Q6600 Temperatures, Arctic Freezer Pro7 and life of cpu

[dan1978]

I have just bought a Q6600 g0 CPU and I am making my first attempt at overclocking.

A few hours ago my computer totally froze up, and when I turned the pc on and off again it wouldn't reboot, and I had to clear the CMOS. I was wondering if this is normal, that was at 1.27500V, now I have increased the core voltage to 1.28125V and the computer has been running fine without any errors at all for a few hours?

The speed is just over 3ghz with a fsb of 334 and a multiplier of 9, I was wondering how long the cpu is likely to last with these settings and full load temperature of 69 degrees centrigrade?

Also I am using an Arctic Freezer Pro 7, and I was wondering if this heatsink and fan is any good?

Thank you in advance for any help that I receive.

 

[dan1978]

bump

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

List all your systems specs, that will help a lot .

I am running a similar setup, and using the "Auto" voltage in the BIOS for the CPU(which gives me about 1.288V in CPU-z and speedfan), running @ 3.01Ghz. I use an AC freezer pro 7 , have been for a year already without any issues at all.

I would suggest maybe raising the Ram voltage to 2.0V if you r memory supports it.

Also you can use CPU-z and check at what speed the Ram CPU & FSB are running.

Have you set your PCI-e speed @ 100mhz? If not that could be the source of the problem since sometimes the PCI-e speed will scale with the FSB...

Let us know.

Edit: Also note that by manually setting the voltage to 1.2875, you may have undervolted your CPU, Because in my case, my mobo as +/- 0.120 volts of Vdroop (check online for the definition of Vdroop), thus I have to set the voltage 0.120 volts more than what I will get in the end...This happens often, and the extent to which it does depends on the quality of the Motherboard. So basically I had to set it manually @ 1.40V to get the rated 1.288 volts I need.

 

[Jim_L9]

Have you tested your overclock with something like Stress Prime?

 

[dan1978]

Hi MCMONOPOLY and Jim_L9,

My system specs are:

Asus P5Q motherboard
Q6600 G0
4 x 1GB sticks of Crucial PC5300 budget RAM
EVGA 8800GT OC
Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II
2 X HD502IJ 500GB Samsung SATA Hard drives
2 X DVD RW drive
Sony FDD
Corsair 450W PSU

I am using budget RAM as I originally had perfomance RAM, and I was getting errors and Blue screens with it. This RAM has been fine even after I Overclocked the cpu, I ran Memtest+ 86 and it came up with no errors at all.I have manually set my RAM voltage to 1.8V as I think this is the right voltage for it.

The CPU front side bus is running at 334MHZ and the RAM frequency is 334mhz.

I have been using Prime95 to stress test my system, but I was using other applications like Firefox at the same time, maybe that's why It froze?

I have manually set the PCI-E speed to 100mhz and I have also disabled some of the CPU features in the BIOS.

I have upped the CPU voltage again since as it froze again and it is around 1.28500 now, and I ran Prime95 over night for about 8 hours and there weren't any errors at all.

 

[dan1978]

I have been using core temp to monitor the CPU temperature by the way.

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

I noticed the 450W PSU, that's a bit tight, not critical, but for an Oc'ed rig I prefer to see higher voltage ->QUALITY<- PSUs, since those 8800's are a bit power hungry, but nothing to be too much concerned about.

Corsairs are up to snuff normally, I used to run Dual X1950PRo with an Oc'ed AMD Cpu, on a 520HX model, and ran like a champ for a year.

So apart from that, don't be afraid to have the Voltage up to 1.3V @ 3.0ghz if it's not stable yet. Your temps shouldn't be much higher than +/- 35-40C @ idle, and +/- 52-54C at full load (4 cores) @ 1.3V.

I use AC thermal paste, and also used the OCZ one, which worked great.

Also I noticed that your running an TV tuner, and that for a fack pulls a lot of juice when in a system( even more so if it does its own encoding/decoding). I have an HTPC at home with a very similar TV card, and it took a good PSu to get the system running stable.

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

I just looked at the PSU calculator form extreme power supply-> http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

With your setup(plus 2x120mm case fans and 10% capacitor aging), and it gave out an 359W load, and if we apply a general rule of thumb about the efficiency of good PSU's (which is about 70-80% of the rated power) your 450W comes in @ 360W @ 80% eff. and at 338W @ 75% eff.

