Project Overclock #2: Trouble in Paradise?

GhostGT

Daemon Poster
Messages
1,019
Q6600.
Tuniq Tower.
Great Airflow throughout case.


What do you guys think my only problem is right now?

Ambient Air Temperatures! :mad:


The Tuniq Tower is doing a great job at keeping things cool during the day, but at night, when the whole house is being heated, my lights are on and my window is closed, the temperature in my room can get hot. As in, 27-29*C hot. And I KNOW that has a profound effect on what I can do as far as overclocking goes.


Here's what I'm currently at:

@ 2800MHz, computer ran beautifully with 1.2125V Vcore.
@ 3000MHz, computer ran beautifully with 1.2750V Vcore.
@ 3200MHz, computer requires somewhere around 1.3500 Vcore, and is not stable.

At 3200Mhz, I raised the VCore to 1.3500V to see if it would become any more stable (P95 kept causing blue screen hangs and random restarts, and sometimes even errors, too.) So I raised it to 1.3500V, and not only were my temperatures hovering around 63-64*C (CoreTemp, might be 4-5* too high, hmm), but it also crashed and I got a BSOD dump/restart after starting firefox while the test was running.

I've returned the computer to 3000MHz and am running fine. I'll leave P95 on overnight to test the stability again, but I'm sorta bummed that I'm not able to use my Tuniq to its full potential because of my room temperatures.

I want to hear your thoughts/advice.


Chris
 
Can't you cover up the heater vent and open the window?

I knew I'd get questions like that:

The heater vent is already covered but the whole house is being heated anyway, so it eventually warms up my room, too. Leaving my window open makes it uncomfortably cold for me at night since my bed is against the window.
 
What you wanna do is make an hole in the wall for an air duct to an outside wall. Get some flex tubing, 80mm, and connect to the intake fan on the computer. Have the computer sucking in cold air from outside.

I had this set up at my mums house. Excellent in the winter and pretty good in the summer evenings.

You might have to re-arrange your room to connect the computer to the ducting which goes to the hole in the wall.
 
What are you other voltages set at. Auto isn't that great for overclocking, and you will need a 1.6V CPU PLL voltage and a 1.4V FSB termination voltage. Also, disable CPU spread spectrum and PCI-E spread spectrum.
 
What you wanna do is make an hole in the wall for an air duct to an outside wall. Get some flex tubing, 80mm, and connect to the intake fan on the computer. Have the computer sucking in cold air from outside.

I had this set up at my mums house. Excellent in the winter and pretty good in the summer evenings.

You might have to re-arrange your room to connect the computer to the ducting which goes to the hole in the wall.

but what about condensation?
 
I never had a problem with condensation.

When I set this up the fan drawing in the cold air was temperature controlled and to be honest was only on during the warmer months.

I modded an old cream coloured tower and had the duct connected to the lower front of the case. It worked a treat and I ended up sell the Gigabyte GA-7ZXR mobo, with the thunderbird CPU, in working condition on eBay.
 
What you wanna do is make an hole in the wall for an air duct to an outside wall. Get some flex tubing, 80mm, and connect to the intake fan on the computer. Have the computer sucking in cold air from outside.

I had this set up at my mums house. Excellent in the winter and pretty good in the summer evenings.

You might have to re-arrange your room to connect the computer to the ducting which goes to the hole in the wall.

I toyed with that same exact idea after I realized that ambient temperatures were gonna be a problem. I was gonna poke a hole in my wall and use PVC piping I had left over from my car intake project to route colder air to my computer air ducts. Two problems:

1. I don't want to poke a hole in my wall.
2. I wouldn't like the look of a pipe taped up to my computer. My room is totally clean and aesthetics are too important to me since I have people in my room all the time.

I've thought about another idea and tested it last night, too.

My computer sits on top of my desk, which is arguably the hottest section of my room because of the monitor heat, lamps, etc. I placed two thermometers near my desk area; one near the computer and another UNDERNEATH my desk. I found a 7*F difference. I don't know if that's a huge difference or not, but I'm thinking that a simple relocation of the computer could technically help me with the heat issues at the height of the night wen temps are so high for me.

I'm predicting that summer will actually be a friendly welcome to my overclocking adventures. I know my logic goes against what every other person says about overclocking, but I see no reason to dread summer. In my house, the heater is always on during Winter, causing ambient temps to be ridiculously high. But during Summer, my AC will be constantly running and my room temperature will be much lower than what it is right now.

Anyway, I'll be trying the location switch tonite and will keep you guys updated.


What are you other voltages set at. Auto isn't that great for overclocking, and you will need a 1.6V CPU PLL voltage and a 1.4V FSB termination voltage. Also, disable CPU spread spectrum and PCI-E spread spectrum.

Worshipme, I've changed quite a lot through the BIOS, and have disabled a lot of features. When I get home I'll go ahead and take pictures of all my settings and i'll post them up. Hopefully you can chime in again.

As per my last post, here are the pics of my BIOS settings.

DSC02199.jpg


DSC02200.jpg


DSC02201.jpg


DSC02202.jpg



Hopefully there's something we can mess around with to help me a litte. I relocated my computer tower to the coolest location in this room and the temperatures are still the same.
 
Got your PM.
As you said in your first post that you couldn't get it stable at 3.2GHz, I can tell you that I didn't need any more than a 1.35V vcore, but I did need to fiddle with a few other settings.

PCIE frequency: When overclocking, always set this to 100MHz, as you never know whether your GPU will be able to handle the higher frequencies and it may limit your CPU. Afterwards, when your CPU overclock is stable, you can increase this to try and get a little extra performance from your PCI-E cards.

DRAM frequency: You will need to set this manually otherwise your RAM may be running at higher speeds and causing instability and therefore limiting your OC. Use a 1:1 memory divider here. You can fine tune after to get your RAM to it's max speed.

DRAM command rate/DRAM timing control: When set to auto, your BIOS will most likely relax these settings slightly, so I prefer to enter them manually according to my RAM specs. Select manual and enter your timings in the first four. Command rate should be 2T.

CPU Vcore: Like I said previously, the Q6600 G0 shouldn't need anymore than 1.35V to reach 3.2GHz.

CPU PLL voltage: Here, I could run at around 3.3GHz with 1.5V, but increasing the FSB further required 1.7V. It may be that your Q6600 needs a little bit more juice than mine, so I would up that to 1.7.

FSB termination voltage: The higher you go FSB wise, the more juice you need. I run a 400FSB with 1.4V, so 1.3V should be sufficient but if you experience instability, up it to the next notch.

DRAM voltage: Nominal voltage for Corsair XMS2 is 2.1V.

NB voltage: Your BIOS looks a lot like mine, so you should have a 1.4V option, use this when the FSB speed is over 350 or you are trying to squeeze some extra bandwidth from your RAM.

SB voltage: My BIOS doesn't have this option so unfortunately I can't help you here.

CPU spread spectrum/PCIE spread spectrum: Supposed to eliminate electromagnetic interference but can mess with frequencies slightly, enough to cause instability so disable both of these two.

All other options are fine on auto and shouldn't have any impact on your overclocking.

BTW, what motherboard do you have? I'm guessing ASUS P5K deluxe...
 
I've got the P5K-E actually. And wow, I forgot it supports 45nm chips. Woooo.

Worship me, as per your instructions I've gone ahead and overclocked my computer again to 3204MHz. We'll see how hot this baby gets and whether or not it'll stay stable. I'll keep you posted.
 
Back
Top Bottom