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Q9550 with asus p5q se2 @ 4.0 Ghz???

ketrab

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Oct 27, 2008
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Long story short I use this mobo with my e6600 on TRUE@3.4 but I’m thinking about upgrading cpu.

What I just realized is that I may hit the wall with q9550.

E6600 was using 1033 fsb so I had more room to OC

Mobo has max FSB1600 so my calculations are as follow:

q9550- fsb 333 x 8.5 stock speed

To get it @ 4ghz I would need fsb of 470x4=1880

My question is:

Since asus reads FSB1600 will that be my max? meaning 400x8.5=3.4ghz on q9550 or it will let me go further?

or I would have to change the mobo( probably won’t) than maybe it is not forth upgrading just go for i7 when cash is handy?

Thanks in advance.

FYI.

MOBO
North Bridge Chipset Intel® P45 Express Chipset
South Bridge Chipset Intel® ICH10
BIOS AMI BIOS 8Mb Flash ROM PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.5, ACPI 2.0a, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
Socket Type Socket 775
Compatible Processors Core 2 Extreme; Core 2 Quad; Core 2 Duo; Pentium Dual-Core; Celeron Dual-Core; Celeron 400
Front Side Bus 1600MHz, 1333MHz, 1066MHz, 800MHz
Supported CPU Technologies Support Intel® 45nm Multi-Core CPU
Memory Channel Supported Dual Channel
Memory Speeds Supported DDR2-1200, DDR2-1066, DDR2-800
Maximum Memory Supported Upgradeable to 16GB
Memory Expansion Slots (4) 240-pin DIMM Slots

 
I've used a couple P5Q boards, a pro and se, and they both went over 480. You shouldn't have any issue getting that Q9550 to 4ghz. I've been using a q9550 myself for about a year and have found little difference at 3.6ghz to 4ghz. A 4ghz cpu is fun to have but I now keep mine at 3.8ghz because for me to get to 4 I'm at 1.34v and at 3.8 I'm at 1.29v and 55c full load temp.
 
Not exactly. The motherboard manual will tell you the rated speed, not how far beyond that you can push it. CPU's are the same way.

As in all things overclocking, YMMV. You may get unlucky and get a Q9550 with a high VID and struggle to reach 3.6 GHz. You just don't know until you try with your hardware.