*Official Retail G0 Q6600 Overclocking Thread*

[mad_skills]

Started playing with mine, needed to reinstall windows a priori to o/c.
Batch L801A203, VID 1.28750V currently @ 3.00GHz default voltage, orthos stable, temps in idle 39,40C and in full load 56,57C at 27C ambiental.
Hope more fun to come.

[JargonGR]

I think its time to get rid of my Quad or my motherboard or both. I used to run my Q6600@3.6Ghz 1.4750Vcore on Water (dedicated Thermochill/DDC/Apogee GTX loop) for 9 months and it was rock stable no matter what i did with it ant that is on an EVGA 680i with 8800GTX SLI. Suddenly I had some random freezing while "unrarring" large 10GB+ files or Encoding video while of course other tasks where running as well.

I immediately tried Orthos, Prime OCCT and the rest and of course there it was not stable. I checked the BIOS redid some settings but it seems my chip does not want to continue its career at 3.6Ghz but it works fine at stock.

Is it possible that I am experiencing chip degradation? Do chips degrade and only work at stock? I thought they either die or work at whatever you through at them.

Another explanation would be that my motherboard has degarded. What would you do? Should I grab another Q6600 since they are dirt cheap now or even a Q9550 (is it working on 680i?).

The real sad think is that only a few days ago I put an Asus P5E Premium with E8500 in my HTPC and it is doing 4.3Ghz on AIR! LOL U am so tempted to just put an 4870X2 in there and turn this to my gaming rig as well on a 52" HDTV.

[Ol'Baditude]

Which BIOS are you running?
You need p32 to run 45nm chips. I'm not sure if that includes quads, but duals for sure.

What is the VID of your chip?

How long did it prime test at that freq. and voltage?

You should not have any sort of degradation me thinks.

[JargonGR]

My BIOS is P30 and my VID is 1.3125 according to Core Temp 0.99.2 at stock settings.

When I first set up this config 9 months ago I left Prime, Orthos and even Memtested thoroughly for 12+ hours at 1.4750 bios Vcore.

[Ol'Baditude]

I had a much better experience overclocking my q66 after the flash to p32. I've never been able to get such good clocks from so little voltage. My X48 doesn't make sounds like it's gonna die like the 680i did, but it takes more voltage to stabilize the same overclock. I'll add that I totally skipped over the p31 bios and went straight to the p32.

Here's an example:

25Hrs Prime Stable, Initial test for stability. Ambient 25DegC.


Nice Cool Day Idle. Ambient 21DegC.


Load. Amient 21DegC.

[DKK]

The new 1.2000 VID chip arrived today, and so far it's a real Gem.

Temperatures should smarten up when the ambient goes down, it was 30degC. in here tonight. Bleck!

I'll let it run Prime over the next 24Hrs to make sure it's stable, but it's a darn good start.



LOAD:

Your core temps are lower than your ambient? Doesn't that, like, defy the laws of physics?

[jcool]

This is mine on its current all day every day setting:



Not quite satisfied yet, I always wanted to get to 4,2Ghz for 24/7 use and I will. Just have to coax my DFI to run a tad more FSB, got 462 already but I need 467...

Oh yeah, it's an older L737 (don't remember the exact batch but can look it up), Vid 1.225V.
Does 4Ghz on water with around 1,45V too.. problem is FSB/the mobo. Some unresolved issues with DFIs X38 and Quad FSBs, no one got over 460 stable (while I could prime the CPU at 480 on another X38 board, will probably go even higher on P45).

[whe3ls]

3ghz @ 1.160 vcore

[Ol'Baditude]

Your core temps are lower than your ambient? Doesn't that, like, defy the laws of physics?

In a word... No.

[BeastNotro]

If your freezing a CPU then your temps will be a lot lower then ambient....

Well i have not posted in here for a page or so.... so i am using Bios 1201 now and all is well so far.. check my specs and template for what i have and running.. Orthos 11hrs before i shut her down and Linpack 1.4 stable .. 10 loops.

[Ol'Baditude]

Yup, the answer was pretty much as simple as using DICE or LN2. But an undervolted chip cooled by a high end WC loop can hover right around the ambient room temperature.

[DKK]

Yup, the answer was pretty much as simple as using DICE or LN2. But an undervolted chip cooled by a high end WC loop can hover right around the ambient room temperature.

What you state has nothing to do with your snapshot. I have no idea if you're using a high quality WC, but you're definitely not undervolting to get your OC clock. Even a high quality WC will not give your core temps below ambient. This is not an opinion but a fact.

[Ol'Baditude]

What you state has nothing to do with your snapshot. I have no idea if you're using a high quality WC, but you're definitely not undervolting to get your OC clock. Even a high quality WC will not give your core temps below ambient. This is not an opinion but a fact.

You should have had an idea of my cooling from looking at my sig. It's staring you right in the face. And yes the chip is in fact undervolted if the VID is 1.200 and the Vcore after .05 droop is 1.184v That means I have to set BIOS voltage above VID at 1.225v to get the required ~1.175v that it takes to run the chip stable.

Anyone who knows anything about water cooling should know that you can't go sub ambient without a chiller. Thx but you're stating the obvious.

