Intel Core2 Duo E8500 cannot overclock!

[Pentap]

EDIT: OK so my last request was a little heavy, and I have done some more attempts at overclocking my system, here's what it comes down to:

Here are my specs:
CPU: Core2 Duo E8500
MB: Gigabyte LGA 775 Intel G41 HDMI Micro ATX Intel
Memory: I can't locate my memory chips or w/e you call them but I have 4GB
VGA: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
HDD: HGST Deskstar P7K500 HDP725050GLA360 (0A35415) 500GB
Cooling: Yeah IDK how to find this either, w/o opening my case and looking up online, but my case has two, very quiet fans.

If anyone can tell me how to actually find all this information I will go back and make the list complete.

So with the Core2 Duo E8500, it is supposed to be stocked @3.16GHz, and I have read that the stock Vcore is 1.225. The first time I went into the M.I.T. I am basically 100% confident I saw the FSB at 266 and have seen some replies in a thread saying it should be 266. However 266*9.5 = 2527 not 3160. Secondly, the first time I entered the M.I.T in the BIOS, the Vcore was at 1.3.

I was a little confused, so I chose to "Load Optimized Settings", and when I go back into the MIT, the FSB frequency is at 333. Which seems to make more sense, 333*9.5 = 3163.5

I try to raise it up, I can get it to 340, but even 349 fails to boot. I have attachments of the settings I am running on now. 350 isn't even really an overclock from 333, so I don't understand why my computer is failing to boot.

This article here: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/668/12/
they get the FSB frequency up to 526 running at 4.73GHz!

I don't really need my computer to run that fast, I was just hoping to hit 3.5GHz at least, 3.8GHz would be good enough for me (well 3.16 is good enough... but not really)

Can someone please help explain to me what I am doing wrong? Prime95 can run for hours at 340

Attachments: http://imgur.com/9JrHN
http://imgur.com/9kFbn

 

[Pentap]

Bumping for major edit.

Earlier I was trying to find my lowest stable voltage. I was able to go down quite a bit, and Prime 95 seemed to be running fine... could I have missed something and damaged my MB? My friend told me lowering the voltage can be hard on the MB, I was only running Prime95 for half hour increments, could it have not caught an error, and I lowered my voltage too low?

Also, I downloaded CPU-Z so I could give a full report on the specs of my computer, if someone tells me what really matters in this situation, I can give all the specs requested.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Are you trying to overclock with stock cooling? If so STOP! You will need aftermarket cooling or you will damage or destroy your CPU. By aftermarket cooling I mean on the CPU NOT case fans.

It sounds to me like you need to do some more reading on the subject of overclocking before you just start increasing things in BIOS.

The RAM you have is important when overclocking a Core2 chip.

G41 is not the best chipset for overclocking a Core2. In my opinion the P45 was the best but they are not available anymore. With proper cooling and RAM you should be able to hit 4Ghz easily. Going much over that is pretty much not going to happen for anything but a benchmark run. For 24/7 then 4Ghz is reasonable. I ran an E8400 at 4Ghz for over 3 years with no problems on a Gigabyte P45 board with a ZeroTherm Nirvana NV120 cooler.

 

[Pentap]

Hmm OK. So then my follow up question to that is: what do I set my FSB back to to? The optimized setting is at 333, but I am pretty sure that it came as 266. Should I set it back to the 266?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

The E8500 is at stock speed 3.16Ghz or 9.5 x 333. The stock cooler is plenty for the chip at stock speed.

Notice that in the article you saw 4.73Ghz that there are tubes going to the CPU. That means they are using a water cooling setup to reach those speeds safely.

If you want to overclock your first step is to get an aftermarket CPU cooler. The Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo is a good low cost option.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

You should also list your RAM and power supply because those will be important. Tell me what those are and I will tell you if they are sufficient for overclocking.

 

[Pentap]

If I would have damaged my CPU, motherbord, GPU, or anything, how would I be able to tell. I switched to stock clock after you warned me. For a while I could play games fine, and had no problems, however, now my computer seems to be having a problem with playing games, and manual restarts.

Whenever I restart my computer for any reason, it stalls after shutdown. Clearly something is wrong here, how do I find out what damage I have done?

 

[C12Friedman]

The Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo is a good low cost option.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

^ +1

You should also list your RAM and power supply because those will be important. Tell me what those are and I will tell you if they are sufficient for overclocking.

This info will help a lot.
You can download Speccy (available here: http://www.piriform.com/speccy ), it'll tell you what brand (usually) and everything else about the ram (and a whole lot more).
About the only thing Speccy will not tell you about is your power supply, for that, you'll need to open the case and look at it. Hopefully the label will be oriented so it can be read. If nothing else, the labeled amperage for the 12v output(s) - brand and model is best though

 

[Pentap]

Hey there, been busy for a while.

Just a reminder, not looking to Overclock anymore!

Here is the speccy results:

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz 39 °C
Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM
4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 360MHz (6-6-6-17)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. G41M-ES2H (Socket 775) 28 °C
Graphics
Acer S201HL (1600x900@60Hz)
896MB GeForce GTX 260 (EVGA) 44 °C
Hard Drives
466GB Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 ATA Device (SATA) 30 °C
Optical Drives
TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223F ATA Device
DYRSFQJ LE3SLQF SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
High Definition Audio Device

Power Supply:

The model number written is PSAZ - CP600, when I search that model number I get "Xtreme" stuff but nothing that looks like mine. The brand seems to be CyberPower, that is after all, where I got my computer from.

 

[C12Friedman]

I sorta doubt you've damaged anything (although I don't know that for sure). People throw together unstable clock combinations all the time, it's part of overclocking, sometimes the scary part. Thing is to reset and start again from a stable spot. Looks like you've reset to stock.
Did you get an aftermarket cooling system from CyberPower?

 

[Pentap]

No, just a bunch of fans. I set the clock back to stock as soon as anort3 told me to stop overclocking. It wasn't until about a month and a half after that, that I started getting problems with restarting. I don't see why my computer wouldn't restart unless there is something wrong with it...

 

[C12Friedman]

Are you aware of any catalyst for the restarts, such as when playing games, or is it only when restarting, it seems to stall during boot, restart,and then boot? Is the stall during the shut down procedure? Or am I just confused?

 

[Pentap]

Games cause it to restart. Of Orcs and Men causes it to restart after 5-10 minutes of replay every time. Was just playing E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy last night, and played fine until about 4 hours in, restarted.

However, when it crashes from games, it restarts into the "failed shutdown, do you want to go into safe mode" screen, but starts up fine.

Manual restarts stall.

 

[C12Friedman]

I'm tempted to lay blame on the Extreme Gear PSU in there which does seem to be the weak spot in CyberPowerPC's builds. In CyberpowerPC's forum, it seems to be quite the topic of 'conversation' (most of it not good). If you have a known working PSU, I'd suggest a swap out.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

I agree it looks PSU related. However one thing that stands out is your RAM speed in the Speccy summary. 360 is an oddball speed. That means you are running 720 effective. If you have DDR2 667 that could be a problem if it's not good RAM. Those 6-6-6-17 timings are odd as well and if correct mean it's probably cheap value RAM. I had Corsair DDR2 800 timed 4-4-4-12. Since DDR2 is either 533, 667 or 800, something is off about the 720 you are reporting.

Download CPU-Z and list what it says under the memory tab. Then list the results from the speed tab.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html