Q6600 @ 3.6 GHz + gt 240 OC

[adakins]

hi i am running a q6600 with stock air cooler, have a 400w psu, and 3 gigs of ram soon to be 4. my video card is a xfx gt 240 1g ddr5. i am running msi afterburner and have a pretty stable gpu. i was wondering how to go about oc'ing my q6600, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[cromedome]

You should first buy an aftermarket CPU cooling before doing any overclocking. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus is great bang for buck.

Your GPU is 'pretty' stable? I'm not sure how stable that is but with overclocking all the components must be 100% stable at a reflectively good temperature to ensure longevity and good performance.

Once you have a good CPU cooler we can help you to overclock. I strongly suggest you don't overclock the CPU until you have a good cooler. Overclocking the GT240 should relatively simple as long as you keep it at stock voltage (I'm not even sure that GT240 supports voltage adjustments) using Afterburner.

 

[cromedome]

I meant relatively, not reflectively.

 

[adakins]

Thanks for the reply. I have read about a lot of people doing it fine with air cooling. They read a lot of people go to 3.6 with a aftermarket cooling system, im only shooting for 3ghz. i get lost in the M.T.I. tab in the bios, heres what i see in mine

CPU Clock Ratio - 9x
CPU Clock Frequency - 2.40ghz (266x9)
CPU Host Clock Control - disabled
CPU Host Clock Frequency - 266
PCI-E Frequency - Auto
Performance Enhance - Standard
System Memory Multiplier SPD - Auto
Memory Frequency - 800 800
Voltage - 1.31250v
in the pc health and status tab i see

VCore - 1.284v
DDR18v - 1.920v
*3.3v - 3.344v
*12v - 11.858v

Sorry for the useless info, but i changed it to 9x333 for the 3.0ghz and it ran well for a while then screen went black so i loaded defaults. What else am i to change besides the CPU Clock frequency And as far as the "pretty stable gpu" hehe good point it ran very well all day then screen flickers and got a message about driver or something reloading or something

 

[jsc]

Speaking from experience, a Q6600 should easily run at 3.0 GHz with little or no voltage increase with the stock cooler. To go any higher will take better cooling.

I am guessing that you have a Gigabyte motherboard and you actually mean "M.I.T." and not "M.T.I".

This should be your first stop.
Core2 Overclocking Guide (our generic guide)
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/259899-11-core-overclocking-guide

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 from AUTO to 2.00, 2.00B, or 2.00D - whichever you need to set the Memory Frequency to twice the FSB. 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.

I think you are inadvertently overclocking your memory. With your memory settings on Auto and the FSB freq set to 333 MHz, your memory is actually running at (333/266)*800 or DDR2-1000 speeds.

 

[adakins]

Man you are so good, hehe thanks a ton i think i figured it out for the most part. and btw my bad about M.T.I. its M.I.T.

And i put a +0.1 to the DRAM overvoltage but cpu-z reads 1.8 still

this is what CPU-Z reads in the memory tab
DRAM frequency 332.7 mhz
FSBRAM 1:1
CL 5
tRCD 5
tRP 5
tRAS 15
tRFC 44
CR 2T