Time to OC my E8400 or Upgrade?

[jayjr8018]

Current specs:
E8400 3.0 GHz (335 FSB)
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R mobo
8gb g.skill DDR2-800 duel channel RAM
nVidia 550 GTX Ti 1gb

Should I overclock to around 3.6? or up the FSB to around 400? I am running at stock speeds with a great aftermarket cooler on my CPU.

I play SC2 and will be playing Diablo 3 when it releases on May 15th.

Current Temps:

 

[willard]

Can't view photobucket here (at work), but I know the Core 2 Duos are monster overclockers from firsthand experience. You can probably get that chip up to 4 GHz if you really try. I've got my E6600 running at 3.5 on air, and got it as high as 3.7 (with major stability issues).

Just keep your temps south of 70C and you should be fine. Open that baby up!

 

[WR2]

What is a 'great aftermarket cooler'?

You have very little reason not to juice up that system.
Let the temps guide you on how high your system can go. Start out at 3.6Ghz and do some testing, check your temps.
If everything is looking good bump it up a bit and test.
Keep doing that till you hit the highest temps you're willing to put your CPU through.

 

[WR2]

There is a whole area of the THG forums called Overclocking Forum

-> You probably want to go hang out there and get some help.

 

[jayjr8018]

Sorry, I should have elaborated on the aftermarket cooler and temps.

The cooler is a Thermaltake CL-P0378 90mm CPU Cooler, and the temps in the picture are core0 running at around 32C and core1 running at around 41C

 

[WR2]

I dunno about 'great'.
Have you seen any reviews where the performance of that cooler is compared with others?

 

[jayjr8018]

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word great, but it seems like it is plenty decent to get the job done.

 

[WR2]

Only the actual performance will tell. It's a bit small and light compared to the better air coolers that have heavier heat sinks, bigger 120mm fans that push more air.
At NewEgg the customer comments for that cooler - one person said he had his E8400 running cool at 3.6Ghz.

 

[ngoy]

If you are gaming with just a low res, just oc what you have. If planning on doing any fps gaming or video encoding, definitely upgrade. I think SC2 only uses 2 cores anyways, but anything newer will be able to utilize more.

 

[willard]

A 90mm fan will probably struggle to keep up with the temps produced by aggressive overclocking, but I'm sure you can still get a large boost out of that chip with the cooler you have.

 

[jayjr8018]

Not trying to aggressively OC, just going to bump up the FSB to 400, and set the RAM ratio to 1:1

 

[digdog]

E6600 here, (basically the same cpu, just one stepping before), running 400x8.

there is NO reason why you should not have OC your cpu already; shame on you!!

no srsly, go get that extra power, 3.6 should be easy for you.

FYI i have 1.38 V on the cpu and my cheap ArticPro 7 (now CM 212) never complained - NEVER had dangerous temps.

besides, gigabyte board.. it's just begging to be OCd

 

[willard]

E6600 here, (basically the same cpu, just one stepping before), running 400x8.

there is NO reason why you should not have OC your cpu already; shame on you!!

no srsly, go get that extra power, 3.6 should be easy for you.

FYI i have 1.38 V on the cpu and my cheap ArticPro 7 (now CM 212) never complained - NEVER had dangerous temps.

besides, gigabyte board.. it's just begging to be OCd

^+1

Good air cooler with a high end Core 2 Duo and a Gigabyte board is overclocking heaven. Back when my E6600 and GA-P35C-DS3R were new, they were absolute monsters. 3.5 GHz dual core five years ago was pretty damn nice.

 

[jayjr8018]

Yeah, I will be OC'ing it soon. I haven't had the time to with school lately, I will do it this weekend, and will post updates here!

 

[amuffin]

You can hit 4.2ghz easily with the cooler master hyper 212+