IDIOT needs help

[C@rtman]

Good evening all, I could really do with some expert opinions on whether I am about to blow my PC up or not. As you can probably tell already I am completely new to the overclocking game and all the abbreviations and technical bios names have finally gotten the better of me. Rather than trying to explain what I have done, I have attached 2 pictures of my first attempt at an overclock on a EVGA 750i and Q6600. The ram is at default and am just trying to concentrate on a stable clock before I go there, although I have already had to take 2x1024 dimms out in order to boot.

Is the anything glaringly obvious that I have done wrong or need to change, I am not trying to break records just to achieve a good stable overclock if possible around 3.2Ghz?. Is it also possible to re-enable SPEEDSTEP with my current settings or am I asking for trouble.
The temps look ok to me, I believe the "88 oc" motherboard reading is duff as Everest did not recognise my MB.
I truly appreciate any advice or help you can give,
Regards

 

[Granite3]

Firstly. the Nvidia boards have a stock ram voltage at 1.8. Bump that to 2.05 right off.

Next, unlink the ram/fsb. This allows you to take the ram out of the equation, up to a point, and concentrate on the cpu.

The Northbridge voltage needs to go to at least 1.4ish, while leaving the cpu voltage on auto.

This should be good to at least 3.0. To get 3.2 is going to require a little more voltage for the cpu, unless you have a great binned piece of silicone.
Up the cpu voltage to go along with your increasing fsb, till you hit your mark. Verify stability with Orthos or Prime 95.

You can reenable the speedstep after you reach your overclock goals.

 

[sciggy]

Another big thing to make sure you do is to lock the PCIE frequency to 100mhz. If you don't, it can overclock and cause severe instability right off the bat.

 

[faster3200]

I think most people here (such as myself) are used to CPU-Z and coretemp (or realtemp or speedfan) as apposed to everest as those programs are more standard, so I don't know what everything on your system bar is without labels.

I am going to assume the 50ish numbers are temps, if so are they 100% load temps or idle temps? If they are idle what are the 100% load temps as those would be pretty high for idle?

I am not sure why you have to take ram out to boot, sounds like they are not stable to me. Even though you didn't overclock them there is a good chance the default voltage is lower than manufacturer specs, the screens you posted don't provide this info. You can re0enable speedstep if you would like. Most people disable it since they don't like the idea of their proc being underclocked, it also causes a load on nb, but isn't a huge issue at the fsb you are at.

I am assuming you did stability testing. If you used Orthos that means you ran two instances (from different folders) for 8hrs and set the affinity properly. If you used OCCT that means you did at least a 1hr test.

I am curious why you are using an 8x multi. 9x multi generally yield a better OC, if you are doing it to keep 1:1, don't bother you won't see performance gains just increase the divider and you will be ok.

 

[dagger]

Firstly. the Nvidia boards have a stock ram voltage at 1.8. Bump that to 2.05 right off.

Next, unlink the ram/fsb. This allows you to take the ram out of the equation, up to a point, and concentrate on the cpu.

The Northbridge voltage needs to go to at least 1.4ish, while leaving the cpu voltage on auto.

This should be good to at least 3.0. To get 3.2 is going to require a little more voltage for the cpu, unless you have a great binned piece of silicone.
Up the cpu voltage to go along with your increasing fsb, till you hit your mark. Verify stability with Orthos or Prime 95.

You can reenable the speedstep after you reach your overclock goals.

Ram voltage depends on model. Most motherboards will default to 1.8v. If your ram is rated higher, you can bump up voltage. Otherwise leave it alone, or you may burn it out. 1.8v is the rated voltage for many models.

Unlinked ram don't run as efficiently as using the ideal 1:1 ratio. At your 1600mhz fsb, the ddr2 ram is at 800mhz. If this is the ram's native clock, leave it alone.

Northbridge voltage should usually be increased, as 1600mhz is very high for 750i chipset. Although stress test it first. If it's stable at lower voltage, that's a good thing.

For a high 1.3125 vid g0 q6600, 1.45v is prime95 stable at 3.6ghz. Intel's recommended voltage for the chip is up to 1.5v, so it's guaranteed to be safe up to at least that point. If you push up to 3.6ghz, use 9x multiplier, not 8, since the 750i is already stressed enough at 1600mhz fsb, and won't take much more.

