Core2 Duo E7500 Overclocking Advice

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dtechman

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Before I begin i will tell you i had extra $ at one point in my life for costly pc builds,and now i don't! So 3 months ago i had to lay my old rig(athlon fx60,nv 7800 gtx*2 and much more)to rest because it was just to old..I only had $250 for a new build so i ended up getting a lga 775 mobo and a core2 duo e7500 and an xfx4850 1gb( it out performs my old rig by at least two times in most benchmarks)nice rig for the $ i have been overclocking amd rigs for a bit.but havent worked with intel much.So i oc'd this e7500 from 2.93 to 3.33 (11*303,1212fsb=3.33ghz)with vcore at 1.275 great temps.been running at 3.3 ever since.I have only found bits of info on oc'ing this chip within reviews but nothing about going past 3.8ghz.i use a hyper 212 and load temps are around 38-42c.So what i will ask of you kind readers is any links or info on oc'ing this 45nm wolfdale past 3.8 on air. i hear of 4.0 and 4.1 on air but no one gives good volt and temp info?? thanks for you'r help :wahoo:
 
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I have a similar setup. I'm running a e7500, MSI P35 motherboard, 4870 vid card, 8 gig 800mhz RAM. I overclock my e7500 to 4004Mhz (11 x 364). I had to pump up the voltage to get there. It reads 1.432 in cpuz. Yes, it's a high voltage, but this is a cheap CPU on an old board and if it only lasts a relatively short time, I am fine with that. I have been running it at this overclock for about 6 months without issue though.

I use a cheap OCZ 3 heat-pipe air cooler and under Prime 95 (in-place large FFTs for max heat) it maxes around 56C-57C if the house is warm (Both CoreTemp RealTemp match temp reports). I have run it overnight without any Prime95 errors. If I run Intelburn Test (max setting), it will max in temp about 79C-82C depending...

xer0

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I have a similar setup. I'm running a e7500, MSI P35 motherboard, 4870 vid card, 8 gig 800mhz RAM. I overclock my e7500 to 4004Mhz (11 x 364). I had to pump up the voltage to get there. It reads 1.432 in cpuz. Yes, it's a high voltage, but this is a cheap CPU on an old board and if it only lasts a relatively short time, I am fine with that. I have been running it at this overclock for about 6 months without issue though.

I use a cheap OCZ 3 heat-pipe air cooler and under Prime 95 (in-place large FFTs for max heat) it maxes around 56C-57C if the house is warm (Both CoreTemp RealTemp match temp reports). I have run it overnight without any Prime95 errors. If I run Intelburn Test (max setting), it will max in temp about 79C-82C depending on room temp. Yes that's pretty warm, but that's the absolute worst case heat scenario. Normal usage never even approaches the temps Intelburn gives me. Running tough 3d games generally only sees the CPU at about 45C-50C max. Most of the time it's idling around 32C and 2184Ghz since I have enabled speedstep and C1E.

I dont crank up the FSB because 2 sticks of the ram (4 total sticks) are not that great. Right now they are actually running at 364Mhz (728Mhz double pumped) which is a good bit below the stick rating of 400Mhz (800Mhz doubled). I was initially trying to push 2 1066Mhz rated sticks of ram (4 gigs) hard, but found out that 8 gigs ram run slower still gave me much more overall performance benefit over 4 gigs run faster in Win7. Besides which, if I messed with the CPU multipliers on my board (aka lower multplier and higher RAM FSB), speedstep would disable, and I'd rather the board be able to drop the CPU speed when it's not needed.

Only time I saw the faster ram benefit was benchmarks anyway, in real-world use, doubling the ram allowed Win7 to precache (pre-fetch? whatever it's called) stuff to work much better and my system felt more responsive despite running the ram slower.

Oh yeah, my e7500's VID is 1.270 so if you got a cpu with a lower VID (better bin), then you should get roughly the same overclocks even easier, especially as your heatsink is better than mine. I didn't have to pump the voltage up much until I was over 3.6ish Ghz on the CPU. If I remember right, I was under 1.365v in the BIOS to get to 3.6Ghz. After voltage sag, the chip was seeing around 1.32V which is easily in Intel's voltage specs still.

