Overclocking the Q9550, first time overclocking a CPU

[hosnappp]

Hey, I understand this is likely a pretty common question:

 

'My system specs are *this* and *this*. Help me overclock?'

 

And I know it's exactly what I'm doing so I'm sorry if that's frowned upon.

 

But I've been saving up for a couple months, as the economy is terrible... I am just now getting the money needed to order the parts I want.

And I really don't want to break any of it.

 

So based on the system specs in my signature, how much can I overclock my Q9550 and with what FSB, V.Core?

 

Help me out?

[Flibo]

Firstly, welcome to OCC!

 

Q9550 is a great chip for overclocking! Well... If you already haven't you really should look through this guide for basics: http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=71656

 

If I'm not terribly mistaken, the safe limit for voltage is 1,36V (don't use the value in BIOS, check it from CPU-Z) for 45nm C2Q processors. You can try to put the vCore up to somewhere like 1,35V at first from BIOS which is SAFE and won't harm your chip, and then start raising the FSB and see how high it will go. You can try stability tests like IntelBurnTest to see if your CPU is stable. There's not much other stuff to do really at first, unless you want to overclock further. Basically it's just "more vCore, more FSB". If you encounter a wall where increasing vCore doesn't help, try touching other voltages such as the North Bridge voltage. Just follow that guide and you can't do anything wrong

[hosnappp]

Firstly, welcome to OCC!

 

Q9550 is a great chip for overclocking! Well... If you already haven't you really should look through this guide for basics: http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=71656

 

If I'm not terribly mistaken, the safe limit for voltage is 1,36V (don't use the value in BIOS, check it from CPU-Z) for 45nm C2Q processors. You can try to put the vCore up to somewhere like 1,35V at first from BIOS which is SAFE and won't harm your chip, and then start raising the FSB and see how high it will go. You can try stability tests like IntelBurnTest to see if your CPU is stable. There's not much other stuff to do really at first, unless you want to overclock further. Basically it's just "more vCore, more FSB". If you encounter a wall where increasing vCore doesn't help, try touching other voltages such as the North Bridge voltage. Just follow that guide and you can't do anything wrong

 

 

Thank you very much This is a nice community.

[Voltes_5]

One of the many things to really keep your eyes on are the temps. You must be vigilant on monitoring your cpu/ram temps. For the cpu, you can monitor it by software much more easily, for ram, I usually touch the ram modules and see how hot they get even at a moderate fsb/voltage increase. You can easily keep them cool for now by putting a small 80mm fan over them. Whenever I overclock my systems, its not in a case and its on a bench, so it is much easier to access individual components. And do read on the guide, and any other guide you can find in fact, especially one pertaining to your system. You might get lucky and fine a system similar, or closely similar to your system and try their settings. But one thing to understand is no matter what, no similar systems, even exact identical parts overclock the same, no matter what, they always behave differently and I have found that out myself many times. Go easy on the voltage increase on the cpu/ram, do it on the barest minimum steps, just what you need and at a voltage heat output you are able to control.