oc Q6600

trabpc

Hi, Just looking for some advice. I have just bought a Q6600 from Komplett. and was hoping to do a mild overclock up to 3.0 mark on air. any advice on which is the best way to go about it without messing with voltages etc.
Is it possible by just changing the FSB. i will also be changing the Stock cooler to a zalman 9700 nt or similar(one advertised here for €30)Don't really want to spend mad money on a cooler while i have no plans to go over 3.0 mark.I have never oc'd before!

below are the parts on the way from Komplett:
Comments appreciated.

Gigabyte 3D Aurora GZ-FSCA1-AN Silver Aluminium Body
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=311887

Corsair Powersupply 620W
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=327672

Asus P5K Deluxe, P35, Socket-775, DDR2, WIFI, eSATA
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=334979

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=330169
(wont know stepping till i have it!)

Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048MB CL5
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=312054

uberpixie

trabpc wrote:

Hi, Just looking for some advice. I have just bought a Q6600 from Komplett. and was hoping to do a mild overclock up to 3.0 mark on air. any advice on which is the best way to go about it without messing with voltages etc.
Is it possible by just changing the FSB. i will also be changing the Stock cooler to a zalman 9700 nt or similar(one advertised here for €30)Don't really want to spend mad money on a cooler while i have no plans to go over 3.0 mark.I have never oc'd before!

I have the exact board you are thinking of getting and only built in the last 2 days.

Buildlog:http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055132852

It is piss easy to overclock to 3.0Ghz with that mobo.

The quad i got is the older stepping, not GO.

To get to 3Ghz all I did was in the BIOS, under jumperless configuration: set the FSB to 333Mhz and disable CPU spectrum spread and PCIE Spectrum spread.

Also manually set the ram timings by hand and add a tiny amount of voltage on top. (I.e. my ram takes 2.3V, i set it to 2.4V)

You may also want to add a tiny amount of voltage to the CPU as well, I just left it at auto and it ran 3dmark06 just fine.

The biggest issue you will have with a Quad is heat, especially when overclocking.

You will want to get a good cooler and a case with great airflow.

Bare minimum would be the zalman you were thinking of or: what i got, an Artic Freezer7 Pro from Peats for €24.99.

If you are going to constantly clock, you might be better off getting a Tuniq tower level of cooler.
(a few of the lads have them here and they will be better able to advise you on that front)

The Zalamn and the Artic are for only very mild overclocking, they will be loud when you put the fan speed up to keep your temps down.

Choice in case is also a big issue:your choice in case does not muffle sound very well at all, by all accounts. Airflow is not meant to be fantastic either.
(This is what I have read from reviews)

Case: I got an Antec P180, which has fantastic airflow and muffles sound very well, but is a bit of a pain to build in. Good case, but you really need to take your time building in it to get the most out of it and really think out how you route the cables.

(look into a few reviews and see what you think, an Akasa Eclipse/Mirage should also be on your short list)

Motherboard: as stated in the build log, it required some beating to get it running stable. The Qfan control option in the bios for controlling the fan speed seems to give me blue screens in XP when I have it enabled.

After I disabled this out, board ran fine. Make sure you manually set the ram timings and voltage, from what I read board can be twitchy if you leave the ram settings to auto configure.

The ASUS software tools included are pure ****e and not worth installing.
(PC ProbeII and AI Suite to be precise:mad:)

Layout of the board is good overall,only downer is that two of sata connections will be obstructed if you fit a very long gfx card, such as a 8800GTX.

Bios is very overclocking friendly, but I will be investing in a fan controller as for the above mentioned issues with Qfan.

PSU: rebranded, actually made by Seasonic and SilentPC review reckoned it is their best PSU to date. A great choice.

Ram: has gotten good reviews and should work just fine with the motherboard.

trabpc

Thanks for all that. looks like the Zalman may not be the best choice!
looks like ill be looking for one of these--Thermaltake 120 or similar


The case i thought looked well. It also got a good review on Trusted Reviews. Do you have a link to the negative reveiws.

Thanks again for the reply.

uberpixie

http://www.custompc.co.uk/labs/86394/gigabyte-3d-aurora.html

A mate in work recently built using this case, he got rid of it because it was too loud.

lot of this is seemingly down to the venting thats on the side panel.

It leaks a lot of fan noise allegedly.

Khannie

I have my Q6600 at 3GHz on air with 4 cores stable at 100% for ages and ages.

