Help with Overclocking

[zeNace]

Hello everyone, i'm fairly new at this forum / overclocking and I have a few questions to ask.

 

 

I know that my cpu is a E0, which should mean that I should be able to overclock to 4ghz fine but i'm having a bit of a temperature problem.

My cooler is a dynatron g950 (which should be good) but i'm idling at ~39-43, and about ~60 under load @ 3.8ghz on my intel e8500.

Thermal Paste: Artic Silver 5

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L

Case: Antec p90 w/ 3 120mm fans

 

I'm wondering if this is fine, or if i'm doing something wrong here, because I want to be able to reach 4ghz, without passing ~60-65C under full load.

I'm (normally) running ddr2 @ 960 mhz G.Skill 4GB 5-5-5-15

 

In the picture, I borrowed my friend's ram, so it's at 8gb @ 800mhz with 5-5-5-15 timings.

[LuckyDeath]

I dont have any experience OCing that CPU... but 60-65 under full load sounds somewhat reasonable for a 1.5 GHz overclock.

 

How is your case airflow? Do you monitor your case temps with HWMonitor?

 

Have you polished the CPU and heat block? Made sure the paste isn't applied too thick? Too much paste will hurt your thermal conductivity.

[zeNace]

I cleaned the cpu + heatsink with rubbing alcohol and applied a rice grain line in the middle of my cpu before putting it on my heatsink.

My e8500 is stock @ 3.16ghz (333fsb x 9.5 multiplier) sorry the cpu-z desktop picture is a bit misleading, (since I have speedstep enabled to save power)

 

I overclocked my cpu from 3.16ghz to 3.8ghz (400fsb), with those temps but it seems that other people have achieved lower temps with the same cpu, even with the stock cooler (Noting that my cpu cooler is much superior than stock).

 

I would say my case airflow is pretty good, I don't have too much experience to understand what's good or not, but I do clean it and there's no dust clogging the vents. I have not used HWMonitor but i'll run it when I get home.

[wevsspot]

ze - even at 65C under full load you're still well within the safe zone for that cpu.

 

It's hard to make comparisons with what temps "other" people get unless everyone is running the exact same hardware, exact same cpu cooler, exact same voltage settings etc.

 

Plus - you could even take two of the exact same boards, exact same processors, exact same voltages and compare and they still won't operate at the exact same temperatures.

 

If you're satisfied that your heatsink mount was done correctly, that you've used the right amount of TIM, and correctly applied the TIM during the installation process - I wouldn't worry much with it unless it gets over 70C on a regular basis under normal loads.