all you have to do is gently tuck the bottom one or two fins of the af7 under the top of the NB and it will be snug and fit in the right position.
 
Well - Theory proven - mostly. I took out the 2x1GB modules and I ran Prime 95 last night for two hours, and then ran the Nvidia System stability test for the whole system for 2 hours at previous 3.6Ghz levels @ 1.4 volts in Visita using the same voltage settings that worked in XP... Neither crashed/No errors.....so apparently my motherboard doesn't like 6GB of RAM when O/Ced to 400mhz FSB.

Looking around a bit this looks like it might be a recognized issue by a few other enthusiasts when using four modules of RAM rather than two on the P35 chipset. I'll report back as I know more.
 
omg! can you tell me how you fit the Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro on that abit board... did the chipset heatsink get in the way? Pics if you can please :p
 
My suggestion would be ditch the cooler you have and get an Thermalright Ultimate 120 Extreme with two high CFM fans. In comparison I have a Q6600 at 3.6 and my temps under Prime 95 on each core never hit above 55c.

Hitting 75c your asking for trouble on the longer-term. Also go into core temp under settings and click the very bottom box that says show delta to TJunction. As a general rule of thumb you want that to be about 30c. This is the reverse of temps. Tells you basically how much temperature you have left before fry'n your cpu. I would never let that go below 20c, because your ambient temps can change drastically from day to night and from winter to summer. YMMV.

 
Well after much testing I've determined that my Q6600 in vista is only stable running prime 95 on all four cores for about 4-7 hours. at 3.6GHZ and I've repeated this several times now. It works fine for a minimum of about 4 hours and has gone as long as 7...but always crashes out prime 95. Sometimes the machine reboots, sometimes prime95 just crashes. Not sure which voltage is at fault.

I've played around with the voltages a bit more one at a time but can't seem to quite get it stable at 3.6Ghz.

I just reversed my fans and am trying it again. XP was stable overnight at 3.6 and 6GB of Ram( though since it was 32 bit the OS only shows 3.5GB) ..

Vista is stable (outside of extended prime 95 sessions) with 3.6ghz and 4GB of RAM, but can't even hit 3.2Ghz with 6GB of RAM.
 
RamonGTP said:
Is your ram being overclocked?
Click to expand...


4x2GB RAM is Patriot 5-5-5-12 ram default at 2.0 voltage.
4x2GB RAM is Corsair XPS - 4-4-4-12 ram default at 2.1 voltage.

Motherboard is running at 2.1 voltage for RAM

Since I'm running 400mhz FSB, the RAM is 1:1 and running at 800mhz, so no, not overclocking currently.
 
well the fans blowing in failed miserably...Prime 95 failed in about 3 minutes. I took off my cover and took a tin snips and cut off a small piece of the bottom two fins on the Freezer 7 pro, then cut into the plastic fan shroud a bit to remove the offending plastic there too so that I could remount my heat sink exhausting towards the rear of the case. I did not re-apply thermal past and fired her back up. Right now with Prime95 running on all four cores my temps are 74,74,73,73, so it didn't really help my temps having it mounted towards the rear --- OR I need to reapply thermal paste -- might be either since I just stuck the heatsink back down in the rear blowing orientation. I am using Artic Silver ceramique so it's pretty thick stuff..I might be able to gain a couple degrees back by reapplication. I'm not worried about the 74*C proc temp. I know it's stable with that based on my XP overnight testing. I'm hoping the northbridge gets too heatsoaked to continue and maybe with the orinentation of the fans I can get my overnight Prime 95....I'll let you know. It's so pitiful to be this close to having a stable 3.6 --- and fail.
 
You have mismatched memory. What are the timings the memory is actually running at (not what it's rated at)? Have you tried loosening those timings?
 
I did today try loosening the timings back to what the RAM is actually rated at this morning and let the PRIME 95 APP run while I was at work. I came home to a rebooted machine. Temps hit 73*C while at work ---

CPU-Z states when 6GB is in the machine the timings are 5-5-5-15.

which is slower than all of them so that shouldn't be trouble.


When I put the 4GB Patriot sticks in there it automatically chooses 5-5-5-10 which is too fast. I manually slowed it down to 5-5-5-12 in the CMOS settings --- Prime 95 still crashed in Vista after about 7 hours -- longest yet, but still crashed. I've not yet tried bumping it up to 5-5-5-18 or something...but I shouldn't really need to since I'm not even overclocking the RAM??!!??
 
Sounds like the instability is coming from the increased RAM, I would play with the MCH voltage. You may need to loosen the timings more on the RAM. Even if you aren't overclocking the RAM itself, you're stressing the northbridge more. What are you voltages at now?
 