So that could be the source of the freezing.

I'm not 100% sure, but apart from that, I can't see anything else, apart from windows itself. But that would reoccur more than once.

 

[eklipz330]

with such a wimpy OC [no offense], it'll last long enough til you realize you needed to upgrade anyway

 

[dan1978]

OK, thanks very much.

Maybe I should upgrade the PSU then, that's the PSU calculator that I use, but I didn't know about the 70-80% efficiency bit.

I am still concerned at the high temperatures under full load (69 degrees), I am using Arctic Silver 5 and also I don't think the core voltage is that high at about 1.28V reported by cpu-z.

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

with such a wimpy OC [no offense], it'll last long enough til you realize you needed to upgrade anyway

I lowered my OC from 3.6 to 3.3 and then to 3.0 when I realized that:

1) You need to have the voltage quite a bit higher than stock to have a stable 3.6GHZ (400 FSB w/1:1 Ram) which in turn riase the CPU temps quite a bit, and with a cooler like the AC Pro 7, I couldn't keep the temps below 80-85C @ full load when using 1.425V, which is quite high.
2) When it's 35c in the summer and you have a PC spewing out 60C+ air out, you tend to try to limit your time near the thing (which negates all the efforts you put into OC'ing)
3) I never had my 4 cores @ 100% load even when gaming/working
4) You risk of damaging the CPU in the long run, even if It's going to last me 7-8 year instead of 20..LOL

That's my reasons.

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

OK, thanks very much.

Maybe I should upgrade the PSU then, that's the PSU calculator that I use, but I didn't know about the 70-80% efficiency bit.

Yeah it's not 100% acurate, but a good rule of thumb. A good 600watter (OCZ, Corsair, PCP&C, Seasonic) should do the trick just fine. Don't go crazy for 750-800W, it'll be overkill.

I am still concerned at the high temperatures under full load (69 degrees), I am using Arctic Silver 5 and also I don't think the core voltage is that high at about 1.28V reported by cpu-z.

ok but the temps you are seeing are from what monitoring app? Bios? because 90% of the time they're way off the mark.

A good temp check would be Coretemp or Speed fan(in which I was told to ADD 15C to the read out to have accurate temps), and also I would check out the OC guide on this forum (check stickies) for very usefull info about the idle/load temps of different CPus.

 

[dan1978]

OK, I will look into upgrading to a 600W PSU.

The temperature monitoring program I am using is core temp.

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

OK, also note that the thermal paste has a "set-in" period of about 100hours or so, before it reaches it's optimal efficiency, which could result in +/- 3-4C in temp drops.

Make sure that the bottom of the HSF in really fully secured, somtimes the pins don't go in all the way, beacause TBH, I find these load temps a bit high, for a Q6600 @ 3.0GHz, 1.288V...

 

[dan1978]

I have reapplied the thermal paste and put the heatsink and fan back on, making sure that it is fully secured. It hasn't made any difference to the temperatures. I think there might be something wrong with the attaching pins on the heatsink as I have had to bend them a little to for them to fit through the holes on the motherboard, I think they are weakened and a bit stretched now. I am thinking about buying the scythe kama cross now.

What do you think?

 

[dan1978]

On second thoughts I think I will go for the Noctua NH-U12P and Corsair 650W TX PSU. The reviews that I've seen for the Scythe Kama Cross haven't been very good, plus the NH-U12P uses a better way of mounting it, rather than the Intel style socket 775 mounting which I don't think is very good.

 

[aeiouandxyz]

Core temp seems to read temps 5 C above Real temp.
http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

 

[dan1978]

I have just bought a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 as it had a good review on Tom's Hardware. I also bought an OCZ 600W OCZ600MXSP Modular PSU.

Hopefully my temperatures will come down now and my system will be more stable.

I will see what the readings are on core temp and I will try out real temp after I get these new bits.

 

[cwall64]

I have a question about Thermal Specifications on Intel's site. when it says "Thermal Specification: 62.2°C" (Q6600 B3 Stepping), is that for the number the BIOS reports or the actual core temperatures from a tool like CoreTemp or CPUID Hardware Monitor? My "CPU" temp is around 44 degrees, where CoreTemp tells me the cores are around 56 -57 degrees under a prime95 run...