overclocking e6600 with DS3 board without changing voltages.

[vwgtipowr]

I have the CPU overclocked to 2.997Ghz and have not experienced any issues yet.

Followed the instructions on the sticky and disabled all the crap in the BIOS. I set the bus to 333mhz, and memory is at 4-4-4-12.
I left all the voltages at stock levels and everything seems to be chipper.
Is that normal? Should I have had to raise the voltages?

I ran orthos for 20 minutes and there were no issues. I can run it longer tonight.
However I installed COD2 and played for a couple hours and I haven't had any problems yet.
The best part the CPU temps are cold! Barely hitting 50*C after 20 min orthos run.
I have one of the case temp sensors stuck to the northbridge heatsink, and it was around 52*C.

 

[N7SC]

Sounds about right. I just built a system around an E6600 and a GA-965P-DS3 board, and run it at 333/1333/2.997GHz, stock voltages, with absolutely no problems.

What "CPU temps" are you referring to when you say that your CPU temps are "cold," Tcase or the two Tjunction temps? And what software or hardware are you using to monitor the temps? Virtually everything that I have run reports my Tcase CPU temp as below ambient at idle, which is impossible. However, if your system is reporting accurate temps, then you are doing pretty darn good.

My TAT idle temps (Tjunction, core 0 and core 1) are around 31 to 33 deg C, and full load, TAT, gets up to around 50 deg C. Orthos small primes stabilizes at about 43 to 44 deg. C. My cooling is a Swiftech H2O-120 kit (Apogee GT CPU block, 120 radiator, fan, pump and res.).

 

[vwgtipowr]

Mine are a little higher.

Core 0 and core 1 were at ~33 ~31 at idle and just above 50C at full load running orthos. That was using TAT to monitor. The other apps I installed were all close to that as well.
I'm using the Arctic cooler freezer pro 7.
Case has 5 Fans.

I didn't pay attention to tJuntion, what is that?

 

[N7SC]

The temps you see in TAT, Core 0 and Core 1, are the Tjunction diodes. There is one in each of the E6600's two cores. Tcase is a sensor in between the two cores that is supposed to give a fairly accurate reading of the temp at the geometric center, on the top side, of the heat spreader. It has to use some conversion tables in the hardware/BIOS/firmware because the Tcase sensor is actually under the heat spreader, not on top of it.

If you haven't read the Core 2 Duo temp guide sticky yet, you might give it a try.

Your temps look good to me, especially for an air-cooled system.

 

[Alsone]

No you should be fine at that.

I'm running mine at 3.0Ghz (334 x 9) and according to cpu-z my vcore is 1.264 volts although Asus AI Booster incorrectly reports 1.41.


I'm totally stable at this.

 

[vwgtipowr]

Yeah I did read it, but being new to this stuff some of it was over my head.
Thanks for the details to clear things up.

How much of a performance gain would I see from going from almost 3ghz to 3.2? Is it worth it? I will prob stay at my current over clock for a while.

 

[Alsone]

I lose stability around 3.2ghz at the moment so its either in need of slacker memory timings or a Vcore increase. Either way, be aware you might need to start tampering in what you said you didn't want to, to increase get it to 3.2 and stable.

I simply chose not to, especially not on stock cooling.