Overclocking the Q9450 - help!

Check out the excellent OC guides among the forum stickies.

HOWTO: Overclock C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - Guide v1.6.1
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/240001-29-howto-overc...

Core 2 Quad and Duo Temperature Guide
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/221745-29-core-quad-t...

And you need a guide for your specific motherboard.

Having said that, you won't get far with stock cooling. I replaced a Q6600 with a Q9550. One of the things I noticed was that the 9550 heatsink was about half the size of the 6600's. The Q6600 was good for a 25% OC with its stock cooler. But I figure that the 9550' cooler was just big enough to safely run at stock speed.

If you are serious about overclocking, you will need better cooling.

This is an easy one if you have a good MB I have the 9400 your proc with 6meg less cach i can run it at 3.7g no issues set your voltage between 1.3 and 1.4 and go directly to 400 FSb test and bump up FSB 10 or so till it starts acting funny. I ended up with volts at 1.450 little high for some people but temps top out at 55 to 60 C so not to worried. have fun so worth it for encoding and such .. if just gaming you don't need much over 3.4 to 3.5 just wont make a big deffrence and heat starts being an issue over 1.5 volts (by the way don't do that without water or better) My rig ended up 8x463 for the 3.7 I ran it at 500 x 7.5 for a while for 3.75 just was a little quirky so went back. Also make sure your ram is 1000 or 1066 to handle the FSB over 800 if you are trying to keep 1 to 1 like most people here try to do.  

T

Hey thanks man - i would be perfectly happy with 400MHz FSB, and im sure i could get the voltage down to, perhaps, 1.35 volts. I think i am going to need some additional cooling though  
Cheers