[SOLVED] Can't get stable overclock over 4.2 Ghz X5660

[Patrick Samuel]

Hello, so I tried to overclock my x5660 ( Yes I know its quite old) for about 1 year without success to exceed 4.2GHZ clock speed, I always get BlueScreens, I tried different voltages, multipliers, setting RAM speed very low, watching lots of videos and trying to copy every setting , etc... But couldn't get stable overclock past 4.2 GHZ, even 4.2 requires at least 1.41875 VCore voltage and I seen videos of guys running 4.4ghz on 1.35VCore. At first I thought it was my ram, but after I ordered another 8GB of RAM, it turned out to be the same. Also overheating is not the problem, I am running quite good thermal paste ( Don't know brand) and Air cooler with 3Fans running 2800RPM. I am looking for any help from you guys, because this system is quite old and i want to squeeze every bit of performance possible
My PC specs:
CPU: Xeon x5660 Now running 4.150 GHZ
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Rampage 3 Extreme
RAM: 16 GB 1444 mhz : 4GB Hynix, 4GB Nanya, 8GB Kllisre
Storage: 360GB SSD, 300GB HDD, 720GB HDD
OS: Windows 10 64Bit

Bellow is the pictures of my BIOS settings, feel free to ask for pictures or any information.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

The cpu Xeon x5660 is not desgined to run at 4.2ghz and overclocking is an lottory .If you already tried things and getting blue screens stop or your going to be having no cpu and if others can get to 4.4ghz they have diffrent specs then you have!

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

the fact that you bought good thermal paste and have fans running at high RPMs does not determine what temperatures your system is reaching.
you have to actually watch and see what temps it reaches while in heavy use and idling.

overclocking has a lot to do with "luck of the draw". come CPUs can handle it better than others, some cannot handle it at all.
it can also be the motherboard. some just do not regulate voltage efficiently enough.

check your ASUS motherboard control software. sometimes it will include auto-overclock options designed for specific system combinations.
usually i wouldn't recommend this but may help determine if a good manual overclock is possible.

 

[Patrick Samuel]

The cpu Xeon x5660 is not desgined to run at 4.2ghz and overclocking is an lottory .If you already tried things and getting blue screens stop or your going to be having no cpu and if others can get to 4.4ghz they have diffrent specs then you have!

Thanks for your answer. So I think I just lost silicon lottery. This system is quite old and I'm planning on buying whole new setup in year or two, so lifespan isn't really important for me. Thanks again

 

[Patrick Samuel]

the fact that you bought good thermal paste and have fans running at high RPMs does not determine what temperatures your system is reaching.
you have to actually watch and see what temps it reaches while in heavy use and idling.

overclocking has a lot to do with "luck of the draw". come CPUs can handle it better than others, some cannot handle it at all.
it can also be the motherboard. some just do not regulate voltage efficiently enough.

check your ASUS motherboard control software. sometimes it will include auto-overclock options designed for specific system combinations.
usually i wouldn't recommend this but may help determine if a good manual overclock is possible.

Thanks for your reply. It has CPU or RAM auto overlcock settings, but it only goes up to 3.5 ghz or smth like that. I will get other system in like a year, because this 1366 platform already reached all his capabilities, so long time stability dosen't really bother me. Can you suggest any settings i could change that may help me overclocking ? Or I should just give up at this point ?

 

[BelgianWarGod]

1Ghz more than the max boost out of the box is nice ofc you need luck with overclocking with those older Xeon cpu's (not really designed for oc). First put the ram back to the default speed because flipping the speed of the ram can also cause instability. Put everything back to stock and do one thing at a time. First overclock see how far you can get without bsod or freezing. After a successful oc you can start doing things to the ram.

Again at overclocking you need some luck at the silicon lottery.

 

[R420R]

I'm running stable at 4.8, up untill i fried the PSU. These CPUs are a nightmare on the power supply, make sure you have a good reliable one that outputs stable power so you can go overclock the hell out of it. These chips don't like some multipliers, so play with them a little as well. You should be able to get 4.5 no problem, but, get yourself a 240mm watercooler otherwise forget about it. Your CPU will cook before the temperature reaches the air cooler, watercoolers are much better that way, as they remoove the heat right out of the block. Good luck man!

 

[R420R]

Disable turboBoost, otherwise your overclocked CPU will try to go even further and that causes instability.
When you buy RAM, make sure to buy 1 stack of as many stick's you need, that way you make sure that all the ram stick's are made within the same batch, that is very important as they need to be completely in sync to comunicate with each other without making mistakes. This DOES matter, although no one cares about it, makes the system much more stable for the same money. Get at least 3 stick's in tripple channel mode for best performance (you can put 48GB of ram, although unsupported it works perfectly, like that cpu is not officially supported by your motherboard and it's there working)

 

[Patrick Samuel]

I'm running stable at 4.8, up untill i fried the PSU. These CPUs are a nightmare on the power supply, make sure you have a good reliable one that outputs stable power so you can go overclock the hell out of it. These chips don't like some multipliers, so play with them a little as well. You should be able to get 4.5 no problem, but, get yourself a 240mm watercooler otherwise forget about it. Your CPU will cook before the temperature reaches the air cooler, watercoolers are much better that way, as they remoove the heat right out of the block. Good luck man!

