hi guys,

this thread is a carry-on from the off-topicness in the Forumites Drives sticky (sorry again about that )

basically i have an e8400 (wolfdale, 3.0GHz, 333MHz FSB, 9.0x multi) sat in my PC, and after almost a year of sacrilegious stock clocks ive decided to see what i can get out of it

so far, ive hit 3.4GHz (378Mhz FSB, 9.0x multi), stable in a default run of IntelBurnTest (clicky), but ill continue to raise this until i hit instability, or go over 65 DegC @ full load. cureently im upping the core ~100MHz, testing, and repeating

at stock, my temps are: idle 43 DegC, 100% load 58 DegC. i know that may not sound like a lot of temp headroom from my maximum, but im at 3.4GHz already and only hit 62 DegC. cooling is provided by my trusty Arctic Cooling Freezer7 Pro, which is 50% RPM @ idle, 100% @ full load. so far i havent had to overvolt anything (although my RAM seems to be getting overvolted by the mobo, @ 2.0v now and im sure it was 1.9v when i started )

any questions, advice etc are more than welcome. if i dont reply in 10 minutes its because im knee-deep in BIOS

You should be able to easily hit 4Ghz with that chip, what board are you using? And see if replacing the TIM helps, get some AS5 or something, should knock a few degrees off.

mobo is an Abit IP35, never overclocked with it before, but my experiences with my old FP-IN9 were good (2.875GHz out of an e4400 )

i already am using AC5 but i think i lathered it on a bit thick, could be the problem. but the high temps could also be a result of me trying to use it in aforementioned IN9, and later (after much crashing and temporary hardware failure) discovering that, despite Abits claims, it wasnt wolfdale compatible its perfectly possible it could have fried the inbuilt temperature sensor. uGuru reads the temps at about 10 DegC lower than CoreTemp and rivatuner, i just dont know which to trust >.<

anyhoo, 3.5GHz IBT stable @ 63 DegC 100% load, my suspicions about the auto-overvolting RAM have been confirmed, so thats one less thing to worry about!!i idle temps dont seem to have changed, they have gone down if anything

What's the tjMax thingy? It should be 95*C, I had to adjust mine in coretemp to get it to read correctly.

444x9 sorts out 4GHz. You only need a very thin layer of as 5

new version of coretemp (99.5 beta) doesnt allow changing the TjMax, so i offset both cores by 5 DegC, its now showing about 37 DegC at idle, which is exactly what uGuru is showing

overclock is currently at 3.7GHz @ 67 DegC, ~1.25v. 3.8GHz caused a crash and static to come from my speakers, making me think its something a little more advanced than a lack of core voltage, so im going to leave it here for now still, an extra 700MHz aint too shabby for a few hours work

@saspro, it was my first time re-TIMming so something was going to go wrong. i dont think its worth disassembling my PC over, and im more than happy with what ive got. but thank you for the advice. maybe ill push for 4GHz when i understand a little more about the voltage options

There's plenty more in that cpu especially at 1.25v
I've had over 4.5GHz at 1.4v

hi guys, i know its been a while since i last posted here, but there have been a few developments just recently

yesterday i tried pushing for 3.8GHz, which, although stable enough to boot windows, crashed mid-IBT. dropped the fsb a little and tried again, same thing happened. raised core voltage, again got a crash. raised every voltage i have access to (core, ram, VTT, MCH, ICH, GTLREF), and was greeted with more crashes. so, as it stands, the highest FSB i can get is 416, resulting in a 3.74GHz core. all mobo heatsinks are warm to the touch, but not what i would call overly hot, none of them are hotter than my 9600GT's PCB for certain

is there anything ive missed, and more importantly, would overvolting further help at all? thanks in advance

What voltage are you up to?

I used 1.4-1.45 for 4GHz on mine.

1.28

ill go raise it but if memory serves, 1.35 saw similar problems as i am currently having

Hi, as saspro says try a bit more vcore, and what speed is you RAM running at now.

RAM is rated at 800, currently running ~830 overvolted to 2.1v, is stable higher (~870 @ 1.95v)

ive spent the last few hours mucking around with voltages, havent got anywhere yet though, and ive just found that 3.7GHz isnt stable in games for any length of time (the main use of my PC)

core is currently @1.32v, but im inclined to skip it and try higher

Drop the RAM speed and voltage.
Have you bumped the northbridge voltage?
It might just be your board (the 1 abit board I had could never do a decent fsb speed)

It might be Northbridge that is unstable, or RAM. What you should do is drop multiplier to lowest you can. eg 6x, rump up fsb to 450, set FSB:RAm to 1:1 and try running prime. If it fails you will need to address it and make it stable. Finding your FSB wall is the first thing you should when OCing C2Q...

If it unstable at 450 it could be either NB or RAM. To test RAM find FSB:RAM ratio in bios and set it so FSB is low but RAM runs at approx 450mhz or so...

My E8500 has done 4.2GHz today at 1.35v.

Just about, anyway.