Overclocking Q6600 advice

Dino-Dan · 26-07-2012, 21:03

Hey, I've been trying to sell off my spare machine for a while now with sadly no takers (well a few no shows but whatever) and have decided i'm not going to get anything for it, so why not use it? I currently have a 2.8ghz athlon ii quad in my main rig but the motherboard doesn't have overclocking facilities, whilst the q6600's does. What i'm thinking is give the athlon to my missus, buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock the Q6600 and use it in my main rig. there would be added bonuses using the Q6600 as the gigabyte mobo its sat in has 4 ram slots, as opposed to 2 in my athlons. also the gigabyte mobo has 2 pci-e slots so i could do silly things with dedicated physx gpu's but that's irrelevant at the moment. I want some advice on what cooler to get, i haven't got delusions of grandeur only wanting about 3.2ghz out of it, i'm looking at the Coolermaster 212 + but is there any others in that sort of price range that are better performers? opinions?
Thanks

Ghozer · 26-07-2012, 21:17

firstly, is it a Stepping 0 Q6600? if not, it will be much more difficult to OC

Dino-Dan · 26-07-2012, 21:23

i believe it is, don't have a psu lying around to set it up. if it's a later revision or whatever will i still be able to hit 3.2ghz?

Ghozer · 26-07-2012, 21:33

basically, this site explains it all..

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2303

CompSpud · 26-07-2012, 21:33

I use Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 CPU Cooler. Take a look: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arctic-Cooli...337141&sr=8-35

I get around 30C tops from a 1Ghz over clock on the E5700.

Dino-Dan · 26-07-2012, 21:47

Cheers Ghozer that was mega useful

oh and still waiting on the box for my psp and the spider man umd

CompSpud, i had a little look around and that cooler isnt quite as good as a 212+ but it will get me to 3.2ghz (what i want anyway) fairly easily and for half the price its a brill find! thanks a lot guys

AlexAtkin · 26-07-2012, 23:03

I second that the Arctic Cooling heatsinks are very good value for money, keep the temps right down and the fans are much quieter than stock.

fake · 27-07-2012, 14:30

Seems a nice and quiet cooler.

With a cooler like that though make sure you have enough headroom in the case as some cases are too narrow for large coolers and some of them can also overlap a ram slot.

Dino-Dan · 27-07-2012, 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by fake

Seems a nice and quiet cooler.

With a cooler like that though make sure you have enough headroom in the case as some cases are too narrow for large coolers and some of them can also overlap a ram slot.

yeahh i'm going to get a new case at somepoint soon anyway so might as well get the heatsink measure the width i need and then get a new case

Trickle · 28-07-2012, 20:18

What mobo?

The Nvidia chipsets from that era won't go past 3ghz.

Dino-Dan · 28-07-2012, 21:04

http://ee.gigabyte.com/products/mb/s...i-ds4l_10.html

It's not the best but has a nice little OC utility, i've been doing a lot of hunting around, and with a g0 Q6600 (one i have) i could potentially get up to 3.4GHZ with a good cooler.

Trickle · 28-07-2012, 21:25

Would be surprised if you get more than 3.1 from the nforce. Suggest you don't spend too much on the cooler.

Dino-Dan · 28-07-2012, 22:06

bad times... i'll see what i can get, if i get 3.0 ghz i'm happy ^_^

after lots of looking around i decided to go for a hyper 212 evo, only a tenner more then the freezer 7 and since i'm seriously considering getting a 2500k at the end of the year i can just recycle it.