CPU Degradation

460 FSB is pretty high but if your motherboard and CPU can handle it, then you might be ok, have you tested with prime/orthos (forget which one supports quad core) to see if it is stable?

Also, it seems that the VCORE you are running at is not bad for that OC, so stress test the CPU for over 12 hours straight, if you see errors then bump it down a smidge, otherwise you risk the prospect of shortening the life of the CPU as it would be considered unstable if there were errors...

Just keep in mind like the above poster pointed out about your mobo being pushed as well. Make sure your not over volting/heating your mother board. Ive seen systems go bad with high over clocks, and the culprit was the motherboard. 70c is fine for stress testing (on the cpu), you'll get 2 years easy out of it.

Thanks for the replies, I am 1 hour into Prime95, large FFT, and my CPU core temps are holding at 61c, 58c, 57c, 58c.

I have notice that my north bridge temps has dropped about 4c with the new cooler. I think that it is the northbridge, it is reported in HWmonitor as "System". It was idling at 45c with the old HSF, and now it idles around 40c. I do know that it would top out at 52c when gaming.

For anyone interested, here's a before and after shot of my system. I had to nip the corner of my side fan for clearance, but I was able to keep it in.

Before: http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu70/henrystrawn/DSC...

After: http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu70/henrystrawn/DSC...
(the red lens flare at the top is my phase LEDs all lit up, running Prime95, is this "bad"?

I was wondering what should I be looking for to make sure my motherboard "likes" the increased overclock? Other than the System temp and the voltages, I don't have any other feedback.

I will post a link to a screen shot about the 4 hour mark, let the forum look over temps and voltages.

EDIT

about two hours into Prime95 I noticed temps creeping up, so I turned both HSF fans and the top and rear exhaust to high, and the temps settled back down to around 60c. I was moving windows, and gadgets around to take a screen shot at the 4 hour mark, and I think I opened too many applications, and I minimized Prime95. windows explorer stopped responding, and task manager would not open. I shut down, but it didn't blue screen.

Maybe I will have time this weekend to run a longer stability test, but I need to get some work done, and I need to use this system.

Once you have arrived at stable OC settings, reenable SpeedStep if it is disabled. That will reduce the stress on your system quite a bit.

Henry, when stress testing the CPU with Prime95, you will see the temps at their absolute highest, it was meant to push the CPU extensively. You will rarely (if ever) see those high temps in real life. On top of that, those temps are actually pretty decent... when stress testing my Q6600 (3.6) with Prime, i remember peaking @ 72c but that was brief during the tests and after that i never passed 62c in real life games/apps...

You are correct ZZFH it is DDR 6400. I read a post by JSC that had a link to a GB guide by shadow. Informative, but the lowest freq I could get for my RAM was 920. I tried all MCH freq latch, with a bclk of 460 is there a way to set my RAM at 800 mhz on this board?

Thanks all for the reassurance concerning the temps. I am happy with the $60 investment, the cooler and two fans. I was just apprehensive about this overclock because of the first comments I got, and 38% OC is the best I have done. I was in unfamiliar territory. I had read that others had reached 4.0 ghz on a Q9550, and didn't know if they are running 24/7. I have saved All good CMOS settings to bios, up to 3.9, so I can reset when I want, but with speedstep, I was hoping to run one setting.

It just shocked me that I could reach 3.9 and still have one more notch of voltage, before exceeding the max vcore. I still haven't completed a long stress test, but the indications are good. I think if I hadn't been messing around during the stress test, it may be a good voltage setting.

I will try again this weekend, I just don't want to leave the system running unattended, while I sleep, I want to "see" what happens.

I just ran 3DMark Vantage at 3.6 and then at 3.91. I showed a CPU score increase of 1289 and a GPU score increase of 328. I didn't change any settings or kill any background processes.

Here's a link to the 3.6 Bench http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu70/henrystrawn/391...

Here's a link to the 3.91 Bench http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu70/henrystrawn/391...

Here's HWmonitor at 3.91, so you can see hardware installed http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu70/henrystrawn/391...

In a nut shell, 3.6 score is 16316 and 3.91 score is 16954, for an increase of 638 overall.

I am not familiar with 3DMark Vantage, I just opened it and clicked "Run Benchmark". I dragged over the CPU Gadget after starting Prime95, so the CPU info would be displayed, I have speedstep enabled.

Could I get some feedback on these benches and are the gains worth the OC?

Yes, the whole PC/DDR nomenclature is confusing IMHO. I normally just call RAM by it's rated freq. I have PC 6400/DDR2 800. I tried to edit my post, but it said "I was not allowed".

sorry ZZFH I was having fun with you on your correction. Thanks for pointing it out. I know what the RAM is, and was having some humor at my expense as well. It was done tongue in cheek, but couldn't find a emoticon for that.

Best answer selected by henrystrawn.