Hi, thanks for your reply ! I think i have good enought PSU, its DW650W Deepcool 80 Silver PSU, so I think its not a problem, but I'm not an expert, so don't really know if that could be the case. When I bought this system it already came with 8 gb ram, but from different companies and then i bought another 8 from another different company. But ram I think is not the problem, I tested different speeds ant multipliers with 1 8GB sticks, 4GB stick, and combined 4 and 8. I unfortunately can't get tripple channel, because my CPU fan is too big and it takes like 3 RAM slots 😀 And about cooling, water cooling is too expensive for me, but I got some nice ( Atleast i think its good) CPU Cooler, its quite bulky, with 3 fans and temperature with Vcore 1.4 and 4.2 GHZ reachers about 80 C in like 5min, about 30 min later its 90, but i think its ok for this cpu

 

[Patrick Samuel]

1Ghz more than the max boost out of the box is nice ofc you need luck with overclocking with those older Xeon cpu's (not really designed for oc). First put the ram back to the default speed because flipping the speed of the ram can also cause instability. Put everything back to stock and do one thing at a time. First overclock see how far you can get without bsod or freezing. After a successful oc you can start doing things to the ram.

Again at overclocking you need some luck at the silicon lottery.

Its seems that I can go even to 4.5 GHZ but with CPU Voltage over 1.45, It seems really strange that this cpu requires lot of voltage. Can the problem be CPU itself and not my settings ? And would you suggest me to buy another cpu like x5675 for 20 Bucks and try my luck with that or performance wouldn't really matter if I go higer than the frequency I already set ??

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

the x5660's max temperature threshold is supposedly ~80°. even at that you are seriously degrading it's lifespan, past that you are just risking damaging.
besides that it's like having a space heater sitting next to you.

you should probably be hovering ~70° at max with a decent case & cooler.

 

[Patrick Samuel]

the x5660's max temperature threshold is supposedly ~80°. even at that you are seriously degrading it's lifespan, past that you are just risking damaging.
besides that it's like having a space heater sitting next to you.

you should probably be hovering ~70° at max with a decent case & cooler.

It reaches that temperatures only in stress tests, in games its hovering around 60-70, haven't seen it past 90 while in games, even 80 its really rare. The question is why this CPU needs that much of Vcore to get it stable ? at 4.2 Ghz i don't think 1.4 is normal 🤔

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

.05 increase for 1GHz does seem to be quite high.
it could be the motherboard or just the chip. i guess the only way to really tell would be to try swapping the CPU to a different board or vice versa and seeing if there's a difference.

 

[Patrick Samuel]

.05 increase for 1GHz does seem to be quite high.
it could be the motherboard or just the chip. i guess the only way to really tell would be to try swapping the CPU to a different board or vice versa and seeing if there's a difference.

Yes, I know only way to test it is to swap some components out of my rig, but I don't have any other cpus or mobos, maybe u can suggest some setting to change or everything seems normal ?😉

 

[86zx]

I had a system with a x5660 at 4.5ghz it was a Asus p6b motherboard a asetek h55 water cooler with a 100cfm bathfan attached to it and a EVGA 1300w supernova psu I got for 30$. I had the voltage somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4v temps in synthetic tests such as aida64 and prime 95 stayed in the 70-73c area. So if you can find a bathfan somewhere you can have good temps lol

 

[Patrick Samuel]

I had a system with a x5660 at 4.5ghz it was a Asus p6b motherboard a asetek h55 water cooler with a 100cfm bathfan attached to it and a EVGA 1300w supernova psu I got for 30$. I had the voltage somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4v temps in synthetic tests such as aida64 and prime 95 stayed in the 70-73c area. So if you can find a bathfan somewhere you can have good temps lol

Unfortunately I don't have a bathfan or free freezer, lol. Can I ask you what settings u used to achieve 4.5 Ghz on x5660, my settings are in the pictures above, I believe they are not stable

 

[gtarayan]

A working server pull such as X5670 can be had for $20 shipped, and x2675 $25 shipped. Those are better than x5660 because of a higher multiplier - won't need as high of Bclk. You could also get a W3680/90 with an unlocked multiplier.

 

[86zx]

I tried my best when I listed them it was probably 1.35 Ik it was right at the top but not over the line but with these cpus you need some good cooling and like others said a good powersupply. I believe I actually used turbo boost but idr I gave the pc to my friends brother so I don’t have it with me to check settings. Base clock was in the 200’s like 212 maybe 213

 

[Patrick Samuel]

A working server pull such as X5670 can be had for $20 shipped, and x2675 $25 shipped. Those are better than x5660 because of a higher multiplier - won't need as high of Bclk. You could also get a W3680/90 with an unlocked multiplier.

So is it worth it to try and buy x5675 and try to achieve higher CPU ghz or 4.15 is enough for this type of system and higher GHZ number won't make much of a difference?

 

[Patrick Samuel]

I tried my best when I listed them it was probably 1.35 Ik it was right at the top but not over the line but with these cpus you need some good cooking and like others said a good powersupply. I believe I actually used turbo boost but idr I gave the pc to my friends brother so I don’t have it with me to check settings. Base clock was in the 200’s like 212 maybe 213

Thanks for sharing your settings ! In my system it looks like that anything above 4.2 Ghz requires at least 1.42 Vcore, no matter the multipliers or CPU PLL, QPI, Dram settings. And do you think Deepcool DW650 W 80 Silver rated PSU is good enough to handle x5660 oc up to 4.5 Ghz ?

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

..do you think Deepcool DW650 W 80 Silver rated PSU is good enough...

search around online for it's product ID and see what types of information you can dig up; specific manufacturer, capacitor type, reviews, it's location on trusted PSU tier lists, etc.

 

[Patrick Samuel]

search around online for it's product ID and see what types of information you can dig up; specific manufacturer, capacitor type, reviews, it's location on trusted PSU tier lists, etc.

Thanks, I tough it is good enough, reviews and forums said it's good for OC, but I don't know if it is true for x5660 That's why I'm asking, because in forums or reviews I haven't found information about 1366 OC.