Cooling OC'ed Q6600 B3

i used to use a cooler master hyper tx3 with noctua nt-h1 thermal paste with my old q6600, had it running 3.49ghz at around 65c under prime95 load. you just need to keep it under 70c, that is fine for that cpu, you dont need to be below 45c under load thats silly.. And im in australia, fairly warm climate, and the tx3 worked fine. you could get the hyper212 to be safe, but its a fairly big cooler just need to make sure it fits. No point spending too much on such an old cpu.

the Q6600 model are simply toaster (i had the G0 version) even with an Noctua NH-D14 i was at 35 idle and 50+ load at stock speed and this thing OC to 4.05ghz would push 55 at idle and 70+ full load....

I know that the B3 is a lot hotter than the G0 and at stock, the B3 is getting as hot as an OCed GO (i've seen NH-D14 on B3 and at 3ghz and stock voltage was breaking the 70 barrier (as B3 thermal limit is 69 while G0 are 73)

Even at stock speed the D14 would get close to what you already have (maybe 40-45 if you're lucky) but the D14 will really help in load temps as the more it get, the more it push, it's extremely effective at pushing heat away...

You could try the D14 or a closed loop watercooler like the Corsair H80 or H90 as they're about the performance of the D14 (the H100 and H110 do better if you really want the max.)

PS: make sure you have the real temp, software almost never give the real temps of your cpu... (i've see 15-20C difference in software vs the actual cpu temp...)

I have exactly the same CPU Q6600 B3.
I can tell you its really hot. I have the Zalman CNPS9700 LED (which is 100%!!! copper), as a case the Silverstone Raven 3 (one of the best aircooling cases), and still I can see 50C degree (while testing it with prime95). But since I live at the hottest country of Europe I think its alrighty.
But generally the Q6600 B3 is really hot. In the end its the first attempt to make quad core (they are actually 2 dual core on the same die (MCM)) cpus (Kentsfield) from intel so I guess they couldn't solve all problems from the begining.

Yeah GPU contribute to heat up the case (i had dual 560ti with the D14 so maybe my temps was a little higher than normal)

HWmonitor, Aida64, Coretemp, the ASUS utility for your motherboard could also measure temps and would surely be the better option...

stock voltage will bring you to about 3ghz to max 3.2ghz... Mine was running way over specs at 1.6V Vcore and 1.5V VTT for 4.05ghz (however it was the SLACR G0 version) I was able to reach 3.6ghz with 1.4V but i was lucky, most Q6600 will hurt a wall at around 3.4 3.5ghz and would need a lot more Vcore to pass the wall 1.4V for 3.6 and 1.55 for 3.7 when 1.6 bring my Q6600 to 4+...

For B3 Q6600: Intel max Vcore is 1.5V; max temps 69C; max VTT 1.4V; max chipset voltage 1.4V (in theory you could go to about 425-450mhz FSB with that voltage) If you manage to keep all that below, you'll be ok and safe on the long run...

When trying 3.2ghz, did you downclock your RAM to match the stock speed (or the closest setting possible) as RAM overclock is a lot of work and on 775 socket 4dimm will never pass 800mhz at 400+FSB unless you throw stupid amount of voltage into ram and internal memory controller (IMC) (FYI: my kingston Hyperx was 1066mhz 2.1V and to run at 450FSB and 1200mhz ram i needed 2.8V on ram while 2.3V is considered dangerous and i was also forced to use 1.6V on the chipset to keep it stable...) Also make sure the reference voltage is ALWAYS EXACTLY 2/3 of the VTT or that could burn the transistor inside your CPU...

PS: for 3ghz, FSB at 333mhz X9 ratio and set the ram to 800mhz if you have the option as ASUS isn't offering multiple RAM ratio like other brands... Don't touch any RAM or Chipset voltage for a low OC like that, they should be able to run that easily.

If ASUS don't have ram speed and ratio options, select 667mhz at default 266 and up to 333, that will give you 835mhz and your ram should be ok for just 35mhz (if that don't pass, up the RAM voltage by 0.1V and don't pass 1.9V for generic ram or if you use high-end module 2.3V is the absolute max if you don't want to burn anything, you could go higher like me but i'm more a hardcore guy that push a lot ;-) You could also push .1V more on the IMC/Chipset to ensure stability on the long term...

You seem to have the same problems as I did with the Asus P5N32-E SLI with the nvidia 680 chipset .
I had problems getting 400x8 (3,2Ghz) (prime problems here too) but not with 400x7 (2,8Ghz). Also I didnt had problems with 333x9 (apart from temp increase, cause I didnt had proper cooling then).
PS: I think I did 2,8Ghz without even voltage increase.
PS2: From what I remember back in 2008, B3 was bad at o/c. Then G0 came in to market with far better o/c potential. It seems our cpu its not good for O/C.

What do you mean? oO
My mobo had a lot of ratios, even free ratio lol (FSB and RAM unlinked).

Had many ASUS board and all the one i've owned was really poor with FSB/RAM ratio (even the Rampage Formula) with only Standard ones, link to the FSB standard (266/667-800-1066; 333/667-800-1066; 400/800-1066) and unlinked was never stable from what i've seen (maybe it's more on the Intel part tho as Gigabyte wasn't stable either in unlinked mode)

Hmm I didn't have any problems with unlinked ratio, BUT, I was getting lower numbers at RAM and CPU benchmarks, so obviously there is no point of doing it. I read somewhere that its natural and from my tests it seems that the ratio of Q6600 with DDR2 matters to the RAM performance (667 linked was like 800 unlinked). It was stable though...

I've always used 1066mhz so maybe in the high speed the unlinked was not a good option for stability as the chipset was stressed out... Never tried it with 800mhz, maybe that would have worked...

I suggest a CM 212+ and keep your ram 1:1.

It's not bad at all:
Hardware Heaven
Frosty Tech
Elite Bastards
The major problem is the B3 stepping in my opinion, though 50 degrees at idle is still too much. Have you tested it with open case? If yes what numbers did you get?

Well you will gain a few temps (maybe 3 or more) with Arctic Silver 5.
Hardware Secrets
I noticed that Asus Arctic Square has fan speed control. Have you set it on high or max?

"the fan is also PWM controlled"

"The 92mm fan in the body of the Asus Arctic Square heatsink is moderately audible under power. The fan creates about 45 dBA when spinning at its full 2300RPM, and just under 38 dBA at slow speed (1200RPM). Because the fan is PWM compliant the computer BIOS will adjust fan speed to match current CPU thermal load."

Mornin' .
Well go for it. Both CNPS12X and Arctic Silver 5 are solid choices. But when you will change your rig you should prolly use Haswell which will require additional parts (cause of different socket).
On the other hand 67C at load with 33% o/c in one of the hottest intel cpus is not bad at all .

You welcome .
Try not to burn it! xD