Overclocking my Xeon W3520: current results

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parisha

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Dec 15, 2009
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Hi all,

So I built my new Xeon workstation a few days ago and yesterday I started overclocking it. The specs are:

CPU: Xeon W3520 (sorry, I don't have the batch number)
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212+
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD5
GPU: 1 GTX 275 (Galaxy double fan one)
Power supply: Corsair TX 650W
RAM: 6 GB Corsair DDR3 1333 (7-7-7-20)
Case: Antec 300 Illusion (all fans on high)

Anyway: I overclocked my Xeon to 4.06 Ghz (Bclk = 203 Mhz, multiplier = 20) pretty much using the i7 overclocking guide posted in this forum: I disabled all temperature regulation controls and turned off turbo boost. I set QPI speed to x36 and dropped my memory ratio to 6x. Then I systematically increased my Bclk in 10 MHz increments from 133 to 203 mhz, checking for system stability by running an hour of Prime95 at each increment. Whenever I got a BSOD I increased my CPU vcore until no more BSOD. My current vcore is 1.26875 V and I have left all other voltage settings to auto. RAM is at 1218 MHz.

Anyway, my current 4.06 Ghz clock seems stable: it ran Prime95 blend for 6 hours successfully, Orthos (8 threads) for a few hours without problem, and has been running BOINC (World Community Grid) calculations using 100% of processors, 100% of RAM and 100% of CPU time for the last 20 hours. Idle temperatures range between 33 and 39 oC and at full load (Prime95 blend) the temperatures range between 62 and 71 oC (after 3 hours of Prime95, the highest recorded temp was 71 oC). Ambient temperature is about 23 oC.

I'm pretty happy at this clock, especially since I will be running at 100% load 24/7 (I may even reduce my clock to keep temperatures under 70 oC for 24/7 computation). However, as you can probably surmise I am not an experienced overclocker so I don't know where to go from here... should I try to increase my memory ratio? Should I do something with QPI voltage? Should I enable turbo boost?

Any tips/suggestions/criticisms are more than welcomed. Also if you have questions about any of the parts that I bought, how they're fairing or how I feel about them, feel free to ask. Thanks!
 
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