*Official Retail G0 Q6600 Overclocking Thread*

[jeeka]

I have it set to 1.4-1.55v depending on...my mood, really
I have never had issues with the vNB with 2 or 4 sticks.

I also went a step further and removed the Chipset Heatsinks, cleaned the factory crappy putty off, and put Arctic Silver Ceramique on the NB, SB and Mosfets that are covered. I also did the same thing to the Heatsink that is above he CPU at the top of the motherboard, plus I have a 120mm fan blowing down on the RAM and NB. The NB is not even warm to the touch.

That might explain why I have virtually no NB issues with heat.

*my q6600 is lapped as well, along with my "Leaning Tower of Pisa" Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme

[jonny_ftm]

I have it set to 1.4-1.55v depending on...my mood, really
I have never had issues with the vNB with 2 or 4 sticks.

Great, nice to hear if I ever decide to go with 4Gb RAM

I also went a step further and removed the Chipset Heatsinks, cleaned the factory crappy putty off, and put Arctic Silver Ceramique on the NB, SB and Mosfets that are covered. I also did the same thing to the Heatsink that is above he CPU at the top of the motherboard, plus I have a 120mm fan blowing down on the RAM and NB. The NB is not even warm to the touch.

The mosfets are better with the thermal pad, as the default heatsink can cause loose contact. If you kept the pad, adding a second thermal interface material (AS5) with the pad is not a good idea, in my opinion as you add interfaces, while pads assume a better contact than paste but are less conductive than a compound.

As of the heatsink above the CPU, it is for the other 4 mosfets.

That might explain why I have virtually no NB issues with heat.

I'm also sure that people taking care to cooling the motherboard and reseating the default heatsinks will have better performances by far. For stock radiators, you also have a very good overclock on a Q6600 + 4Gb Ram on air, as I removed them all and replaced with thermal righ heatsinks

[jeeka]

...The mosfets are better with the thermal pad, as the default heatsink can cause loose contact. If you kept the pad, adding a second thermal interface material (AS5) with the pad is not a good idea, in my opinion as you add interfaces, while pads assume a better contact than paste but are less conductive than a compound.

As of the heatsink above the CPU, it is for the other 4 mosfets.
...

not sure I follow you. I took off the thermal pads on all heatsinks and added the nonconductive Arctic Silver Ceramique, not added to the thermal pads. The Arctic Silver Ceramique makes great contact with the mosfets as I test fitted them, and the footprint "smear" was great.

Correct me if I am misunderstanding you.
Thanks!

[jonny_ftm]

not sure I follow you. I took off the thermal pads on all heatsinks and added the nonconductive Arctic Silver Ceramique, not added to the thermal pads. The Arctic Silver Ceramique makes great contact with the mosfets as I test fitted them, and the footprint "smear" was great.

Correct me if I am misunderstanding you.
Thanks!

Humm.. so you removed the thermal pads
The mosfets heatsinks are covering 4 PWM each. This will cause in all cases a loose contact sometimes on some mosfets, despite the tightening of the push-pins. This is due to 4 things:

- The PWM surfaces are never even at a same level. Making that will need very expensive manufacturing process and is useless because of the bending of PCB. This first issue is the most important and impossible to correct, unless you lap evenly all mosfets with a glass
- The mb PCB is not hard, it bends, always... less than 1mm, but it bends
- Fixing of the heatsink is made by two push-pins on the extremities only, so impossible to solder to middle of the heatsink when the PCB bends
- Finally, ASUS heatsinks are really light aluminium without any surface polishing or special care.