I use the scythe ninja and just upped the fsb (that's all you can do really) and a tiny bump in the vcore got me to 3GHz.

trabpc

Would you mind me asking what your fsb settings are to get to 3.0Ghz
Im new to this!!
also do you have to change the vcore at all to reach the 3.0 mark
and if so by how much did you increase the vcore by?
Thanks,

trabpc

Just arrived from Komplett yesterday. I have installed Vista. Now maching keeps Crashing BSOD, Memory Dump Etc after pc is on for only 2 mins.

Any ideas?

uberpixie

trabpc wrote:

Just arrived from Komplett yesterday. I have installed Vista. Now maching keeps Crashing BSOD, Memory Dump Etc after pc is on for only 2 mins.

Any ideas?

Disable asus Qfan in the bios, set your ram timings manually in the bios, disable any Asus auto overclocking on the motherboard.

trabpc

Ok ill try when i get home. any idea for the ram timings. Also bear in mind i have not messed with any settings in bios, the machine is unstable out of the box!


Thanks Again

uberpixie

trabpc wrote:

Ok ill try when i get home. any idea for the ram timings. Also bear in mind i have not messed with any settings in bios, the machine is unstable out of the box!


Thanks Again

RAM:5-5-5-12-2T @1.9v

Set the ram to 2.0 volts in the bios just to be sure.

Yes the machine is unstable out of the box. Welcome to the joys of building:D.

trabpc

Sorry only getting back now,
Busy in Work. These are my settings in the bios



Ati overclocking Auto
CPU Ratio Control Auto
Dram Frequency DDR2 800
Dram Command Rate Auto
Dram Timing Control Manual
CAS# Latency 5
RAS# to CAS# delay 5
RAS Precharge 5
TWR Auto
TRFC Auto
TWTR Auto
TRRD Auto
TRTP Auto
Dram Static read control Auto
Everything thing else Auto

Hope I spelt everything all right.

Still crashing. BTW i am migating 2x500GB Disks to a Raid 1 when it happens. But this is probably only a coincidence.
How do i adjust volts to 1.9 or 2.

Thanks again

uberpixie

trabpc wrote:

Sorry only getting back now,
Busy in Work. These are my settings in the bios



Ati overclocking Auto
CPU Ratio Control Auto
Dram Frequency DDR2 800
Dram Command Rate Auto
Dram Timing Control Manual
CAS# Latency 5
RAS# to CAS# delay 5
RAS Precharge 5
TWR Auto
TRFC Auto
TWTR Auto
TRRD Auto
TRTP Auto
Dram Static read control Auto
Everything thing else Auto

Hope I spelt everything all right.

Still crashing. BTW i am migating 2x500GB Disks to a Raid 1 when it happens. But this is probably only a coincidence.
How do i adjust volts to 1.9 or 2.

Thanks again

This is EXACTLY what you need to do in your BIOS:

Under ADVANCED-> Jumperless configuration.

Set "AI Overclock" to manual

Set your ram timings to 5-5-5-12-2T

Set "DRAM Voltage" to 1.9 or 2 Volts (ram voltage settings)

Set "CPU spread spectrum" and "PCIE spread spectrum" to disable.


Under POWER-> Hardware monitor

Set the 2 ASUS Q-Fan settings, CPU Q-fan and Chassis Q-Fan to disable.

That should sort you out.

After that, hitting 3.0Ghz is a matter of setting the FSB setting in Jumperless Configuration from it's default of 266 to 333. And that is it.

Just make sure to download core temp to monitor your CPU temps.
http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/CoreTemp/

trabpc

uberpixie wrote:

This is EXACTLY what you need to do in your BIOS:

Under ADVANCED-> Jumperless configuration.

Set "AI Overclock" to manual

Set your ram timings to 5-5-5-12-2T

Set "DRAM Voltage" to 1.9 or 2 Volts (ram voltage settings)

Set "CPU spread spectrum" and "PCIE spread spectrum" to disable.


Under POWER-> Hardware monitor

Set the 2 ASUS Q-Fan settings, CPU Q-fan and Chassis Q-Fan to disable.

That should sort you out.

After that, hitting 3.0Ghz is a matter of setting the FSB setting in Jumperless Configuration from it's default of 266 to 333. And that is it.

Just make sure to download core temp to monitor your CPU temps.
http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/CoreTemp/

Have tried all the above. checked timings with corsair ram that i have and

they are 5-5-5-12 1.9v.

I have used 667 and 800 on the ram. I also changed the other settings you

said and still machine will not stay in windows any longer than 2 or 3 mins.

I also unplugged Dvd rom's etc.

