Quote Originally Posted by zsamz_ View Post
temps are what you comfortable with lol
just keep em in the 40s
just dont forget to put a fan on nb
Higher the NB voltage, lower you need to keep the temps as a rule of thumb. Voltage alone won't kill electronics, but voltage & heat make for a pretty potent destructive force

Low - Mid 40s for high FSB/tight PL latency is fine if you don't get 30+C days. The hotter your ambient temp gets the lower your NB temp will need to be to maintain stability. In constant temperature mid 40s is adequate, but with variations from day to day, you want to aim for low 40s so when you get that odd day when its warmer than usual, blue screens or hard locks won't drive you crazy or make you waste hours readjusting bios settings.

As much as I love my DFI X48 board, it doesn't like heavy temperature swings when I've adjusted every bios setting to near their limit. If I set everything up in 18-20c temps then I can run everything at its limit as long as the ambient temp doesn't go above 25c or so in my room. If it does then I get random crashes and the only solution is to back off GTLs/DLL Skews/Vrefs/PL until they stop.

I've done it so many times that now I just run my Q9550 at 8.5x400 PL8 and ~61-62ns mem latency, and other than not having to deal with occasional crashes, I don't notice that great of a difference for day to day usage compared to 450+ FSB with PL7. For benchmarks my timings/gtls and such are crappy, but I spent some time tweaking the "relaxed" settings I use day to day with Linpack and OS responsiveness and while Everest cache benchmark tells me I suck, gaming/general use tells me the complete opposite.

You can get good performance from relaxed settings if you spend the time learning them to play nice and get along with together! DFI bios adjustment is so flexible that you can pull off great performance with much lower voltage/heat/frequency cost. Just takes some patience and a keen eye for small details to help you make fine adjustments.