It's not without a reason that all reliable third party manufactures of optional mosfets cooling kits recommand thermal pads for cooling mosfets.
This is also the case on VGA cards when cooling memory chips: you need either separate heatsinks per module, or the use of a thermal pad for many modules under the same heatsink because of the always uneven surface between two chips

Hope you understand better now what I meant

[Pacha]

Humm.. so you removed the thermal pads
The mosfets heatsinks are covering 4 PWM each. This will cause in all cases a loose contact sometimes on some mosfets, despite the tightening of the push-pins. This is due to 4 things:

- The PWM surfaces are never even at a same level. Making that will need very expensive manufacturing process and is useless because of the bending of PCB. This first issue is the most important and impossible to correct, unless you lap evenly all mosfets with a glass
- The mb PCB is not hard, it bends, always... less than 1mm, but it bends
- Fixing of the heatsink is made by two push-pins on the extremities only, so impossible to solder to middle of the heatsink when the PCB bends
- Finally, ASUS heatsinks are really light aluminium without any surface polishing or special care.

It's not without a reason that all reliable third party manufactures of optional mosfets cooling kits recommand thermal pads for cooling mosfets.
This is also the case on VGA cards when cooling memory chips: you need either separate heatsinks per module, or the use of a thermal pad for many modules under the same heatsink because of the always uneven surface between two chips

Hope you understand better now what I meant

I made the same mod as he did with my first and second Commando and I must say the contact is quite good, putting enough as5 for the sink to cover them all, the results seem correct.

Anyway, there are mosfets just right near the mosfets' sink and others a little further that doesn't have any default asus cooling ont it, so this installation may be enough to not worry about it

Or you may want to put a fan blowing on the mosfets near you cpu to feal at ease.

[jeeka]

ah, yes, ok I get you now.Totally makes sense. I, too, realized that the mosfets were staggered height and was wondering how much that would effect cooling. It's worth a try to put the thermal padding back on...but obviously mine is rolled up in some trash heap somewhere.....

Where would you recommend, if you can actually buy them, thermal padding?
The only stuff I see are thermal compounds and not physical padding kits...

Thanks!

[jonny_ftm]

I made the same mod as he did with my first and second Commando and I must say the contact is quite good, putting enough as5 for the sink to cover them all, the results seem correct.

Anyway, there are mosfets just right near the mosfets' sink and others a little further that doesn't have any default asus cooling ont it, so this installation may be enough to not worry about it

Or you may want to put a fan blowing on the mosfets near you cpu to feal at ease.

It can be enough for a C2D, but clearly not optimal. And it won't be enough on a quadcore with vcores above 1.45-1.50v, overclock will be limited

ah, yes, ok I get you now.Totally makes sense. I, too, realized that the mosfets were staggered height and was wondering how much that would effect cooling. It's worth a try to put the thermal padding back on...but obviously mine is rolled up in some trash heap somewhere.....

Where would you recommend, if you can actually buy them, thermal padding?
The only stuff I see are thermal compounds and not physical padding kits...

Thanks!

In france, at watercooling.fr, they have adhesive pads. In NA, nextag searches gives some shops too, maybe google it but they do exist. By the way, even thermalright products (no one can criticize their heatsinks top quality products, right?) do ship all their mosfets heatsinks with pads

[jeeka]

Sitting at 3800Mhz on a q6600 has not been an issue with the Ceramique applied, but I will look into thermal padding to get some contact with the shorter mosfets, the ones that the Ceramique probably won't have great contact with.

[Demo]

Mine is an L7 also, but it OC's piss poor or just my mobo is piss poor ( Abit IP35-E )

1.315v bios 3,2Ghz (400*8)

[gearhead364]

I am still a little new to OCing Intel and I was wondering why so many people are running a CPU mulitplier of 8. Is this just so you can gain a higher FSB, which will bring the ram closer to 1:1? I would appreciate any tips that you can provide as far as squeezing the last bit of OC from my CPU.

My setup is the following: Q6600, ASUS P5K-E, 2x2GB Mushkin Redline PC2-8000. I have already had the ram up to 1066 at stock volts and I am fairly confident that I can go past 1100+ with some voltage.

[Talonman]

With my EK waterblock on my NB, and MX2 used as my TIM, Everest reports that I have 1.65v going to the NB core, and never cross 30C at 3.8GHz loaded.

Idle reports 23C on the NB.