Sorry to annoy again but any other ideas

uberpixie

trabpc wrote:

Have tried all the above. checked timings with corsair ram that i have and

they are 5-5-5-12 1.9v.

I have used 667 and 800 on the ram. I also changed the other settings you

said and still machine will not stay in windows any longer than 2 or 3 mins.

I also unplugged Dvd rom's etc.

Sorry to annoy again but any other ideas

Bugger. The biggest issue I had when first running the machine was that when Asus Q-fan fan was enabled the machine would blue screen.

When I disabled it, it stopped. I found out from the Asus forums about this issue where a guy could not even install XP until he disabled Q-fan.

You def disabled Q-fan? For both chasis and CPU?

You could also check the hard drive configuration. you have SATA hard drives right?

Make sure they are set to IDE/compatibility mode.
(front page of your bios, under SATA configuration)

Will look over the bios again and see if I can think of anything else.:(

EDIT:

Try the following.
(Worth a shot)

Under ADVANCED-> PCI PnP set this to "YES" (tells bios to allow windows to configure devices, not have the bios do it its self.)

Under POWER-> disable ACPI 2.0.

trabpc

Ah! my PnP setting in bios is disabled. ill have a look tomorrow and let you know?

trabpc

uberpixie wrote:

Bugger. The biggest issue I had when first running the machine was that when Asus Q-fan fan was enabled the machine would blue screen.

When I disabled it, it stopped. I found out from the Asus forums about this issue where a guy could not even install XP until he disabled Q-fan.

You def disabled Q-fan? For both chasis and CPU?

You could also check the hard drive configuration. you have SATA hard drives right?

Make sure they are set to IDE/compatibility mode.
(front page of your bios, under SATA configuration)



Will look over the bios again and see if I can think of anything else.:(

EDIT:

Try the following.
(Worth a shot)

Under ADVANCED-> PCI PnP set this to "YES" (tells bios to allow windows to configure devices, not have the bios do it its self.)

Under POWER-> disable ACPI 2.0.

had to get up out of bed to try this. It was starting to annoy me!

PCI PnP set this to "YES" (tells bios to allow windows to configure devices, not have the bios do it its self.)

This seeems to have done the trick . Pc booted in vista now for 30 mins (fingers x) Thanks again Uberpixie. You know your Stuff!!.

By the way i Have 2x Wd 500Gig sata Disks on the machine and i really want to arrange them in a raid 1 for security. Alot of Family photos Videos etc. In the bios i have set the Sata drives to ide mode. and now when in vista and load intel matrix storage manager it says drivers not loaded. the only way around this is to go back to the Bios and change Drives from IDE to RAID. Is this the right way of doing this.

Thanks again for all your previous help

uberpixie

trabpc wrote:

This seeems to have done the trick . Pc booted in vista now for 30 mins (fingers x) Thanks again Uberpixie. You know your Stuff!!.

No bother, you pick these things up as you go long. At least you now know what to do for the next build when it goes wrong

trabpc wrote:

By the way i Have 2x Wd 500Gig sata Disks on the machine and i really want to arrange them in a raid 1 for security. Alot of Family photos Videos etc. In the bios i have set the Sata drives to ide mode. and now when in vista and load intel matrix storage manager it says drivers not loaded. the only way around this is to go back to the Bios and change Drives from IDE to RAID. Is this the right way of doing this.

Check the motherboard manual, it gives instructions on how to setput raid.

I don't bother with it myself so I honestly don't know.

trabpc

Back to the original reason for starting this post. I hope to overclock soon but obviously before i do so i need to get myself a cooler.

I don't think Komplett stock these-Tuniq tower. who does?

Komplett have this one Scythe Infinity http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=330008

My Q6600 is the B3 stepping

any opinions. I only want to go bring the Q6600 to the 3.0Ghz Mark.

uberpixie

Off komplett I would look at either the scythe infinity you mentioned or

Scythe Ninja Plus
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=320978


Best coolers listed there for socket 775.

Both offer similar cooling, in the same ball park as a Tuniq tower.

The difference between the infinity and the Ninja is their mounting clips.

The ninja uses a backing plate, where as the infinity clips in like a standard cooler.

Personally I would prefer the ninja as it has ther more secure mounting of the two.
(Have a look at review and see what you think yourself).

Other than that Elara.ie stock thermalright Ultra 120 Extremes which are the best coolers on the market at the moment.

Or if you really want the tuniq, you can order it of overclockers.co.uk

If you are going to order of clockers I would look at this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-043-TR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=821

Similar performance to it's big brother, the TR Ultra 120 Extreme, but half the heigth and weight.