Q6600 overclock stability problem, please help

Jon87

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Aug 11, 2008
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Hey guys I am fairly new to overclocking and yesterday received a new cpu cooler (Akasa AK-965) which I installed and after checking the temps on my stock q6600 chip (35 idle, 45 load) decided to overclock to 3GHz (FSB 1333).

I have an Asus P5N-D mobo which failed to post when voltages were set to "auto" at both 2.7GHz and 3Ghz clock speeds which I thought was odd as the board is supposed to over-estimate voltages when on auto. I set the voltages manually based on research as follows:

Vcore 1.325
Memory auto
HT 1.3
NB 1.3
SB 1.5

The System now posts every time, temps are around 38 idle, 48 load and everything is stable until I really push the cpu. Arma 2 is the most intense program I have and so I have been playing that to test the overclock with occasional blue screen crashes (after 5-50 mins play).

I have tried raising the Vcore to 1.35V in small increments but the crashes still persist (although are perhaps less frequent). What advice do you have in terms of getting the system fully stable? I could keep raising Vcore as the Vdroop on my mobo seems fairly severe (at 1.35V Vcore in bios, cpu-z reads 1.296V), I have heard increasing the north bridge voltage may help too. It seems others have achieved 3GHz at lower voltages than I have currently though.

The error message on one bsod read as follows: "A clock interrupt was not received on the secondary processor within the allowed time interval

RAM is set to unlinked at factory timings of 5-5-5-18, 800mhz

My PSU is 550W with 35A on the 12V rail, GPU is 9800GTX+

Many thanks for your assistance
 

ac3144

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Apr 27, 2009
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Hi, I got to 3GHz on stock volts which I think is fairly common (as I think you have found also) I had problems posting initially even with tiny increases in FSB, I later discovered it was due to RAM running above rated speed.

What does CPU-z report your ram:fsb ratio as? (it tells you on the mem section). I'm not a whizz with RAM timings etc so can't help you there but I can say that you shouldn't need to up the voltage very much, if t all, to get to 3GHz.

Mine runs at 1.3685v for 3.4GHz with a 1:1 fsb:ram ratio (fsb @ 375).
AC
 

rojito

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The Q6600 (G0 Stepping) should be able to get 3.0GHz at stock or near voltages, the chipset also, so check RAM (not only the voltage but the frequency if you have something different to 1:1 ratio the RAM could be too stressed.
 

Jon87

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Aug 11, 2008
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Thanks for the responses guys. I have unlinked the RAM from the FSB and have it running at stock (800MHz, 5-5-5-18). Been doing some more testing on upping the Vcore a small bit and it seems at this stage to be working. I think the VID on my G0 chip is quite high (1.3V) which may explain the instabilities at 1.325 and 1.35