At no time did I say that my idle temperatures were correct. I was just giving a screenshot of what I had so far. Those numbers were not calibrated in RealTemp which should have been obvious by the fact that they matched perfectly with Everest. Anyone who says that their temperature monitoring program is exactly right anyway is deluding themselves.

Anyone who's ever taken a snapshot of a temp monitoring program knows that:
a) the numbers fluctuate and it's anyones guess where they're going to end up at the instant you take the screen shot. In this case it was 32,28,28,28. They can and will fluxuate ~5 deg in either direction.
b)thermal sensors in a chip aren't always exactly stable, consistent or as good at reporting temperatures as people think.
It just so happened the Idle core temps happened to read a little low at the instant I took the screencap that's all.

I can see now that your original question was aimed at me in particular, but it was ignored due to the obvious reasons above, and because it came off as ignorant.
I addressed the obvious and general inaccuracies of your question by indicating sub ambient temperatures are of course not against the laws of physics.

And the point you should pay particular attention to is this: nobody posts a screen shot to show their idle temperatures, because they don't matter. People post two screenshots. One to show idle and one to show load so that people can get an idea of the two important things: The max temp, and the delta between idle and load.

[jcool]

I beg to differ - idle temps don't matter, ever. Delta is between load core temp and air (aircooling), water (watercooling) or, in some cases, between evap and core (I get around 0 C coretemp at -20 evap and approx 260W heat load, for example, hence Delta = 20 C).

[Ol'Baditude]

Ok, that's one way to look at it. And you are right. Thank you.

Another would be to refer to the change btw. idle and load as the delta (since delta can be used quantify the amount of change in any situation). For me, monitoring this delta is merely for diagnosing problems with my setup(ie: HS/WB mount, TIM application, rad efficiency, etc.), and to show this when displaying screen caps to support my OC reports.

[jcool]

I can see your point. Rad efficiency is best measured with the delta between ambient and water temp, not CPU core temp though. Too many variables there, like mount, TIM used, pressure applied, flow etc.
You know why idle temps aren't of any importance to me? Because we DCers don't even know a state called "idle". You might wanna have a go at it, too - head over to the distributed computing forums and pick your addiction (I'd favor WCG )

This is called active member acquisition, you know

[BeastNotro]

Bah thats it i moving to the North pole anyone wanna join me as that is a COLD/FREEZING place.. heck i bet we won't need anything on the CPU at all to run it...

[Ol'Baditude]

I can see your point. Rad efficiency is best measured with the delta between ambient and water temp, not CPU core temp though. Too many variables there, like mount, TIM used, pressure applied, flow etc.
You know why idle temps aren't of any importance to me? Because we DCers don't even know a state called "idle". You might wanna have a go at it, too - head over to the distributed computing forums and pick your addiction (I'd favor WCG )

This is called active member acquisition, you know

Hehe, I was wondering what DCers meant. I fold for team32 already and have a dedicated rig for that, and yes, It does not have an idle state. Sry, no room for more in my small one bedroom condo.

Also, yes. When I said rad efficiency I meant more along the lines that it doesn't take too much to dissipate the heat of an idle processor, and if you just look at that, you're not even coming close to getting the whole story. But if my delta between CPU idle and load temps skyrocket after I turn on prime, and I've verified the function and performance of the rest of the loop, it might be time to change part of my WC setup. In particular the Rad and or Fans, or just make adjustments to my fan controller. I think that in this case, the way to make sure if your rad was in need of replacement would be to do what you said, and check the efficiency by monitoring the Ambient air and water temperatures.

[jcool]

If my idle temps show -1C (core sensors won't go lower than that..) and temps move at all as soon as I start up prime, my evap mount is bad
Phase change can be so simple sometimes

Good to see you're folding already

[Ol'Baditude]

You have pictures of that setup?

[jcool]

Not really... I am waiting on some final WC parts to finish the rig, for now it's just running, cabling is a mess etc.
You can catch a glimpse at it here, note these pics were taken while the unit was down, hence the "emergency CPU waterblock"

[klanjsek]

Hi all...

I have just joined the q6600 club and wanted to report/share my findings, especially after reading about the effect on of low/high VIDs on oc. Namely, when i first run core temp and saw that my q6600 is g0 with the VID of 1.325 I said: " i am screwed". And I was right. When I tried to boot at 3ghz with everything at stock, pc did not even boot. I said ok, this is some serious crap. But then I went in to bios and changed some voltages (had 939 rig before so i really did not know what i have to change ) and eventually ended up booting and priming stable at 3.2ghz at 1.35v. Then I lowered cpu voltage to stock and primed again...stable . So I am running at stock voltage at 3.2ghz at 60/60/54/55°c under load (according to core temp) on p5q using artic freezer 7 again having hope that I did not get a complete dud.

[Loser777]

What batch?

[klanjsek]

What batch?

hmm...i do not know if this is the correct No., but under fpo it says:
L807A422 (SLACR, Malay, pack date 5/9/2008). Is this good?

will go for 3.4ghz@stock and report back.

[Ol'Baditude]

3.4 @ stock might be a little tough for you. I can boot my 1.2000VID at 3.4GHz at stock settings and run applications , but forget about Prime stability.

When you say you are priming stable, how long are you priming for?