Hey, im Brad. Ive been looking for a decent cooler that will be able to hit a 4ghz o/c on a core i7 920 or 930.

From what ive found out i think its a mixture between the ease of air cooling, and the cooling power of water cooling. Im currently running a P5NTWS with a Q6600 overclocked at 3.0Ghz however i think im at the limit with this board every time i try to go higher its unstable, maybe im doing it wrong.

Any advice would be greatly appriciated and thankyou very much for your time.
Cheers Brad.

Overclock Settings:
CPU Frequency 1350
Core Volatge 3.0GHz
PCI Frequency 100
C1E Disabled

Welcome to the forums.

You can easily hit 4GHz on a 920 or 930 using a Titan Fenrir HSF, although water cooling is more effective and quieter.
There are probably some overclock guides floating round the bit-tech forums.

As far as your current setup goes, 3GHz isn't much of an OC for a Q6600. Is it a B3 or G0 stepping?
B3s can struggle a bit, but I'd expect more than that.

Drop the multiplier on your board and test your max FSB, to see if you can find the limit. If you can increase the FSB and get to run stable, dial it back and reset your multi and try your overclock with slacker memory timings.

1.35v isn't a huge amount for the quad but I would have thought you'd get beyond 3GHz without going higher.

Yeah i know its so poor i think it might be the mobo I mean the multiplier is at 9 but the frequency fsb should be at 333 to get a 3ghz overclock but its different i have to put the number of 1350 in to achieve this and to make things worse i bought the D0 so i should be easily hitting 3.4Ghz i also have a freezer 7 pro what am i doing wrong? Thanks for the welcome

Can you tell me what timings you have, what the NB voltage is set at and how many sticks of RAM you have?

That's an nVidia 6xx chipset board, and they didn't like more than two RAM modules when overclocking, some would get unstable in dual channel mode with just two sticks. I had a 650 board that wouldn't run at stock with 4 sticks.

You could try the overclock with just one stick of RAM at 6-6-6-18 and maybe even give the NB voltage a little nudge up, if you are still struggling for stability.

Crucially, don't leave ANY voltages at Auto setting (even if it means setting them to default volts in manual mode), and make sure you have decent airflow around your NB heat sink.

+1
i had an Abit FP-IN9 SLI (nForce 650i-based), the NBs on those things get insanely hot, even with the huge heatsink they put on. my IP35 doesnt get anywhere near as hot. it was also very fussy with overclocking, and wouldnt overclock at all after updating the BIOS, even 1Mhz FSB increase would cause it to not POST. in the end i swapped it out because my new CPU didnt work with it, despite several BIOS updates to enable compatibility

anyway, as Spreadie said, keep your voltages on manual mode, nudge up NB/RAM/FSB voltages, and keep an eye on your temperatures. if that doesnt work, it might be worth lowering your multiplier a step and overclocking, to see if its your CPU limiting you or another factor

Ok sounds like ive missed som key voltages i left N&SB voltages on auto as i didnt know what value to set them at. For the ram Timings they are at 5-5-5-18 its the corsair 2x4GB 800mhz xms stuff. How much should i O/C ram by atm the ram voltage out of the gate is 1.8V so i wouldnt know what to go up in. I always thought incriments of 0.5 volts was ok but what frequency and voltage should i use with say a 3.4GHz overclock? I mean i dont have a bad CPU cooler i can remember back in the day Bit tech praised the freezer 7 pro and i think i should be easily able to get more out of it. Maybe the mobo is just a bad o/c board.

Thanks Brad.

Ive taken some pics so you might be able to see whats up with my settings

Pic 1 Post Screen

Pic 2 Bios

Pic 3 Bios Frequency CPU + Mem

Pic 4 Bios Volatges

the Freezer 7 is an awesome cooler, the rig in my sig uses one and never goes over about 65 DegC, even in IntelBurnTest

my PC has 4x1GB of 800MHz XMS2, which requires somewhere between 1.95v and 2.1v to hit the relatively high frequency it is at now. however since you have the option to unlink your RAM speed from the FSB (intel boards dont have this) id leave it limited to ~800MHz. you shouldnt have to change the RAM voltage doing this, since it isnt being overclocked. ive never owned a quad core so i cant advise you in that area, but nForce motherboards are quite notoriously fussy with overclocks. if anything were limiting you, id say it was that, but since you already have an upgrade planned out i wouldnt bother spending any more money on your current PC

You seem to talk alot of sense but put it to me straight... I aught to upgrade to an x58 chipset i7 and forget the Nvidia chipset thats limiting me?

in your first post you mentioned needing to cool a core i7, i assumed this meant you were planning an upgrade? if not id just leave it, unless you have proof that your clock speed is holding you back. a 3GHz Q6600 will still be fast enough for the majority of games

Yup.

In fact, if it's mainly for gaming, you'd be much better off forking out for a GTX 580 instead of the i7 upgrade.

Of course waiting a few weeks, to see just how good the AMD/ATI 6970 really is, could be worthwhile. Rumours are that it almost hits double the frame rate of the 5870 in some tests. Others suggest a good 30-40% performance jump. Sounds freakin awesome TBH.

depends on what graphics card/screen size he has at the moment, obviously theres no point upgrading to a 580 if he already has a 4XX-series, or is playing games on a 15" monitor however, assuming he running the average 2-year-old spec GTX260/HD4870 on a 20 or 22", a GTX5XX or HD69XX would be a worthwhile upgrade. personally i would (am) wait(ing) until Intel releases Sandy Bridge before upgrading the CPU, they are shaping up to be quite interesting if current information is correct, pricing shouldnt be too bad either

I was assuming a decent mid range setup from around the time when the Q6600 was still in it's heyday, and your point is very well made. However, considering the cost of a 920/930, 4GB+ DDR3, an overclockers mobo and a top end air cooler - knocking on the door of £500 - thats in the same area as a 580 and a 22" screen.

I'm sticking with my QX9650 until I'm happy that Intel has decided on a platform with a little longevity.
I mean LGA 1366, 1156 and 1155? For goodness sake, make your minds up. Look how long 775 ran.

I know they're aiming the sockets at different levels, but I don't believe they'll stick with it for long.

Sorry bout the slight threadjack, Braderz.

No wories about i must upgrade to a new cpu as i only play FSX if you know what that is its a flying game but it runs from the CPU so the more cores the more FPS you get however its a massive frame killer to max it out i get best of 30fps and in some scenarios i will get as low a 15fps quite annoying but i also do alot of 3d work. So for Cinema 4D i would love an I7 it will save me rendering time.

Ive been looking at boards for the I7 and when i get paid in Jan after christmas i will probs blow aboout £150 on a good overclocking board not a cheap cop out Nvidia chipset that is real poor. I would really like a Gigabyte board or maybe the Asus Rampage II looks great and thats in my price range both have pretty good reviews, but how do they cope with overclocking. Would hate to have a pain in the neck board that wont overclock again.

Thanks Brad

The Bit-tech review covers the overclocking aspects of the Rampage II

Rampage II review