The Scottish Boinc Team

Hi,

Was wondering if anyone else is overclocking these chips and by how much.

I'm running air cooled but using a nice heatsink and getting:

Q9450 - 3.5GHz @ 1750MHz FDB on my 790i mobo
Measured floating point speed 3558.22 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 10093.61 million ops/sec

Temps hover around 60C under load. The Q9450 has been running 24/7 for a months, but only crunching my Bonic projects for the last few days.

Thinking of overclocking my Q6600 on a 780i mobo, should have some nice headroom, but waiting for a new heatsink to come in frist.

I've seen lots of people overclock the Q6600 and was wondering what's a good target speed to shoot for?

Hi DW, welcome to the team!

My Q6600 reaches around 3GHz on a 965P-DS3 mobo with an Akasa HSF.

Benchmarks are currently 2098/5888 on 64bit FC6, but the Boinc benchies are somewhat dependent on OS and other factors. The box achieves 4000 credits per day on Einstein, rather less on WCG.

It doesn't sound all that impressive much in terms of what others can achieve and I'm pretty sure it has plenty of headroom, but I had a hardware fail a few months back and nearly lost the box. I can tell you, it's pretty scary when you re-boot after power outage only to be met with a blinding blue flash and a room full of acrid smoke.

My E6700's reach 3.2GHz on a good day and my E4300's get to 2.6GHz.

I have been steadliy oveclocking my Q6600 bit by bit, currently at 2.7Ghz (9x300) and rock solid at about 51 to 55 centigrade depending on room temp. been running it like this for about two weeks Boinc 24/7 and no issues so thinking of going a bit higher next week.

Cool, thanks for the replies... I think I'll start it out slow, maybe 2.8GHz, see how it feels. It would be nice to get it up and running as 90% of the machine is ready, just waiting on PSU (had to RMA it last week).

I'll post when I get it running.

I've cut back on the overclocking as the summer has come in. Boinc is important but so too is the kids being able to sleep. I have previously had no trouble getting Q6600s to run at 2.8 regardless of the MoBo.

Anway I'll be overclocking agian from September on. 8)

Hi,
My Q6600 is currently running at 3Ghz (333Mhz sys clock x 9) air cooled by a Zalman huge copper thing with a Blue LED fan (I can't remember the model number off hand). I need to keep the side of the case open to keep the temperature of the proc down, but, as I type, the hottest core is running at 62 DegC and the coolest at 56 DegC. When the room heats, the temp can go up to 66 DegC, and I usually slow the FSB down from 333Mhz to 300MHz to compensate, also re-adjusting the memory speed back to 800MHz.

The rest of the system is ASUS P5K Deluxe mobo, memory is 3Gb of DDR2 6400 from PC world (I had a problem with my original memory being incompatible and didn't have time to wait for new stuff by email).

I run the system 16-18 hours a day and I've never had stability problems. I would need to take some brave pills to try clocking any faster though. The NorthBridge gets very hot and should have a wee fan fitted to get it's temp down when I get time.

Nice info ianmbaker2, what voltage are you running your cores at?

Thanks,

DW

Hi,
I left all the voltage settings on Auto. Currently the CPU Voltage (according to PC Wizard which I use to monitor the CPU) is varying between 1.288V and 1.296V.

As I write, it is reporting:-

CPU: 3005.83MHz
CPU Temp: 45 Deg C
Core #1: 61 DegC
Core #2: 61 DegC
Core #3: 56 DegC
Core #4: 58 DegC
CPU Voltage: 1.288V

All the cores are running at 100% (Thats Einstein and Cosmology )

GFX #1 50 DegC.


Regards,

Nice to know about leaving the voltage on auto...

I just found the Ultra ChillTec CPU cooler.

I guess it uses a TEC plate for active CPU cooling, seems pricy but I may give it a go. Some reviews saying it'll take your CPU down from 60C to 35C, no liquid.

Would be cool if this tunrs out to be true (forgive the really bad pun) becuase it's around $130 US... way cheeper than any other cooling that gets those numbers.

Looks like the install might be it's downfall. Every other review was how tricky the install was.

Anyone else hear about this thing?

DW

From the reviews I've seen it doesn't appear much more fiddly than any other big HSF. Looking at it, this beast should be no worse than fitting a water cooled rig.

Remember though that the Peltier device generates heat itself, so you will want to make sure the case has sufficient cooling. One article I saw suggested as much as 50W extra heat.

Having said that active should be better than passive in a like for like setup.

Its actaully best not to leave voltage on Auto since most motherboards overcompensate and set it too high, therefor generating far more heat that required.

Heres a good guide for people to follow:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/240 ... uals-guide

Now running at 3042Mhz (9x338) for last 48hrs and so far no problem, running at a steady 54 degrees. CPU core voltage 1.325.

Not sure how much higher a want to go for 24/7 crunching.

That's a pretty low temp you have for that speed and voltage. I have 1.288V at 9 x 333Mhz and my temp is 65 DegC.

What are using to cool your proc?

Ian

I am using an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Cooler and I am making sure I am getting plenty of air front to back through the case.

Okay, got the UltraChillTEC CPU cooler up and running.

Running a Q9450 (stock 2.66GHz) @ 3.6GHz with 1800MHz FSB, stable. Can push to 3.67GHz but I like to back off a little from the best OC I get to make it a little more stable (mainly for peace of mind leaving it on when I leave the house, lol).

Temps are 58C under load, 40C idle. Core voltage is at 1.41v.

Warning: This cooler needs airflow (to cool the TEC plate) and the bigger the case and fans, the better.

I'm using a Antec 1200 (moved from a 900) and getting great air flow.

Just wanted to update, this is my new system. I went out and bought a Q9450 for it as well since I can't seem to find where I 'safely' put my Q6600, oops.

Running a Q9450 (stock 2.66GHz) @ 3.6GHz with 1800MHz FSB

Smokin'!

I gotta get me one of them beasties

Okay, quick update...

The two machines had some minor heat issues, so I've modded the TEC heatsinks (this unit has two, one for CPU and one for the hot side of the TEC) a little and lapped the CPUs and now I'm getting 3.67GHz from one and 3.7GHz from the other.

Both run at 1.41V and hit 62C at load (but TEC plate doesn't let them stay at 62, they drop to 59-60 then heat back up, then drop, etc...) and 39C at idle.

Overall my biggest issue is leaving them both on in the same room, lol. They are high priced room heaters!

DW

Once you have more than two or three PCs in a room keeping the room cool is more of an issue than keeping the CPUs cool. I suppose having coolers that generate almost as much heat as the CPUs might add to that problem.

I don't do much overclocking but I just acquired a Q9450 which is 100% stable at 3.26MHz - my first stab at overclocking 1600FSB plus a lile for luck. Which is enough to have it do 9000 worth of credits for Cosmology per day. See my freshly resurrected blog for details.

nice to see the blog back in action mate. interesting figures.

what made you go for a ddr 3 based mobo though?

The mobo does ddr2 & ddr3. The main selling points for ddr3 were energy efficiency and overclockability.

The cost was against it but if I was hard up I wouldn't be doing any of this!

could you run some of your stats (seeing as your in an experimenting mood) with the cpu on stock speed? just curious to see how much boost the overclock is giving you.