 

[calinkula]

What PSU you got?

 

[C@rtman]

Guys,
Firstly, thankyou for the responses, I realise how tiring it must be responding to clueless halfwits. I have spent days trying to get my head around all the different chip phrases and abbreviations and this is where I am getting myself confused. To clarify, the nforce SPP on a 750i bios is the Northbridge voltage bios setting......what the hell is the MCP bios setting?.
I have attached another picture from CPU-Z and coretemp to make things a little easier for all and posted my specs below.
My current settings where based on a forum post I read boasting of a 3 minute overclock which was probably the wrong way to go, especially as I have no idea of what I am altering. The temps from Everest were idle speeds with 48c being the cpu and 59c the GPU.
I am willing to try any suggestions that will give me a stable overclock with my current hardware and not stress anything that I dont have too if possible. I appreciate your patience and if you could suggest alterations in lamens terms or bios language it would be greatly recieved. My ram voltages have been increased to 2.1v as per DIMM spec but this is the only setting I changed apart from selecting the unlinked option. The system froze with 4x1024 but was ok with 2x1024.

granite3, I am going to try your suggestions after this post and will respond how I get on, my specs :

NorthQ 4775 Giantreactor 1000w
EVGA 750i FTW
Q6600 CPU
8800GTS GPU
4x1024 Corsair Dominator 8500C5D

 

[C@rtman]

Bigger picture, it wouldnt let me edit

 

[C@rtman]

Chaps,
I ran prime95 as suggested on "large FFT's" on my original 1600Mhz setup and it failed within the first 3 minutes. I have since changed the FSB to 1400 with a 9 divider, running unlinked and left all the voltages on Auto, including the Dimms which default at 1.9v. Prime has run for an hour and a half with no fails...........my temps from core temp average 61oC at 100% load.
Can I raise the FSB in say 50 step increases with all voltages left on auto until prime95 fails for a stable overclock, the current CPU core voltage from an auto setting is around the recommended 1.40v?. I dont want to stress my fsb if there is a way to achieve the same overclock by reducing fsb and increasing divider and or voltage?.

This overclocking lark is not as easy as it sounds .

 

[faster3200]

I would recommend taking voltages off of auto since that way you can fine tune them. You can get them as low as you want this way or jack them up high and OC without having to think about voltage when testing and then go back and trying to drop them. I am never positive the auto setting will work correctly.

You may want to take your ram off of unlinked since they don't run as efficiently in this mode. I realize someone recommended doing unlinked to concentrate on on your CPU, just make sure you change it backed to linked once you find the max stable CPU OC.

It is not a good idea to raise your fsb anymore than in 5mhz chucnks, especially as you are getting towards your final OC. You have a bit of temp room so you can keep pushing onward if you want.

Also I don't think you are using the term divider correctly. What I think you mean to say is multiplier. Divider is the ratio between cpu speed and ram speed. The multiplier is your clock speed/fsb (or a more natural way of thinking is fsb x multiplier=clock speed). I think you may also be a bit confused on what fsb we are talking about since it isn't the commercial term. FSB is what CPU-Z labels as bus speed. This number is multplied by your multiplier to get cpu speed, multiplied by 2 and then adjusted by the divider setting to get your mem speed, and multplied by 4 to get what is the commercial term for fsb (also the speed nb and sb run at). If you didn't know any of this don't worry, it isn't something that is just openly stated.

 

[C@rtman]

Faster,
Thankyou sire for the explanation and terminilogy, I know in my head what everybody is talking when reading posts but not so good at explaining or using the correct terms in responding .
I do of course mean multiplier and not divider....doh!, and you are correct the fsb had me confused.

On a brighter note, I have changed my ram timings to 5,5,5,15,2T and added the additional 2 gigs which is now recognised by the system and windows, I increased the SPP in steps from default 1.2 - 1.35v < is this too high as I have also noticed a hike in the temps.

Once I am happy with my final overclock and if I change back to linked, does this automatically adjust the ram timings to match the fsb, I am worried that I will start having issues with my ram again, as this is the first time I have all 4 chips recognised by the sytem at the specified timings?.

I appreciate the help.