I recently bought a Micron SSD and it has by far been the biggest improvment in overall system responsiveness. It takes about 15 seconds after BIOS to be in Windows with all the junk loaded and the cpu back to idle speeds.

I use an i7 2.8Ghz at work (supplied by company of course) and really, for most things (re: 99.5% of things), my lowly OC'd e7500 is plenty powerful and with the SSD actually "feels" much faster to use than my work PC with a really powerful CPU and standard hard drive.
 
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Part of that is because 3.8 GHz is a good OC for an E7200 series CPU.

What kind of motherboard and memory?

Now it's time to do a little studying ...

This should be your first stop.
HOWTO: Overclock C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - Guide v1.6.1
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/240001-29-howto-overclock-quads-duals-guide

Next stop should be a guide for your particular motherboard. Google is your friend.

If you happen to have a Gigabyte motherboard ...
Shadow's Gigabyte motherboard OC guide:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-245679_11_0.html
It's for an EP35-DS3L but all the Gigabyte Core2 BIOS's are similar.

Go through the guides. Then take your core voltage off Auto and set your memory voltage to factory recommended values. Change the System Memory Multiplier (or whatever your BIOS calls it) from AUTO to 2.00, 2.00B, or 2.00D - whichever you need to set the Memory Frequency to twice the FSB. Then when you increase the FSB, the memory clock will rise in in proportion with it. At an FSB of 266 MHz, your memory clock should be at 533 MHz.

Download CPU-Z to check your FSB:RAM ratio. It should be a 1:1 ratio.

For a serious overclock, you will need better than stock cooling. Here are three under $50 heatsinks that are pretty popular:
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065
Sunbeam
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835207004
Xigmatec Dark Knight
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233029

They all require a somewhat different approach to applying thermal compound.
Suggestions for applying thermal compound:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170&Itemid=1&limit=1&limitstart=5

And they are pretty large, so they might not fit inside your case.

This should be enough to get you started.
 

dtechman

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boy thanks very much for all your time and info.let me say real quick i am new to forums and this site,but as i said in first post i have many many hours of ocing under my belt and am in no way a newbee at the art of performance tuning.as i said before i have mosty delt with amd rigs,but i do know the science behind both the ht link and the fsb.i was going to just start and not stop untill i found no more thermal head room but i dont have anymore $ for another cpu.so i wanted to hear from some people that may have already been down the road of ups and downs and bsod's of ocing this chip.so im sorry if my original post sounded inexperienced.i run an msi p7n-sli(ms-7380)2*2gb crucial cheepo ddr2 800,and i do NOT oc the mem.(yes i know how to use the divider)just hoping to hear of some CPU volts,temps and speeds that have been accomplished.anyways i do very much thank you for your time respect.i will be playing around with some voltages and bus speeds this weekend that zer0 posted and will let you all know how its going ......BTW i haven't seen the core 2 duo and quad oc how to untill jsc posted the link i will recomend it to anyone new to ocing intel systems thanks again
 

dtechman

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Thanks zer0...been running your specs all weekend.i was very supprised at how oc-able this is compaired to my old $1000 athlon fx60,from 2.6 to 3.096 max i could get on air cooling!the 45nm chips run much cooler at higher volts than 90nm!I will be pushing this some more seeing as how at your specs, intelburn is maxing out at 71c on my rig. anyways thanks to all.must get to work ,i'll be posting again about temps and speeds,hope to see around 4.1 ghz now that i know this $80 has way more head room than what i'm used to..thanks again from the very wet state of Washington
 

demonfox79

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I got same CPU E7500 with (cooler master hyper tx3), a GIGABYTE - GA-P41T-D3P O.C by stock to 1333 and ADATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10700) and PSU (cooler master 600W), What are my options here to reach the best stable overclocking ?!!!
 
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