Q9550 @ 3.65 voltage and heat help

[the fong]

I decided with the imminent release of the BF3 beta in the next few days to overclock my old gaming rig, and I've managed to get a 10hr stable blended Prime95 test on it, just wondering if my temps and voltages were within safe limits

Rig is as follows

Q9550 (e0 stepping) @ 3.65ghz (430x8.5)
4gb Corsair Dominator 1066mhz ram @860mhz 5-5-5-15
DFI Lanparty x48 ut-t2r
twin Sapphire 5850 in crossfire
Corsair hx750 psu
Coolermaster Hyper 212+ cpu fan

Idle temps are 39-38-37-38, under 100% load in blend test after 6 hrs was 61-59-58-57
Vcore is at 1.35v, Nb voltage is at 1.4v, ram at 2.1v

also, was wondering if trying to get ram to a 1-1 is worth it?

Edit: Have lowered vcore to 1.30, raised nb voltage to 1.45 (and ziptied a 40mm fan to the northbridge heatsink), temps under load after 6 hours were 55-52-53-54. Not to bad for an almost 4 year old mobo

 

[Cygnus x-1]

Your ram is running in a 1:1 ratio, to get 1:1 and your rams rated speed you'll need 500+ on the fsb, probably not going to happen stable long term. Your temps are fine, you actually could go higher if you really wanted to. Keep it around 70c prime loaded or less and you're good.

 

[arthurh]

Welcome to THF the fong.

wondering if my temps and voltages were within safe limits

The tcase for the Q9550 is 71.4 C and Vc is .8500V - 1.625V. LINK

That being said I have run my CPU well over 1.4V and so far it still lives. My 24/7 OC is 3.83GHz with water cooling @ 1.30 Vc and as pointed out to you already your temps are fine for the OC you have. I do not like to go over 65 ~67C under-load but that is just for my peace of mind.

Since the only common component we have is the Q9550 I can tell you my experience with my M/BD was the higher NB V I could run the lower I could set my Vc. I also had to tinker with the PLL and VTT voltages for stability with my M/BD and ram timings had to be set manually. I left all the GTL voltages on AUTO.

Thou for the OC @ the bottom I had to adjust those as well but that was just to see if I could get a 500 FSB OC. It was Prime 95 stable for the 30 minutes I ran it.

I found a review, LINK, for your M'BD that has some pretty good info
regarding its capabilities which you probably already know.

Hope this helps you.

 

[geekapproved]

Your temps and voltages are VERY good.

You'll be rocking BF3 like a champ.

 

[the fong]

Best answer selected by the fong.

 

[cadder]

I'm running a Q9400 at 3.4GHz. I cranked up CPUID to see what it said. It says core voltage is 1.22V. Coretemp says the temps are 46C-51C. I've run it at 3.8GHz but I didn't record my info.

Have you tried the Q9550 at anything beyond 3.65? It might be able to do a little better.

 

[arthurh]

Edit: Have lowered vcore to 1.30, raised nb voltage to 1.45 (and ziptied a 40mm fan to the northbridge heatsink), temps under load after 6 hours were 55-52-53-54. Not to bad for an almost 4 year old mobo

Good going there my friend!

 

[the fong]

I'm running a Q9400 at 3.4GHz. I cranked up CPUID to see what it said. It says core voltage is 1.22V. Coretemp says the temps are 46C-51C. I've run it at 3.8GHz but I didn't record my info.

Have you tried the Q9550 at anything beyond 3.65? It might be able to do a little better.

Honestly, the only reason I've OC'ed it anyway was to reduce the bottleneck on my 5850cf for the BF3 beta dropping tonight, as long as I can run near max settings at above 50fps, I'm happy, if I can't, might try up the clocks a little more, I know the CPU and mobo can handle a lot more voltage, but I'm not really in a position to buy a new pc if I burn this one out, and DFI boards are notoriously hard for running stable at higher FSB speeds. On a side note, tested memory speeds at 1-1 (860mhz) and at a 4-3 (1033mhz), got a small speed increase at the 4-3 mem belt.