New Processor, Time to OC the hell out of it (Advise needed)

Stop It

Good afternoon all,

I bought a new CPU/Motherboard recently (As Profile, E4500 C2D cpu), and already the thing is at 2600Mhz from a stock of 2200Mhz without any issues, but does anyone have one and have overclocked it? It has a new stepping (M0), and online reviews of the chip do not seem to exist, so I ask of you guys, any ideas on what these things can do?

Thanks all

Edit: What are the best stability testers out there? anything I can leave on overnight and if my PC is still running its stable sort of thing?

zaim

just treat the overclock like any other cpu mate.. overclock it like any other core 2 =)

ChaosMinionX

Congrats on your purchase, and welcome to the world of Core2 Overclocking

What motherboard are you running? And what sort of cooling for the processor as well as ram are you running?

As for some tools to help you out in your overclocking.

CPU-Z - CPU-Z - Lots of useful information about your current hardware as far as the chip, mobo and ram are concerned. A standard in the OCing world.

Orthos - Download Stress Prime 2004 BETA - A stability testing program, highly trusted in the world of stability.

Prime95 - Prime95 version 25.4 - mersenneforum.org - Another program like Orthos, recent updates have brought it into the foreground of OCing community as its support for multiple core stability is unprecedented at this moment as its the only program capable of running more than 2 cores from 1 instance of a program and does not need to have any core affinities set for it to test more than 2 cores.

Everest Ultimate Edition - Lavalys - Comprehensive IT Security and Management - Everything you possibly want to know about your computer, its there. It also has great tests to see the synthetic scaling of your computer as you overclock, these are located in the benchmarking caption of the program. You have to pay for this program to have all the features, but if you look hard enough you dont

Core Temp - Core Temp - a solid temperature monitoring program for Core2Duo, Core2Quad and any other chips made by Intel or AMD.

Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT) - techPowerUp! :: Download Intel Thermal Analysis Tool - Was used internally by Intel and System builders to test maximum thermal output of a processor in an environment, as well as how well the cooling of the processor was working. Also a solid temperature monitoring program.

Memtest 86+ - Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool - A bootable program that is the gold standard for memory stability. Highly recommended when overclocking ram.

Speedfan - SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer - Excellent temperature monitoring program as well, also has some other great features if it supports your motherboard.

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If you need something more specific, please feel free to post with what you need. I am sure someone will be able to help.

And as a quick explanation of a good test of what is to be referred to as (24/7 stable) is the following ( as well as the one I use on all my rigs to ensure stability, and I go pretty out there on overclocks as well )

In Prime 95/ Orthos there are the following options.

Small FFT - Maximum FPU stress and fits in L2 cache. This basically (in combination with Round off checking - only available in prime95) is the best thing to test lowest possible "Stable" voltage for an overclock, as well as the overall stability of the processor itself.

Large FFT - Inplace FFTs used to stress maximum thermal output of a processor - Some argue this to be the true test of a processors actual stability for 24/7 usage.

Blend - A little of everything used to simulate a maximum load of processor and ram intensive processes. Generally this is ran for 6, 12 , even 24 hours or better to usually determine the final overall stability of the entire computer.

As a reminder, there is a Priority setting in both Prime95 and Orthos. You will want to run it at priority 9, and disable your screensavers. More info on this, just ask

In conjunction with the tests stated above, use Memtest 86+ and run the full suite for about 6-12hrs usually what I run for RAM stability checking.
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The actual methodology I use for testing is....

Small FFT (6-12hours with Round off checking to test lowest stable voltage etc) ----> Large FFT (12 hours burn in with heatsink to measure not only maximum heatload handling of a heatsink, but also more processor stability testing) -----> Memtest86+ 12 hours worth of testing ------> Blend (24-36hours)

Some may say thats a little overboard, some may say its not enough. However for all intents and purposes of my computers its as stable as I will ever need it, as all loads simulated by the aforementioned programs will never actually occur on your computer. Unless of course you do large scale encoding/decoding, folding, or lots of computations and such, gaming and general computer usage will not stress the computer as much as these tests.

Hope this helps

Any questions, clarification needed please feel free to ask.

-Chaos

zaim

ok. what he said :P

Stop It

Thanks very much ChaosMinion :P I will be sure to take your advice and get right to Orthos to test this beast

Also, thanks for the thought Zaim

ChaosMinionX

What sort of cooling are you using? Stock HSF or have you bought a 3rd party one?

Stop It

It was stock, but I found a cheap (Possibly temporary) Gigabyte HSF with a 120x25mm fan which has helped, initial testing (Of course the Arctic Silver takes a while to bed in, and unlike the place who installed and tested the chip, I applied it properly, the thermal paste was rubbish and badly spread out) shows it is 6 degrees (Celcius) cooler using the orthos stress test than stock, from 57C stock to 51C.

I have now pushed the CPU to 2.75Ghz, using a 250Mhzx11 Multiplier and it seems stable so far, I am going to wait on actual articles on the chip to come out before going higher, a 25% OC without any problems isn't a bad start

Thanks! :P

ChaosMinionX

Highly suggest you replace that heatsink with either Thermalright Ultra-120extreme, or Enzotech Ultra-X.....If you dont want to go as extreme as either of those, the Thermalright Ultima-90 will do as well.

Intel® Coolers - Take your pick

Stop It

Nice coolers, shame that the pricing in the UK is just astonishing £51 or $102, for the Ultra 120 I will look into it though, thanks for the advice

Time to put it on the Blend test overnight, if it doesn't burst into flames, I'll be happy

Stop It

Right, left the Blend testing running for 8 Hours 30 minutes, 0 warnings, 0 errors, both CPU cores were at 53Degrees, I'm pretty certain this thing is stable, yey

Over the coming months I am going to change my graphics card/ram/motherboard, this was just the first step, getting rid of my old Athlon 64 3000+ now I know this CPU can easily do 2750Mhz, I am happy it will be a decent addition to my pc for a long time

ChaosMinionX

Good deal, 53C is a little hot for that OC... then again its due to your heatsink your using.

Stop It

I done a quick test at stock and got the same result, I'm pretty sure the temp is due to a high ambient temp (It is summer here after all) rather than any major problems, during normal use the chip hasn't got anywhere close to it, my graphics card is now a major bottleneck, leaving my CPU to sit there doing little even when playing games like oblivion etc.

I can't wait til next month now, get the rest of my PC upgraded, and I may grab a better cooler if I feel like going past my current speed, thanks for all of the advice too, much appreciated.

Lelisevis

Heh I'd recommend the thermalright Ultima 90-i from the same place, trust me if it can handle my B3 Q6600 at 3ghz I doubt you'll stress it to much.
Thermalright Ultima-90i CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775) on most sites it's comparable with the extreme 120 until you reach insane heating the neighbourhood OC's.

ChaosMinionX

Yeah after I thought about it, the OC's hes looking for would do fine on an Ultima90

H3X4D3C1M4L

Pretty good OC. I've seen 6300's do 2.8-3GHz no sweat from 1.8 You can even drop the stock voltage on them

Core 2 Duo's are such solid procs