I was able to get mine stable on an IP35-Pro with the following volts:

CPU = 1.47
DDR2 = 2.1
CPU Vtt = 1 bump
MCH = 2 bumps

At first, I couldn't get it stable at 3.6ghz for the life of me. Then I reseated the heatsinks on the board using bolts and put 40mm fans on the mosfets and nb. Now my system is completely stable at 3.6ghz. I'm not sure if this will help you at all, but hopefully you can find something useful.
 
Archaea said:
what voltage did you have to turn your memory up to? Or did you just have to decrease timings?
Click to expand...

I just decreased the speeds. It was initially near 1000MHz 5-5-5-15, I don't remember exactly, but I ended up decreasing it to about 800MHz 5-5-5-15. I don't really care, as I've noticed absolutely no difference, except my BSODs went away.

Hitting 75c your asking for trouble on the longer-term. Also go into core temp under settings and click the very bottom box that says show delta to TJunction. As a general rule of thumb you want that to be about 30c. This is the reverse of temps. Tells you basically how much temperature you have left before fry'n your cpu. I would never let that go below 20c, because your ambient temps can change drastically from day to night and from winter to summer. YMMV.
Click to expand...

It's not even the CPU I would worry about. When I had an IP35-E and Q6600 running 3.6, the PWM temps passed 100C under load, and caused the computer to shut off as a safety mechanism. Archaea what are your PWM temps under load? Abit has that uguru program which you can monitor those temperatures with.
 
blade52x said:
I just decreased the speeds. It was initially near 1000MHz 5-5-5-15, I don't remember exactly, but I ended up decreasing it to about 800MHz 5-5-5-15. I don't really care, as I've noticed absolutely no difference, except my BSODs went away.



It's not even the CPU I would worry about. When I had an IP35-E and Q6600 running 3.6, the PWM temps passed 100C under load, and caused the computer to shut off as a safety mechanism. Archaea what are your PWM temps under load? Abit has that uguru program which you can monitor those temperatures with.
Click to expand...


The uguru program corrupts my PC...I've tried to install it twice and it's made Vista not load on both occassions. Both times I had to reboot with last known good config to get the OS to work and then reload a system restore point to get a error dialogue about I/O abit.sys failure or something. I just tried again recently so I'm afraid that app won't work...BUT...I do know it gets dang hot. I saw 98*C in the CMOS PC health screen at idle 3.6ghz OC while changing BIOS options. I'll try the bolt mod sometime soon and see if I can decrease my northbridge temps --- maybe that's my problem.
 
98C on idle? If I were you I'd return everything to stock until the bolt mod could be done. Who knows how hot that thing got while you ran prime!
 
I kinda settled back for the summer on this. I determined I could run everything rock stable - prime tested at 3.15Ghz on stock voltage.

I can't complain about that at all. It's plenty fast and during the summer when heat is more of an issue I've been running it at 3.0Ghz just to give myself a bit of a buffer.

There's absolutely no slowdown on anything I've ever seen at 3.0ghz so I'm not too worried about pushing the chip to it's limits anymore.
 
Archaea said:
Parts list
  • 6GB of PC 6400 RAM (2x2GB and 2x1GB)
Click to expand...

While it shouldn't be this way.... a lot of motherboards barely operate with 4 matched sticks of ram, much less mix matched. Your having mismatched pairs could be contributing to instability. Its much more straining on the NB. Try running with just the 2x2Gb again. Besides when do you EVER have need for more than 4Gb?

I have the same exact size sticks (2 pairs) at home, but I'm only using the 2x2Gb b/c I'm on XP home (32-bit).

edit: only read 1st page... looks like you are only using 2x2gb now?
 
yeah I'm just running 2x2GB now. The 2x1GB set I put in another system.
 
Archaea said:
I kinda settled back for the summer on this. I determined I could run everything rock stable - prime tested at 3.15Ghz on stock voltage.

I can't complain about that at all. It's plenty fast and during the summer when heat is more of an issue I've been running it at 3.0Ghz just to give myself a bit of a buffer.

There's absolutely no slowdown on anything I've ever seen at 3.0ghz so I'm not too worried about pushing the chip to it's limits anymore.
Click to expand...

IMHO this is the smart approach - I can run at 3.6 on my Q6600/IP35 Pro but the voltage I have to push it to to get stable there generates heat which then eventually becomes a problem at 4-7 hours like you were seeing. At 3.2 I can keep the volts a good bit lower, the heat a lot lower and run 24+ hours of Prime95 during the hottest summer day so that is where I settled.
 
Why can't I leave well enough alone...I'm wanting to play with this again!

Trying 3.2Ghz with the 4GB of Patriot RAM again!

It's like I just like abuse!
 
heheh...

I'm back at it again.

this time with a q9300 and 8GB of PC6400.

Long live my abit IP35-e!
 
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