OC Q9450 3.2Ghz

[csflame4]

Does this look right?

 

[shadowthor]

did you use prime95 small ffts for 12hrs+ to test for stability?

 

[csflame4]

not yet, All I did was set the ram to 1066 speed, which is what its supposed to be set at, and the FSB to 400, everything else is at auto

 

[Zorg]

Don't forget to lock the PCIe to 100 and disable any BIOS auto overclocking settings.

 

[csflame4]

Ok ill make sure to check for those. Does the voltage seem to high? or is it good there? I heard that leaving the voltage set to auto, the mobo will set it higher than what it really needs.

 

[Zorg]

It depends on the mobo, you can usually get it lower manually. You are within spec though. I had set mine manually for a while. Now I have it on auto and let C1E lower it at Idle, the newer BIOS on mo P35-DQ6 seems to handle it differently. You just have to run some tests.

 

[csflame4]

I also noticed something. I just installed PC probe to check my temps. My cpu didnt go up at all, stays at about 33C, but my southbridge and northbridge shot way up. Mainly the northbridge. Northbridge went to about 55/56C from the low 40's high 30's and southbridge went to about 46C from the high 30. Should I set the voltage on those manually so they dont get so hot?

 

[Zorg]

You can't really trust those temps because they come from the mobo sensors. I wouldn't worry about those temps anyway, I don't think they are too hot. I have no idea what your components are because you never posted them. Do you have good NB cooling?

 

[csflame4]

I have an asus rampage formula X48 mobo. My case has 5 fans so its got good cooling. The mobo has a huge heatsink on it

 

[Zorg]

That mobo appears to have good cooling so I wouldn't mess with the northbridge voltage.

 

[aznguy0028]

set your ram to 400mhz. run it 1:1 just cause its the thing to do

setting voltages on auto does overestimates on what you really need...but in my opinion, if it all falls within the safe limits of the CPU/mobo...and the temps are decent, i rather not mess with it because we all know Prime95 takes up massive amounts of time.

thats just me though, cuz im lazy

 

[csflame4]

if I set it to 400, wouldnt it be running at a lower speed? because then it would be DDR2 800 right? instead of 1066

 

[Zorg]

Yes.

 

[csflame4]

so its faster the way it is now then

 

[Guest]

wait if you set it to 400... wouldn't it be like 200 then? or do you mean set the ram to 800 because the fsb is 400?

from what I understand... it doesn't matter if the ram itself is faster than the fsb.... because if it is... the fsb isn't fast enough to communicate with the ram those extra couple hundred times

 

[Zorg]

I mean set the base FSB clock to 400 and that would set the RAM to 800, thereby under clocking it a little and ruling the RAM out as a source of the crashes on the OC.

You will get better throughput with faster RAM, the problem is that the real world performance increase, with the core2, is negligible.